Life’s easier without things. No colours or shapes, no up or down. That’s what it’s like for me, gently floating in the liquid sphere of my living room. It’s a way to while away a day. I didn’t always spend so long in here, but somewhere along the line, it became better for me than what was on the outside. I’d spend eight hours here a day, then ten, then twelve. I go out to put the bins out or to say “Hi” to Lead Greg from next door, but then I come right back.
“Rise and shine sleepy-head”. It’s my Dad, speaking in his sing-song morning voice. He is a black and tan dachshund that has raised me since I was a child, and I am his fussy human son. “You’ve got a very important day ahead of you”.
“No, it’s not time”. I feel myself quivering. “I need another year”.
“Oh, nonsense, James. Don’t think I haven’t heard your tummy rumbling. You’ve got the spirit of a warrior in there”.
“You reckon?”.
“I know so. You’re gonna knock ’em dead”.
“Okay”, I say, and take in a deep breath. “I’m going”. I throw on a scarf knit to look like a long bacon rasher and drift towards the entry tube.
“Don’t tell me you’re just gonna wander out of the house without giving your ol’ pa a kiss on the mouth”.
I spin around with an “Okay, Dad”, and he licks the ketchup from that morning’s breakfast out of my beard. Then it’s smooth, sideways motion. We got the corridor to the front door oak-panelled; it curves inwards as I go. On the walls, there are masks of tortured human faces, the poor souls who didn’t make it. They spin around me in dizzying pain. This next part, I hate. I press up against the grinder at the entryway of the house: a ten-foot-high steel cylinder with holes all over, each the size of my fist. A crank at the side turns, and my body strains out into thin tubes of meat and bone, my screams echoing down the pipes. I see red mush working its way through to the opposite side of the mechanism like corn beef going down the drain. And then just like that, I am back in one piece, squinting in the morning sun.
At one time, this could have been any other suburb. We had PTA meetings, bake sales, pot lucks. Now the sky is thick with red mist like the surface of Mars. Rotting ham hangs in the trees and jerky is planted in the ground. Just about the only thing you can smell out here is the stench of death. In the middle of the street, there’s a makeshift wooden stage with colourful, puffy rosettes over the top and a banner that says “Port Elderflower, 11th Annual Eating Contest”. I step up to it and hear a loud, ugly voice from behind the curtains
“Weakness comes”. It’s a voice full of phlegm and spittle, and I know it well; it’s Sean. He walks out, a big pile of mince and contempt, pieces of clothing jammed into him as the result of futile attempts to get dressed. He’s connected by this stringy umbilical cord to a kebab-like pillar called Larry. No one knew where Sean and Larry had come from, they’d just shown up one day, and that’s when the trouble began. Devin, Lead Greg’s kid, says that he once saw a picture of Sean in a textbook at the library with the words “Meat Homunculus” underneath.
“Go home James, the adults have a contest to run”, squeaked Larry.
“Shut up, Larry. No one wants to hear it”, I tell him. A massing crowd whoops and shouts in agreement with me. A few yell at him to “go home”.
“He will not depart”, says Sean. “But you will”, he bellows with a force that knocks a few families back into the bushes. He keeps the “Will” held, his voice pressing against me like a forcefield. I shield my face and push into the rancid breath with one shoulder. With strength I didn’t know I had, I haul myself onto the stage and slowly lift my head to stare Shaun in the eye. I hear scattered applause from behind me.
“You don’t get to back out now”, I say. He faces the crowd but stares off into the mid-distance as he speaks.
“We stand here for this prestigious show of power and consumption once more. A chance for the people of this town to see the gnashing, righteous tenacity of your leader on display. Whoever stands victorious from this contest today shall lead this sorry port”.
“Yeah, feel it”, echoed Larry. A few people on the ground had an “Oh boy, here we go” look. Others cowered or averted their eyes from Sean’s beefy face.
“You had a mayor once”, began Sean. “His name was Pete. Pete smiled too much, Pete gave too much, Pete overestimated his waistband. When we came to this foolish suburb, Pete stood in our way. Pete challenged me to an eating competition for leadership of the town, and after twenty-eight ounces of southern fried lasagna, he was hospitalised. I visited Pete in that hospital, and when he awoke, I made him finish that lasagna. The pasta destroyed him, and Pete died eleven years ago today. Ladies and gentlemen…”, Sean turned like a spinning top, “I give you our new Pete”. The crowd booed and threw things, but this had never bothered Sean. His body absorbed the shoes and rotten tomatoes. As Larry clattered about preparing the dishes, I stood at the edge of the platform in front of the townsfolk.
