Voracious Read online

  Published by

  Sinister Grin Press

  Austin, TX

  www.sinistergrinpress.com

  February 2013

  “Voracious” © 2013 by Wrath James White

  All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.

  Cover Art by Kyushik Shin

  www.shinybrush.com

  Cover Design by Shane McKenzie

  Interior Design by Brian Cartwright

  1

  Lelani Simms woke up hungry, terribly, overwhelmingly hungry. It felt as if her entire world would end if she didn’t eat something, anything, everything she could, now. The hunger consumed her thoughts. It was her sole preoccupation, allowing no other considerations or concerns. Career, family, society, the latest political squabble, or celebrity divorce-none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except the pain churning in the pit of her gut.

  Shadows danced across the walls, dark chimeras caused by the traffic below and the lights of the other high-rise condos and office buildings. A crack of lightning sent the shadows off in a riot through the apartment. It was the kind of night that used to frighten Lelani out of her wits and cause her to sleep with all the lights on. But on this night, she was oblivious to all but the cloying pain in her belly. The flashes of lightning seemed to coincide with the hunger pains, as if there was a link between the two, the lancing jolts of pain in her gut so intense that it left her flesh and arced across the sky.

  It was past one a.m. and Lelani had not slept more than an hour at a time in the last forty-eight. Her hunger had prevented all but the briefest naps. Lelani’s refrigerator stood open, the light calling out to her, cutting a swath through the shadows and guiding her to salvation. But it was a barren wasteland of empty cartons and containers leaking their remaining contents down into the vegetable bins in a congealing stew of rotting perishables. She had opened every box and can and completely gutted the freezer. A mere thirty minutes had passed since the last time she had eaten, yet Lelani was ravenous. She had scrambled a dozen eggs, fried three hamburger patties, and boiled an entire pack of hotdogs and gobbled down still another pack uncooked. Then she drank a gallon of milk and made six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before falling asleep on the couch. When Lelani woke thirty minutes later, she felt as if she hadn’t eaten in months.

  Her metabolism had always been fast. Even now that she was in her mid-thirties and maintaining her runway figure had become a daily battle, she was aware that, by the standards of the average woman, Lelani was practically anorexic. By the harsh standards of the fashion industry, however, she was practically a cow. She had blown up to 120 pounds, ten pounds heavier than her ideal weight, and getting the weight off and keeping it off had been her crucible the last few years. That wasn’t a problem anymore.

  Lelani hadn’t felt this hungry during her most extreme diets. Liquid diets, raw food diets, vegan and macrobiotic diets, even when she’d restricted her calorie intake to barely enough to sustain a hummingbird, fewer than five hundred calories a day, she hadn’t felt this ravenous. Her latest medical weight remedy had left her with a metabolism like a star going nova. Food was all she could think of. It was her only priority. And no matter how much she ate, the weight continued to melt away.

  Today she had lost another six pounds and was half-mad with a gnawing, insatiable hunger combined with sleep deprivation. She felt like a prisoner of war. Ever since the hunger had advanced beyond the persistent, nagging ache, which had been seventy-two hours ago, to the desperate agonizing imperative it was now, she had been unable to order her thoughts. She had hallucinations and blackouts and long periods when her thoughts drifted in no coherent order, when she was just barely conscious. She was exhausted. It was torture. A living hell. Her flesh burned as her body cannibalized itself, eating away the last vestiges of fat and beginning to feed on her muscle tissue. Only eating seemed to calm the fire within her, but that only lasted a short while before the burning hunger returned like an incurable, recurring infection. Kicking heroin had not felt this bad.

  Her stomach had shrunk and was now concave, sucked in against her pelvis and ribcage, rumbling audibly. In the silence of the night, it sounded like the purr of a large jungle cat. Lelani’s arms and legs were completely devoid of adipose tissue, and most of the muscle tissue had atrophied, the skin drawn tight to knobby bones. They resembled something insectoid, like the jointed limbs of a spider. Her cheekbones jutted like axe blades from her skeletal face. Her fingers were bony claws, with nails grown long and gnarled. Her hair was a frizzled nest of tangled knaps.

