UnBooks:Hungry Fantasy

Consumer festival, rain to stop. I squeezed through the dense crowds into my apartment, eight hours into my daily fasting, about to climb the stairs as my second workout. Even separated from the streets, the air was saturated with spices, a temptation to the celebrations treading on a floor of uneaten food, which I really wanted to feast on – but I turned away, determined; two hundred steps the fat would burn, fifteen minutes to forget, one chance to gain control again.

I seldom remembered how I ate: the mouth caved in and swung shut, and a plate of food would suddenly disappear among a deluge of saliva; on the contrary a vivid bitterness always accompanied the time between meals: not floods of wanting but a persistent itch, a wasp in my brain that chipped at my concentration bit by bit. Passing the turn of weight cycle and growing chubbier robustly, I kept convincing myself of control, even if my lifestyle went precarious like my overfilled food tray on a cheat day. Will the intensive meal planning truly save me? Don't know; only an inertia carried me through the days.

A burst of light interrupted my musing. Prosperity found its very definition in the city before me: rooted in history, center of culture, pivotal to economy. But it was equally standing on pillars of salt as I saw: millions of individuals, running in circles, erecting premises of cash and empires of data destined to dirt.

“Where do you follow, where do you lead? 'cause down this lane is hell, and no other way I see.”

~ Postmodernist Chant

Under a sudden will to damn whatever weight loss plan to hell and eat everything in reach, I shivered in the blisteringly bright city lights.

Stage I

"Body image"

Is this the end of all the relentless conflict between appetite and apprehension? Having been treaded on by alternating shocks of guilt and starvation, this time I was duly glad that I held my savage hunger in reins.

Or did I?

I was tired, so tired as if walking in the air, my body smoke and my legs cotton. A mere thread of consciousness upended me over the smooth dark ocean of sleep. Perniciously, the tire dulled my mind, dragging me under a jagged impulse to eat anything in front of me. I took a massive gulp of water to drown the notion, the vital moisture shuffling my cracked lips.

Humans can easily survive a week without food, I recalled, but prolonged starvation is associated with worse weight relapses. True, even if weakness seeped into my flesh and soaked soft my bones, and confusion puffed my senses with thick cushions, I could still hear every cell of mine screaming for energy, with a force that couldn't logically be there.

I glanced again to the box of muffins on the shelf, gorging them down with my eyes while salivating profusely.

There was every reason to loosen the deletionistic diet, and no reason to fight the instincts till the last breath.

I opened the box and pinched off the top of a plump muffin to my mouth, where the airy sweetness melted my senses, all fluffy allure. A terrifying phrase flashed brightly through my foggy brain: point of no return.

Stage II

The craving goes long...

The box was open anyway, and seeing these luscious treats to stale and writhe in air was more than I could stand. Driven by an conniving force, I reached out my hand to snatch the remaining half, then descended to lick the crumbs clinging to the mould. Only then did the full scope of hunger revealed itself, unchained by the feeling of food in the harrowing hall of my stomach. I ate one more, then another. Eating has never been so breathtakingly beautiful; the sensation ignited, proliferated, and burnt high, too massive to resist.

And so I opened a box of cookies – I always keep a few boxes by my side – snatched one and see the lamplight infuse an essence to its well-browned surface. This is where truth resides, I thought. Edo, ergo sum. "If I eat these cookies now, there will be less craving in the future thanks to the absence of food." I said out loud. If I could benefit the future self simply by enjoying food, why qualm about the win-win?

For five minutes straight, cookies flowed down my mouth like a dream, with a pace I struggled to follow even with both hands. The thick paste from my hurried chewing covered my esophagus like lime, but I forced it down anyway. The food industry had captured the bliss point right on: their supersized imitation cheese quartet with fried mountain dew filling was edible art. Finishing the last morsel, I could not help savoring the gooeyness and wanting more. No more for now, I told myself. Time to take a walk and devote myself to something else, embracing nature and bonding with others and so on...

