I peeled another strip out of my notebook absentmindedly. You couldn’t read it anymore, not that it mattered. Just some scribblings in the margins that once denoted hope, now empty promises.
I didn’t know how long it had been. I kept track for awhile but at some point I stopped bothering. It didn’t really matter except as a longing for some kind of normalcy. A lie I told myself in the dark when the candle would flicker out as the wick no longer outreached the wax.
Rolling the paper into a ball, I stared out the grimy window. An old abandoned spiderweb hung heavy in the corner, dust weighing down, the last effort of a long dead arachnid.
My stomach grumbled.
I had named that spider, it seemed like long ago. He was Bob. Or she. Didn’t matter. I watched it spin the web, so intricate, its endgame being a meal that never came. I don’t know what died first, the spiders or the flies, but it didn’t matter now. I hadn’t seen either in quite some time.
It happened fast, back then. So fast there were no answers. One day there was a world with school and shopping and television and pizza delivery and then… so fast there was… nothing. Nothing but me and some spiders and flies and the occasional stray cat. Til there wasn’t.
The smells kept my hunger at bay for awhile, the world reeked of rot and death. For awhile I got by with canned foods… for awhile I was fed. Then one day I opened the last can, baked beans which I always loathed yet ate that day in a frenzy.
I searched through the neighborhood, emptied immature vegetable gardens which cramped my stomach sometimes. I broke into every house, ate every morsel I could find. I thought I’d get by this way indefinitely, but even cans expire and I tired of finding rotten food. It took longer and longer to ride to new neighborhoods, new towns. One day I realized I couldn’t muster the energy to peddle the bike anymore.
I was now in the last place I’d live, some dusty trailer park in some unknown town. I had no idea how far I’d traveled.
I set traps for the local stray cats. They were hungry too, the birds had been gone for a long time and I only saw the occasional rodent. I didn’t know why the cats had survived but there were at least half a dozen and I was sure they saw me as a meal. I hid in an old blue trailer, long neglected before everything ended. I heard the rustle of empty tin cans the following day, I had snagged an emaciated tabby who wailed and clawed before I managed to slit its throat.
I had always wanted a cat growing up but my mom was allergic so I’d only had a goldfish. The fish was a much smaller meal.
I’d never learned how to hunt or skin an animal, but desperation was a hell of a motivation. I did the best I could to get the fur removed before wrapping it in aluminum foil and setting up the little woodstove in the trailer. I shoved the cat in the stove whole, my stomach pained as I waited impatiently for my first meal in a week.
There was so little meat on the bone, but I ate every bit, even the sinew and organs. Taste didn’t matter anymore, it was all about the calories. As the sun went down I gnawed at the bone, desperately trying for every single nutritional fiber. Eventually I fell asleep on the dilapidated couch.
Once the cats were gone my options grew slim. There was a mouse one day, a roach. Then there was Bob, spinning that web. Not even momentarily satiating, just a desperate act as hunger pains tore through me again.
A week later my hair began to fall out. It was surely in the water by now, but water was all I had, a small creek in the woods that was barely keeping me alive. It tasted wrong, but I didn’t care. Plumbing doesn’t work without electricity and the bottled water was long gone.
I looked at the clump of hair and closed my eyes and shoved it in my mouth. I immediately gagged and spit it out, no way that was going down like that. I found some scissors and cut it into small pieces, mixed it with some Creek water and drank it quickly. It tasted worse than the skin I’d been gnawing around my fingernails, but it was all about the calories. Anything to feel the smallest bit of energy. Even for a moment.
It’s amazing the will to survive. I could have ended it any time. I’d found guns, I’d found pills. I could have ended my suffering. But I didn’t. Needed just one more year, one more week, one more hour. I walked over corpses for the last strand of dry spaghetti and here, now, I rolled the last shred of paper from my notebook and shoved it in my mouth, chewing it like it was a piece of gum. I’d stripped bark from trees, eaten grass, I’d made myself sick on unidentified mushrooms in the woods.
But I no longer could stand. The last meal I’d have would be what once was the journal of 14-year-old me. I once wrote about school and boys and dreams, then I wrote which houses I’d emptied of food and now, now it was my last meal. As I slowly mashed the paper between my teeth it occurred to me I’d never learn to drive. I’d never kiss a boy or have a sweet 16 or go to college. I’d die in a stranger’s trailer, their corpse rotting behind a closed bedroom door, unaware that I was squatting.
The light is growing dimmer but it’s only midday. The wad of paper sits in my mouth now. I’m too tired to chew anymore. Just a nap. I’m sure that’ll help. Then I’ll find something, anything else to eat. It’s only about the calories now.