  It had only been eight years since Lelani was voted one of the most beautiful women in the world. But there were fathoms between twenty-eight and thirty-six. At twenty-eight, she could eat whatever she wanted and starve herself back to a size one in a few days. At thirty-six, it took a full-time personal trainer, a nutritionist, and a plastic surgeon to keep her off the unemployment line. Born in Hawaii to a mother of mixed Japanese and Hawaiian descent and a father who was African American and Irish, Lelani had inherited the most desirable physical attributes of both. Her skin was a blemish-free, light cappuccino tan. Her eyes were hazel and slightly slanted. Her lips were full and bow-shaped. Her hair was long, curly, and raven black. She was tall and naturally slender, with muscular legs and arms and an ass that sat up high and tight like that of an Olympic sprinter. Her exotic looks and signature gaunt “heroin chic” appearance had made her one of the fashion industry’s most sought-after models.

  Then she’d begun gaining weight, and the tabloids had not been kind. As her weight yo-yoed, capturing a photo of her looking flabby, a shot of her in a bikini with a paunch or conspicuous cellulite had become the holy grail of the paparazzi. She had grown increasingly desperate and had finally sought medical help. Now, she had wasted away to nothing. Beyond even “runway skinny,” she looked like she was a pound or two from organ failure, like something that had clawed itself out of the grave. Her famous, muscular gluteus maximus was now a mere coccyx draped in a parchment-thin layer of skin. Her breasts were two withered bladders, shriveled up on her chest like dried peaches. She looked like death’s diseased mistress.

  Lelani’s eyes shined like mirrors, catching the faint glow from the streetlights and reflecting it into the night like some nocturnal beast. She scampered off the couch on all fours. Saliva tinged with red dripped from elongated canines tipped with red, giving her the appearance of a vampire-if vampirism was accompanied by anorexia and a complete disregard for personal hygiene. Lelani smelled like an animal. She hadn’t bathed since the hunger had begun. She hadn’t done anything but eat and sleep.

  Lelani raced into the kitchen and attacked the remaining food. She opened the last cans of corn and dumped them into her mouth while she searched for something else to consume. She opened a half-frozen bag of peas and carrots and began shoveling its contents into her mouth in large handfuls, whimpering at the soothing feeling of the much-needed nourishment, but she needed more.

  She needed meat.

  She looked around the kitchen. In the sink was an open package of frozen chicken breasts. She had taken it out of the freezer earlier and tried to eat it, but it had been too frozen, so Lelani had placed it in a sink filled with warm water to thaw it. She pulled the package out of the sink and pulled off a piece of chicken breast. It was still partially frozen. She ran it under water so hot it nearly scalded her. Then she shoved the cold, dead poultry into her mouth and began to chew, heedless of the fact that she hadn’t cooked it yet. The raw meat tasted good. It was nourishment. Ca
lories. That’s all that concerned her now. Lelani repeated the process until the entire package was gone and her stomach was filled, and then she returned to the couch and collapsed once more into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  Like an alarm clock, Lelani woke exactly thirty minutes later. The room spun and blurred. Lelani barely knew where she was. She struggled to her feet and shuffled forward, exhausted. Her stomach growled. She moved quickly toward the kitchen in an awkward shuffle. Lelani looked at the countertops piled high with empty cans, containers, and boxes and then opened the freezer and stared at the bare shelves. There was no food. Even the condiments-the mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, horseradish, Tabasco sauce, and soy sauce containers were empty. There was no food anywhere. She practically ran to the cupboard. It too was empty except for a few eight-ounce cans of designer cat food. Lelani seized those, opened them, and quickly shoveled their contents into her mouth, barely tasting the flavorless gruel as she licked each can clean.

  When she’d eaten the last can, she looked around and spotted more cat food in a dish by the cat door leading out to the yard. She dropped down on all fours and scarfed it down.