Stage III

The city was smooth and moist after a light shower. The bipedal choice cuts were natural and fresh, the radiant toppings on the street dainty, the browning of the bricks just fine. Oh no – in my eyes, the cityscape gradually intensified in saturation, until I was walking on chiseled wafers below flocks of aerial cotton candy, as fountains of Gatorade raved splashes on me. How can a famished man withhold himself when he is really walking on food? It took me everything to halt my mandible from diving into the ground and taking a bite.

Then when I lifted my eyes, I got stunned in place. A bakery stood at the crossing, wrought in an attire of fragrance, all elegance. Heavy aroma of breads drifted liberally up my nostrils, and warm yellow light adorned the cream cakes gilded grace. I lost all control. Almost flying inside, out of my mind, I bought a 12-inch birthday cake and ate it right at the spot. A thousand tastes flirted my tongue as I spelunked through chocolate then cream then chiffon, vanilla extract and coffee liquor and molasses and cocoa and all, saturating my senses so well that I could hardly tell what was going down.

Only after I licked off the last bits of crumbs on my hands did the flow state reside, revealing a room of shocked stares stamped on me. The profound shame came pounding on my cream-lined head, a loath so strong that could only be stifled with yet more food. What the hell, I have broken my plan already, so why don't make it a release and eat everything I can?

Uncontrollably, I grabbed a plump loaf of bread from the racks and swallowed it in two bites, to a horrified gasp of the cashier. "You ... you haven't paid yet!"

And out of pure instinct, I opened my caving mouth and sucked him down into my gastric dungeons flooded with sugar and shortening. I swallowed him whole.

My memory of the next few minutes had been shredded into ribbons, but it was gaping mouths I could recognize, some petrified and some screaming, with mine own snarling in the middle of all. Part of me backed in, hid and wept, but the rest of me knew that the show had just begun.

Stage IV

I did not remember how they fell, the palaces of sugar smothered in paint. Concrete plates crushed on my palate, and lime flowed like cream upon my teeth; pavements crumbled up my teeth one moment, and skyscrapers drilled down my mouth the next.

Watched from below, the metropolis appeared alien, eviscerated: the downtown avenues and skyscrapers had mostly succumbed, leaving the fresh wounds lined with teeth marks bleeding water, sewage, and fire. My washed and cleaned hometown had been basted in choking smoke plumes, stuffed with affluent emptiness, ready to be baked in my gastric juice.

Comorbidities

Once I started to eat I could not stop; the first bite was heavenly, but the second bite would descend to the mundane, and the rest of the meal floated in a pool of half-solidified dripping the texture of hair gel. The whole-city cuisine was no different, apart from greater negative marginal utility. Somehow, in my smoky brain, the root of this problem occurred to me: it was the humans, each of them a sinister calorie ball coated in extensive strata of fat, with the stubborn flavorings of soft drinks overpowering even the taste of digestive juices. How disgusting! I simply could not fathom the very notion of putting such abominations into my mouth. Immediately I knew to step up the control, returning to nature and foregoing such junk foods.

All-natural non-GMO organic kosher halal keto gluten-free bloaty methanogenic cold burger!

The next day saw me stepping into the forest. Dinner was thick, earthy chunks of land airy and moist, with a diverse texture ranging from fresh, pliable leaves to woody, teethy stems, toppled with blithe floral and honey notes. Never had I known that vegetables could be so tasty without being candied or deep fried! Plus, they were all healthy, bursting with iron and vitamin C; being raw, they showed off the most flawless taste and fullest spectrum of nutrients. Happily going down my "logical thinking", acres of land had entered my stomach within minutes. Even deluges of cookies and floods of cakes could not bring such genuine joy: I was living a healthy lifestyle among the masses deceived by the artery-blocking sugary delights! Flavored with rectitude, the woods struck me as the ultimate guilt-free indulge; thus I ate mindfully, never forgetting to pick out those hopping humans in the fields.

