The Starving Man

The Starving Man

R. Fakier

There once was a man born in Ukraine in 1902. We will call him the starving man. The starving man had a family, a mother, a father, and a young sister. We will call her the sickly girl. The starving man survived the first world war with the help of his family and their hunting dog, Beasley, dont get too attached to him. After the war was over the starving man was happy, he lived for quite a few years before anything bad even happened, but when it did it hit like a tsunami; drowning everyone near, leaving others with permanent damage and trauma. Soviet Russia was not happy, especially not with Ukraine's political views. They wanted communism and Ukraine didnt want to oblige.

The famine came, more like a genocide. The starving man was now truly starving. So was his family. The Russians ransacked their village, and shot Beasley. Then the walls came. His sickly sister could not survive the disease and malnutrition. A large amount of Ukraine had already resorted to cannibalism, so they ate her corpse. They did what they had to survive. The starving man ate with tears rolling down his cheeks on the verge of vomiting. He couldnt stand the thought that he now knew what his sister's blood and flesh tasted like. It tasted like copper pork. As his family slowly died he slowly ate them two. The man now despised himself.

Once the borders went down he fled to Poland. In Poland he found a forest where he stumbled upon a small little cottage that had been abandoned. In the cottage was a book, the book was a spellbook. He looked through the book, just for fun at first, until he found a spell for eternal life. The spell would also cure any diseases or conditions you had or would contract. The man was susceptible to illness due to his malnutrition, and he had caught a disease causing him to slowly go blind. The man realized that if he used this spell he would be able to continue to see, and he could live forever too. The spell had a few rules and catches though.

You must consume human flesh for the rest of your life.

You must kill your victims with your own hands.

You must reside in the house for the rest of your life.

The people you kill will haunt you as spirits in the house forever.

You can only die if you kill yourself.

You must kill your victims on the property of the house.

He studied the rules carefully. He decided to do it, but he would need a sacrifice. He strolled to the nearby village where he met a young man who could not read, we will call him the illiterate man. To lure him in he told him that he would teach him to read before he went blind, he would just have to live with him. The illiterate man agreed to the starving man's proposition. He slowly fell in love with the illiterate man as he taught him how to read. He truly loved him. His face, his glasses, his hair; but as his vision started to fade and he could barely see these features anymore he knew it was time. One day he walked up to his darling, knife behind his back. He confessed his love to him, and kissed him. As the illiterate man started to spill his confession, and confirm their love, the starving man stabbed him through the heart. He held his darling's corpse and cried as he muttered how much he loved him into his ear. He vowed that he would never love again.

He performed the spell, and his darlings spirit haunted him, taunted him, tormented him, and he regretted it. He would stand in the hallways and stare, cry at night, and scream through the radio. He became heartless and cold, for about a year he went on a rampage. Someone even killed for him to try and prove their love; but he didnt care and killed them too. His loves spirit now had company, and he barely recognized his presence most of the time.

One day in the 1940s a group of young adults who had escaped a concentration camp stumbled upon his cottage. He let them stay, putting on a fake smile, pretending that he cared whether they got caught or not. There were four of them, the bloody woman, the wooden man, the gentle girl, and the clumsy boy. He really didnt care at first, but when he realized that the clumsy boy couldnt read, something broke inside him. Maybe it was cabin fever, but he started to think that this boy was his first love, the one that he had murdered. He couldnt lose him again. He started to teach him to read, falling in love again.

One day it was time he needed to eat flesh again or the spell would wear off. He told them they couldnt leave or they may get caught. He brought the gentle girl into the basement, his preparation station as he called it. The others didnt even hear her scream. He was so quick, just a slice to the throat. He fed the others their friend, they didnt question where he got the food from. Two of them because they didnt care, the other because she knew. She had tasted it before, she knew what she was eating, she got a high off of it. The bloody woman begged him for more, and again and again he told her no. Eventually she took matters into her own hands and killed the wooden man and tried to kill his darling. No, no he couldnt have that. His darling was injured and terrified, what had she done?

He caught the clumsy boy, who tried to run away, luckily he was clumsy like the name suggests. He locked him in the basement, and took care of the others. The clumsy boy was crying, the man tried to calm him down by muttering how much he loved him in his ear, but this just scared him more. Who are you! He would cry, and the man would just assure him that they had already shared their confessions and they were in love, because thats what the man truly believed. Eventually he started to let the clumsy bot roam around the house, which was a grave mistake.

The first chance that the boy got he grabbed a knife and ran into the basement, putting a chair at the door so the man couldnt enter. Once the boy was alone he stabbed himself through the heart. The man tried to knock the door down, but by the time he did all that was left in the room was a corpse. He held his darling in his arms, crying, muttering in his ear how much he loved him.

1160 words! Thanks for reading my really wholesome little story!

Definitely very wholesome! - Charlie