  It wasn’t enough. Her stomach still growled. The pain still churned in her guts like a belly full of barbed wire. She stood up and ran for her car keys. She needed to get more food. The nearest supermarket was six miles away and the nearest late-night restaurant was at least seven. She calculated the time it would take to drive there in traffic, find parking, and purchase food. Twenty minutes to get to the supermarket, find something to eat, and make it through the checkout line if she pushed it, and it would take more than an hour to get seated and served if she went to a restaurant. Too long. She needed to eat now.

  Lelani began to moan, a low, mournful dirge. She dropped to her knees and wept uncontrollably. Her mind fragmented into a thousand jagged shards, every one feeling like they were working their way through her digestive system.

  “Oh, God! I’m so fucking hungry! What the hell is wrong with me? What did they do to me? Why is this happening?”

  This was her first coherent thought in hours. A sliver of sanity that she grasped like a lifesaver in a swirling maelstrom of pain and ravenous appetite. Then her mind lost all cohesion once more. Lelani clawed at her arms and face before pounding her fists on the floor in frustration. She grabbed the keys again and stood up, determined to make it to the supermarket and feed herself and restock her pantry and refrigerator if she had to break a speed record to do it.

  She reached for the front door when she heard the pet door that led out to the balcony open. Prince Charles, her pedigree Himalayan, entered the kitchen with a quizzical, “Meow?”

  Lelani dropped down on all fours and scuttled into the kitchen on her long bony limbs. She spotted Prince Charles sitting in the center of the kitchen floor, licking his empty food bowl. Lelani pounced. She tackled the kitten like she was trying to take down an NFL quarterback. They slid across the marble tiles, through the empty food wrappers and containers, and slammed into a cabinet door, cracking it. Lelani was already scratching and biting at the dazed feline, spitting out tufts of hair as she tore large avulsions in her hissing, scratching pet. She bit into Prince Charles’s tender belly, unraveling his intestines and devouring them, slurping them up like linguini, burrowing up into the cat, chewing through the soft organs as blood poured over her face and the cat yowled and clawed her face. Without a thought, Lelani broke both of Prince Charles’s front legs to prevent him from scratching her again. The limbs splintered and jagged shards of white bone ripped through the soft fur as she continued eating the agonized animal. She tore off his hind legs and gnawed them like chicken wings while the cat continued to hiss and howl. Its pain was unable to touch her humanity, obscured beneath a tenebrous veil of desperate appetite.

  2

  Bill Butler walked off the plane wearing khaki cargo shorts, a deep-blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and a pair of brown John Lobb loafers. Even dressed casually, he looked like money. He smiled and winked at the young Asian flight attendant who’d served him throughout his flight. She was tiny, only about a hundred pounds, maybe less. She had long black hair that hung down to her waist and a smile that enveloped the entire cabin. She took Bill’s hand, passing him her phone number.

  “I hope you enjoyed your flight, sir. Come fly with us again soon,” she said, smiling back at him and mouthing the words “call me.”

  Bill nodded. He felt so good he almost skipped down to baggage claim. There was nothing more invigorating than having his sex appeal validated by the attention of a beautiful young woman.

  He had just designed what was destined to be one of the hottest video games around based on a popular movie in which the world is overrun by vampires. The project had been green-lighted, with a budget of more than one hundred million. He was dating two models with the recent prospect of adding a young, hot, Asian stewardess … uh … flight attendant to the stable. He had just bought a new Mercedes, his first, and he was having a new house built in downtown Austin, right off Congress Avenue, with a price tag of more than seven hundred thousand. He was the very definition of success, and he was only thirty years old.

  Bill retrieved his luggage and made his way to long-term parking. He couldn’t wait to see his new baby. He’d just purchased it when he’d been called away to Los Angeles to finalize the deal for the new video game. He’d only driven it two or three times. The reality that he actually owned a goddamn Mercedes was still sinking in.