Sadly the post-industrialized world had erased the vast majority of forests, and the few surviving patches had also fallen ill, growing on soils depleted by countless rounds of crops. Finishing the diminutive woodlands and hardly full, I turned to the suburbs, coursing through bushes and shrubs. Once I got too engaged in front of a brewery and ate its fermentation tank as well, then immediately took a keen liking to the slightly effervescent green beer. I greedily sought out the tall tankards to enjoy their juicy pulp, and when there were not enough of them I uncontrollably ate other buildings as well: fuel tanks, distillation rooms, chemical storages. No pressure; the natural antioxidants had my back! Still, I warily circumvented the commercial crop fields, knowing they all grew GMO crops. Such were the atrocious anomalies! They all had disgusting bacterial genes interjected in their DNA, and the very notion of coming near them made me feel inflamed. Inflammation is terrible; it induces stress and puts the body in sickness mode, right? Turning away without an extra glance, the exposed bedrock I carved out bathed in the afternoon ultraviolet, honoring me a glowing praise of temperance and virtue.

Metastasis

However the fertile lands were like pizza crust: dead chewy, duly bland, and utterly unfulfilling. Initially it was tolerable, perhaps drizzled with a bit spillover pride: my strenuous mastication might even cover the energy consumed, promoting weight loss! Thus hours passed with intra-abdominal tectonics running full force, yet the dirt mousse fell short of my appetite. Overstuffed, a yarn of roots and branches tangled between my teeth, but I wanted more; stone crackers and leaf salads precipitated broad throbs of pain in the lower abdomen, but the total bowel cleanse regime was not over yet. I would have ignored the signal since my body always grudged aplenty whenever I go on a healing diet, if not for the sudden realization: raw plant material is high in oxalate, an antinutrient that interferes calcium absorption and increase the risk of kidney stones.

Horror! I squatted on the smoking dead grass to tug my fingers down the throat, as deep as I could, trying to remove those unhealthy oxalate; yet my body would not listen, holding tight onto the bezoars and fecaliths to extract whatever meagre nutrients to fuel the starved organs. Changing to a kneeling position and lifting the burnt rags of my clothes, I centrifuged my memory to seek information about the kidneys. Where are they? I tried to recover the scenes of pig slaughter from movies, identify the positions of kidneys, and trace them onto my belly – oh no, my belly was more or less a sphere, stretchy tender to palpation everywhere. Panicking, I curved my upper torso into a crescent, hands pressing on the bulging temples, and heaved, heaved – roasted to crackling by the searing regret from my most grievous mistake.

In the languish of attempted purging, all thoughts dissipated but one: I had to eat more, to dilute the damage of those toxins, and to punish myself.

The sky darkened with post-prandial somnolence. A miasma of sulfur veiled the storm of oil, metal, and derision: the Human Resistance Forces again. Central of the empty barrens, it burnt like a grill, ringing of fire, and waves of cacophony alight were the engines, exhaust, and so many men, pushing and splattering and harassing; I tasted blood welling from the back of my throat, heard the brisk crack of my glassy vision, then saw miserable tears drench the crumbling defenses of reason. Pain –

I opened my mouth and swallowed, war and impasse and self-inflicted limits and all. Precisely the same moment a lightning flashed, and tears mixed with the corrosive rain as my fat shape torn an opening through the bullets, half action hero half fat fuck.

Coma

The quest for satiety had taken me across the globe, oscillating between flares of extravasation and tunnels of restraint, my all-natural yo-yo dieting. Still, I found it impossible to stop eating: the feeding sets those precious flavors free, soothes my acute pains, numbing enough to become my sole source of happiness. What use is of a limitless eater devoid of control and awareness? I might as well take the dive and forget it all.

Then quickly, eating went from satisfying to lulling, and finally boring; in fact, this past exhilaration had become such a chore that I would resort to introspection, unable to do anything else with my fingers always covered in sauces and crumbs. I never knew this fourth stage of consumption, in which eating simplified to a sight-to-stomach streamline under the monotonous rhythm of mastication. Muscles and joints pushed the grimy puree down the tube mechanically, operating with post-industrial precision, reminiscent of how endless tubes of toothpaste fill up; and the paste down my stomach, too, eventually got squeezed out, such that all the tender steak plates, the gourmet desserts flavored with exotic spices, the hearty stew out of grandma's pot, and so on, sadly destined to the smooth porcelain john. There should not be any joy to it. Stemming from prehistory and continuing indefinitely, running in circles, a spontaneous comparison to the universe arises; food started to take up a philosophical aura, of materialization and dissimilation and deconstruction. Yes, deep cultural roots, intimate personal ties, blah blah blah, I got it – it all traces to our fundamental penchant for food. Were it not enjoyable, who would bother to put ambiguous mixtures partially decomposed by cooking into our stinking cavity? Why should food be enjoyable in the first place? For the pandemic of dieting and disordered eating, men is not to blame at all; it was food that we simply could not turn our back to.