“It’s great to see you all out here today. I’ve been waiting on this one a while, and I’m gonna try to do you proud. This one’s for Pete and for my Dad back home”. We both sat down in front of our plates and put on bibs that said “A Very Hungry Boy”, although Sean could only affix his to his chin area at a screwy angle. Larry placed the serving dishes in front of us; I can see the red sky above reflected in them.
“You may lift your lids in 3, 2, 1”, he rasped. As I whipped off the lid, he announced the name of the dish. “Full rack of cauliflower”. Sure enough, the fluffy white vegetable was stuck to thirteen lengths of bone. It was tougher and slightly smokier than you’d expect, but I’d trained for this. We were starting easy. Larry placed the next dish in front of me.
“TV Remote!”, he said. I looked down and I was staring at the handset for an old LG flatscreen. It was dusty and solid between my knife and fork. Sean was gorging himself like a pig, but I studied the block of plastic, unsure how to find a way in. I tried to imagine it as a delicious flatbread and the buttons as tomatoes and pimento olives. I crunched down through its hard shell. “Sean has already finished his course, and James has barely started”, said a delighted Larry.
“He lags behind”, said Sean. As I chewed, the smell of an office cubicle filled my mouth. In between the shards of the remote casing, the buttons felt like rubber. It was slow going, but eating contests are all about pacing yourself. I did my job, but then the nausea came on. Sean saw it; I could feel his peepers burning into me. We moved onto the next meal.
“Novelty key chain stand”. Just like he said, Larry had taken two of the racks of novelty key chains from the gas station and put them on the stage in front of us. They were all there: Pro-gun rights Minnie Mouse, the Texas shape that said “Idaho” on it, and weed Bart. Sean was shovelling in big handfuls of the stand; he actually seemed to be enjoying this. Scratching my head about where to begin, I took a few of the smaller curios from the outside and crammed them into my maw. The metal was jagged and cut my mouth like knives. Looking over, I noticed Larry gurgling and shifting in place as Sean ate.
“Something’s up here”, I mused. I got up from my seat and approached the pipsqueak.
“What are you doing?”, he sputtered. “Return to your scoffing post at once”.
“I think you and I had better have a little word about something first”. I grabbed the flesh line that connected Sean and Larry and running through it, I could feel the chunks of the key chain stand. I turned to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that we have a cheater on stage here today”. I ripped away the intestine, and they both let out a cry of pain. From inside came jangling out hundreds of metal novelties, several chunks of TV remote, and a cauliflower soup.
“Do not hate me for my superior biology”, rattled Sean.
“Now, I think you know as well as I do that this isn’t in the rulebook”, I responded. The crowd yelled their disdain and Larry began shivering, looking the worse for wear. “I move that this round be stricken from the record and that there shall be no more of this stomach-sharing”. The crowd responded in the positive, but Sean just chuckled.
“It makes no difference, you have already lost”. Larry is now on the floor, and the boy ain’t doing too good.
“Sean, man, you’ve gotta help me”, he pleads.
“You have expended your use. I can claim victory from here. James, your next challenge will not fit on this stage. It is behind this curtain. Larry, the honours”.
Sean pulled on a gold tassel, parting the curtains, and with his dying breath, Larry announced “Three cheese convertible”. Behind the curtain were two royal blue sports cars packed to the roof with cheddar, brie, and camembert. Sean trudges confidently toward the trendy Masserati and begins scarfing it down. I don’t want to fall behind, so I follow suit. The glass was merciless on my insides, and the chassis was a mouthful, but what I hadn’t counted on was how filling the cheese would be. As part of the drive mechanism disappeared down my throat, I felt myself get sluggish. The crowd roared words of encouragement.
“Come on James, we know you got it in you”.
“Ya can’t stop now James, I won’t let you”.
“James, if you can put the bins out every week, you can do this”.
It was no use. A tire, a glove compartment, a seatbelt, every one of them was ballast to my stomach. My vision began to fade, my mouth began dry, my arms went limp.
“You should have stayed in your bubble, James”, yelled Sean through mouthfuls. At that moment, I felt like I was back there. I could see my Dad slowly rotating in front of my vision like a Windows 98 screensaver.
“Oh, you’re not gonna let one little convertible be the end of you, are you?”, he says.
“It’s over”, I tell him. “A human is not meant to eat a car”.