  It took Bill several breathless minutes wandering around the airport parking lot before he spotted his baby, a ninety-four thousand dollar high-gloss, metallic-black, six-cylinder 2013 Mercedes Benz S-class. Bill smiled and unlocked the doors, popped the trunk, and started the engine with his remote. He tossed his Samsonite carry-on and garment bag into the trunk and slipped behind the wheel. Bill turned up the radio and gunned the engine like a teenager with his first car.

  The drive to the condo was too brief. Bill hardly had time to open the engine up before he was pulling into the building’s underground parking garage. He turned off his Android phone and tucked it in the glove compartment beneath his registration and insurance papers, and then turned on his iPhone and checked his messages. Lelani didn’t know about the Android phone. That one was for the six-foot blonde Scandinavian woman he’d met at a fashion show in Holland last year. Her name was Suzanna and she was a twenty-three-year-old up-and-coming fashion model, thirteen years younger than Lelani. He had a separate e-mail account just for her and an apartment in Houston where he’d meet her whenever she was in town. By all accounts, Bill was the mutherfucking man. He had everything a man could want times two. He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face as he locked the Mercedes and set the alarm.

  Bill smiled at a young couple he’d seen coming in and out of the building several times. The guy was young and cocky. A six-foot, blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty boy who probably lived off his daddy’s trust fund. His bleach-blonde girlfriend looked like the typical club-hopping speed-freak or coke-whore with an IQ lower than her number of sexual partners. Bill winked at her as he walked to the elevator and she smiled and waved, eliciting a stern look along with a sneer complete with puffed-out chest from her boyfriend. Bill held his hands up in surrender and smiled wider as the elevator doors closed. He pushed the button for the penthouse, whistling a tune from an old hip-hop song, something about pimping big and spending cheese.

  He always heard hip-hop or heavy metal lyrics in his head when he felt like this. His hubris had its own soundtrack. He had a play list on his iPod full of songs by Jay-Z, Will Smith, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West interspersed with Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crew, and Van Halen for when he needed to pump himself up or when his ego was already on full blast and he wanted to continue stoking the fire. Today, he felt truly gangsta, like the mutherfucking pimp of the year-the white-bread yuppie version at least.

  The elevator doors opened, and Bill pulled out his keys and walked across the hall to his
front door. He unlocked and opened the door with a flourish. The powerful stench of body odor, rotting food, and fetid blood and meat immediately assailed his nostrils. He recoiled and covered his nose with his forearm. “Jesus! What the fuck? Lelani!”

  The instant he spoke her name, a feeling of dread crushed down upon him.

  “Lelani?” he whispered, taking a few tentative steps into the condominium, leaving the door open in case he needed to make a hasty retreat, and cueing up 911 on his cell phone. He’d seen too many horror movies and episodes of Law and Order to take any chances. It smelled like something had died and then something else had eaten its putrid carcass and regurgitated it.

  Lelani wasn’t answering. That just couldn’t be good. Now Bill wished he’d gotten his concealed-weapons permit. He owned two guns, a Glock 9mm and a Desert Eagle .45. Both were in the closet in the master bedroom and hadn’t been fired since the first month he’d owned them.

  The apartment was dark. Bill groped for the light switch in a near panic. His imagination was working overtime, and he kept anticipating the touch of a cold, dead hand on his own. Chills raced along his spine before he found the switch and the light chased back the night, but not the dread or the feeling that something wasn’t right. If anything, seeing the chaos of the penthouse-the smears of food on the counters, walls, and floors, the empty food cartons and containers, broken plates, jars, and bottles-increased his anxiety.

  Then he saw the blood. A long streak led from the kitchen to the living room. It didn’t appear to be a fatal amount, but Bill had no idea how much blood leaked out of a human body. His finger hovered over the call button on his iPhone as he followed the trail of gore. When he spotted the pile of splintered cat bones, a small, blue collar festooned with rhinestones and affixed with a crown-shaped tag strewn among the remains, a sob choked in Bill’s throat.