A Strange Kind of Hunger | FIRST DRAFT

Fighting Talk

Jonathan passes the rest of the day in a haze; he returns to the Goodwin house with a fresh bottle of laudanum and gives orders to administer some whenever Jesse seems to be in too much pain, then finishes off his house calls for the day. Sleep eludes him. The face of the dead crow hovers before his eyes, melding with the face of the old woman until the creature staring back at him is neither one or the other but a grimacing, devilish, gaping-socketed gargoyle. He tosses in a cold sweat, and finds the image branded into his eyelids.

When morning comes, it comes in summer perfection, heavy-laden with golden sunbeams. Fat, little birds puff out their chests like dramatic sopranos, strutting along the branches as they chirp their arias; every path wears its Sunday best of blooming wildflowers in flagrant reds, dainty blues and sunburnt oranges. Jonathan isn't inclined to feel kindly to the morning: his head aches with a tight, pulsing pain only aggravated by the light, and though he has no appetite his stomach is ravaged by what he can only describe as twisting pangs of hunger.

Every part of the beautiful morning reminds him of Jesse, which only makes Jonathan resent it even more. The songbirds have stolen his gentle voice, the babbling stream robbed him of his bubbly laugh — and worst of all, every fresh ray of sunlight seems to carry a fragment of the glow that used to dance in his eyes. Forcing himself to eat some porridge, Jonathan closes the curtains and tries to ignore it all.

He has no house calls; he has nothing to do at all, and inevitably finds himself wandering through the town, despite his resolve to avoid everything except the solace of a dark room. The buildings regard him with indifferent hatred, their piercing stares turning to judgmental frowns as his feet begin to turn towards the graveyard. No. Even if the flowers on the woman's grave are beginning to brown at the edges, he can't allow himself to go near the place that reminds him so achingly of Jesse, that stirs up feelings he can't even begin to name. Not daring to give in to those feelings, to the dreadful hunger that cramps his stomach, Jonathan turns instead to the dirt road that leads to the church.

Half-laughing to himself, he notices the irony of walking towards the church as his mind remains fixed on Jesse. Fixed on kissing Jesse, on what his lips would taste like, whether his curls would tickle as their lips met. The only other man Jonathan has ever kissed tasted of whiskey, bitter and fiery, of the acrid pipe smoke of an evening spent bent over textbooks, puzzling out the innermost workings of the human body. Jesse is none of what his Robert had been, and even less of what he has become, but somehow manages to be better. So much better.

By the time he reaches the church, Jonathan has fallen into a slight daze, where Jesse is the only thing he can think of. The wind is whispering his name. The sun is screaming it, dazzling Jonathan until he almost walks right into the back of his sister, Mary-Ellen.

A crowd has gathered around the church, thronged so thick that for a moment he thinks Pastor Williams must be preaching on the doorstep. The smell convinces him otherwise: a reek of decay that sticks in the back of his throat and almost makes him gag.

"What's going on?" he asks, slightly strangled and trying his best to breathe through his mouth.

"I don't know; can't se— what are you doing?"

Mary-Ellen isn't a slim woman; she's kind and she's soft but she isn't slim or light, so Jonathan doesn't quite know what possessed him to half-hoist her onto his shoulders. Straining slightly from the effort, he is nonetheless proud once she is seated with a leg on either side of his neck, fingers tangled in his hair.

"Can you see now?"

"Yes, I—" there's a catch in her voice, a stunned, revolted gasp. "Get me down. Get me down now."