“Is that the rubbish they’ve been teaching you in this town?”. He gives a cross between a bark and a chortle. “Son, let me show you something”. Suddenly, we’re hovering above some scrubland. There are pointy rock formations, tufts of dried grass, and neanderthals sprawled out across the place. I can see a bunch of them crowded around shiny new vehicles. “James, your ancestors would eat hundreds of cars every year. Bentleys, Mazdas, and Porches. And that’s not all…”. With the flick of a paw, he whisked us across the globe over cavemen clinging to huge structures made of all sorts.
“They ate skyscrapers, adventure playgrounds, lawnmowers, televisions, even Burger King. But soon humans forgot about all this, and they didn’t want to eat junk no more. They just wanted to eat their hamburgers and their steak tartare and their social media”. My Dad gave the most heartfelt stare into my eyes I’d seen from him, his brow softened, his eyes glistened. “Son, they don’t teach you about this no more because they don’t want you to reach your full potential, but I’ve never had a doubt. You can eat anything you put your mind to”. When I come to, I’m already shredding through the steel with my hardy chompers.
“Now who is cheating?”, growls Sean.
“This ain’t cheating Sean, this is the will of the human spirit”. I tell him. “Something you wouldn’t know anything about”. I swoop and glide my jaw across the vehicle like a vegetable peeler over a potato. Layer after layer of silver flakes away. I gobble down lugnuts like bonbons, I slurp up the whole fanbelt like a piece of taffy. Sean doubles his efforts to keep up, flailing to jam bits of door and undercarriage into his mouth but me and the crowd can all see him stating to lag. They chant my name and stamp their feet. The broken windows slide down my throat like sherbert, and the seats go down like chewy steaks. I make short work of the whole Masserati as Sean begins to fall to his knees, wheezing, and cursing.
“Now, Sean, it’s rude not to finish everything on your plate”.
“Do not think you have the right to patronise me. Not two seconds ago, we saw your pitiful struggle”.
“We’re still waiting”. As Sean heaped the last of the luxury car into his mouth, I could hear stretching and creaking from within him. I thought he might be ready to burst at the seams. I turned back to the crowd. “I think we’re done here”. The applause was almost deafening, but underneath them, I could just hear the wheezing laugh of that windbag.
“Such hubris, but the contest continues”.
“What are you going to do? Throw rounds at me all day? Sean, you’re coming to the end of your time on this stage. If you don’t stop now, you’re going to do yourself some serious damage”. He shakes his head.
“There is but one more round”. He stands, leaning over and holding his stomach with one hand and then whips out two more serving platters from thin air. The places them on the ground between us. “The final course is…”, he makes the reveal. “A beloved friend”. When he removes the lid on his meal, underneath is the limp body of Larry, but underneath mine is Dad. It feels like a cannonball hits my chest. Sean is already away, ripping into a meal of tendon and sinew. I’m paralysed, my limbs vibrating. Dad looks up at me.
“It’s okay, James”, there’s no fear in his voice. “We all have our time. No hard feelings”. The crowd doesn’t say a word. Sean is halfway through Larry, who is stuffed with the first couple of rounds of food like a surreal turducken. He leans back, taking in my shocked expression.
“There’s got to be another way”, I tell Dad.
“James, remember, you can eat anything you put your mind to”. I think for a couple of seconds. Of course! I stand.
“Admitting defeat?”, asks Sean.
“We’re both defeated today”. I snatch the stump of Larry off of the plate in front of him and in three big, bony bites finish him off.
“Sean, you are unable to finish your meal and cannot win. The rule of the contest is that it’s only the winner who gets to keep leadin’ this town”. There is the loudest applause yet.
“I knew you could do it”, Dad tells me, wagging his tail. Sean is angry enough that he’s lost control of his body. He’s slamming his fists against the stage, he rolls onto his back and in one almighty release of rage screams and goes off like a volcano, firing his innards into the air. It pushes a hole through the red mist of the sky and the clouds part, showering us with pure unfiltered sun for the first time in eleven years.
In the months that follow, I get rid of that dark bubble. I don’t need it now that I can be around my townsfolk without the smell of rot in the air. We all hold an election, and they vote me in as the mayor on account of my gastronomical achievement. I stand on a hill overlooking the town, Dad at my side. I can see all the houses in a row, nestled cozy between the trees, and the street lights come on like fireflies as the evening draws in.
“So”, says Dad. “What are you going to eat next?”.