Still, we could simply listen to our gut instincts, until those scientific discoveries threw everything off: sugar is linked to dental caries and obesity, saturated fat is a risk factor for atherosclerosis, et cetera; articles whipped us with the almost-mystical pathologies with lengthy names, whirling fear and dread with those regression models of evil and agony. Even trapped in my circling pool with junk and quasi-food, so beneficial I was to this world: I was actively tearing down the stale and corrupt old order! As for the consequences, other intelligentsia would take care of the construction of new science, in which I would be inaugurated as the founder!

Finally justifying myself, my shame left me in a breeze, and even the humanoid fat vacuoles smoothened out in a blast of long-lost joy.

Rupture

My prandial meditations did not end there. Wiping the dust of self-hate from my cognition, I started to feel an inner voice hinting me through the shuffling set of ragged teeth, a shapeless presence that nevertheless taught and guided me: I learnt to reframe the bingeing sessions into a healthy bustle, eating quickly while not forgetting to enjoy each bite; I learnt to spruce up the hearty fresh greens and browns with an arsenal of flavorings, ranging from aviation kerosene to mining wastewater; I even learnt to tame the revolting taste of overfed humans – those macerated in condensed vehicle exhaust were the most tender. Sparks of dedication and creativity illuminated my ingested despair. My memories of this time was a harvest with dark roasts of ashes and foliage dipped in a prudent touch of clarified human fat; the notes of coffee and coconut embedded in the warm interplay between acidity and fattiness danced all the way from the tip of my tongue to the bottom of the stomach.

Bite by bite, I nibbled off the bitter hate that once dominated me; sip by sip, I rinsed the naive perfectionistic body image with flavors that touched the soul. I binged, but to the psychiatrists' dismay, whole-heartedly; while the food used to enslave me, I have come hand in hand with food to a higher inner harmony.

Physiology cannot be changed; we should always enjoy food rather than wage war against it. Food is the selfless giver of love.

So devoted was I that the magnificent plots of the remaining humans evaded me; so sadistic humans were that they made themselves sacrifice for each other's pain, whereas food sacrificed itself for our happiness. The human armies had been fighting internally, due to some incompatible ideological difference. I felt sad for them, who would come short from fulfillment; the earth would have been terraformed completely before their squabble could finish.

Terminal stage

The Human Resistance Forces finally amassed to me whatever meagre forces they had left, shivering in the grease-laden wind on the last plough of ground without teeth marks, their not-so-heroic final stand. I cracked them like a snack.

The Earth had had all edible parts torn from its foundation, now cooling dismally like a plate of turkey bones. I finished a last bite of the crumbly land, grinding the dried roots and illegal nuclear waste inside. I had fulfilled my desire to an extent never reached before, and I had paid the price: My liver had become pâté, my kidneys two thin chips, my arteries a labyrinth of plaque, my digestive tract a full sphere dangling. It was all over now, I thought, acutely aware of the looming end.

The only miraculous force keeping me alive was the unstoppable wanting for food; thus, with the last swallow it went, and my sticks of legs collapsed under a landslide of fat. On the interface of life and death, facing the end of human lineage, there was so much sentiment to this moment, to the reverie irreversibly broken. I crushed my hope of tomorrow between my own teeth; but I had the decency to thank this world for breeding me, for putting me through the experience ultimately enriching.

The vitality of nature drained up, as the world's blood ran dry. With the last eye of untouched land closed by my final bite, it slept in knee-deep concrete crumbs and particulate pollutants, returning to the primeval posture of a baby; in a world where nothing would ever happen, I decided to do the same, thinking that I must pass away ugly to dissipate clean.