I Hungry

Jules has a large buck in his sights. He’s shot other deer in the past, but never one as majestic-looking as this one.

The buck turns its head and appears to look Jules in the eye.

The deer’s defiance makes Jules feel like a knobby-kneed child.

“Go ahead, son, pull the trigger,” his father, Guy, urges.

The pleasant, pudgy-faced forty-one-year-old farmer is admired by his fellow villagers for his willingness to lend a helping hand to others.

Tilling the soil has turned Jules, his eighteen-year-old son, into a sinewy man who shares his father’s belief that all God’s creatures are basically good.

A blur passes in front of them. A man about Jules’ age runs at the deer. Its head perks up with surprise as the boy tackles it.

The buck kicks at the boy with its hind legs, surrendering to its fate with a short, defeated huff as the boy sinks his teeth into its stomach.

Guy and Jules cautiously approach the boy, who looks up at them quizzically with blood dripping down his chin and a hunk of flesh between his teeth.

The boy appears to be the same age as Jules. He is slender and bony, probably no more than 130 pounds, with unusually soft, fair hair and an unusually wide mouth. His body emits a pungent, unpleasant odor akin to death.

“You might want to cook that meat before you eat it,” Jules cautions.

“What’s your name, son? Where are you from?” Guy asks.

The boy looks up at the cobalt-colored sky.

“Fallen.”

“Is that your name or where you come from?” Jules asks.

“…I hungry…”

***

Guy and Jules have never met a boy as unusual as Fallen, and neither have the 150 other villagers who inhabit the French village of St. Lucien. Fallen seldom speaks, and when he does, it is in English rather than French.

His vocabulary consists of the same phrase… “I hungry.”

Some villagers think he’s a shell-shock soldier or an orphan, another victim of the world war that has been going on since 1914 and has left France’s once bountiful countryside a mass of torn trees and craters.

Guy and Jules try to make Fallen feel at home. Jules and Fallen enjoy kicking a soccer ball around, and he enjoys it when Guy reads to him, particularly the stories about the ancient Greeks.

Aside from his foul, strong smell, Fallen has another trait that Guy finds distressing. He has an insatiable appetite.

Guy watches in awe one afternoon as Fallen eats four deer steaks and an entire crate of apples. Barely three hours later, he consumes a pot of greens and two pies meant to be shared between the three of them.

Jules begins to worry about Fallen one morning when he goes to feed the chickens. All eight of them have disappeared.

Jules finds Fallen under an apple tree covered in feathers, belching in his sleep.

***

Dr. Emile Gaspard examines Fallen, squinting at him with his good eye. His left eye is glass, having been shot out at the Battle of the Somme.

“Stick out your tongue.”

Fallen complies. His fetid breath is so nauseating that Dr. Gaspard’s rich lunch climbs up his throat.

“Good, Lord, what do you feed him? His breath smells like a week-old corpse.”

“He loves squirrels,” Guy replies. “Cooked, uncooked, it doesn’t matter. Birds, rats, bugs, anything that moves is fair game. And trash. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him eating our cans, boxes, and newspapers. He ate a tire in the course of six minutes.”

“You can’t be serious. They’re made of rayon.”

“Yes. I think it was a brand-new Michelin.”

“He eats anything,” Jules adds. “Even disgusting things like roadkill. He drank the green, scummy algae off of Duvalle Pond once when he was thirsty.”

Dr. Gaspard cocks his good eye at them. “Why are you two teasing me?”

“We’re not. We’ll show you.”

Guy and Jules pile an assortment of objects, including branches, bottles, and books, in front of Fallen. Dr. Gaspard watches, aghast, as Fallen swallows each item.

Dr. Gaspard rubs his good eye. “He barely bothers to chew. I’ve never seen anything like this. One question for you, Fallen… Why?”

Fallen belches loudly.

“I hungry.”

“He’s eating us out of house and home,” Guy says.

Dr. Gaspard pinches Fallen’s arm. He fails to react, looking curiously at him.

Dr. Gaspard gives him a vicious slap.

“Hey! Leave him alone! You’ll hurt him!” Jules shouts in Fallen’s defense.

“That should have made him cry or strike back,” Dr. Gaspard observes. “Where are you from?”

Fallen looks up at the clouds. “…Fallen…”

“His answer is always the same,” Guy notes.

“He always looks up at the sky?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Gaspard backs away from Fallen, his good eye blinking rapidly.

“Oh no, there’s more than one of them… I know what he is.”

“Who is he, Doctor?” Guy asks.

“Not who. Like I said… What. He’s a fallen god.”

Guy rolls his eyes.

“Now it’s you who's kidding us. How do you know?” Guy asks.

“I saw a fallen god once a long time ago. My father hunted men for a living. He tracked down some dangerous people in Paris - gangsters, mass murderers. One day, he brought home a man with wings. He said he’d captured him in the woods while he was running down a deer...”

Guy and Jules trade anxious looks.

“That creature was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It took three men to wrestle him into a cage. It still managed to escape. It took my cousin Leander’s head clean off with one swipe of its wings. Then it grabbed Leander’s body and split him apart like a Sunday chicken. It chomped down on Leander’s chest, ate half of it, and threw the rest at my father and me. The other men shot at it. It swatted them, too. It knocked them both cold. Then it flew off. My father trailed it for months. You know what he got?”

Guy and Jules shake their heads emptily.

“He got dead. That’s what he got. While he was tracking the creature, it was tracking him. You need to get rid of it.”

“But he’s like a brother to me,” Jules imparts. “And the way he acts? He can’t be a god.”

Dr. Gaspard turns to Guy. “Keep an eye on him.”

“What? Why? You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

“As far as I can tell, they don’t feel pain. I want to show you something…”

Dr. Gaspard reaches into his physician’s bag. Pulling out a rusty revolver, he points it at Fallen.

“Take your shirt off.”

“I hungry.”

“I know. Just do as I say.”

“I thought you said he couldn’t be hurt?” Jules asks.

“I did. The gun just makes me feel braver… Take your shirt off. A bullet couldn’t hurt the other god. I don’t want to have to find out if it can hurt you.”

Fallen slowly complies.

“Now turn around.”

Two horn-like bones protrude from his back.

“That’s the beginning of his wings,” Dr. Gaspard says. “You need to part ways with this creature before they grow. I think this one is young and willing to live with humans. When it gets older, you two are going to be on the menu.”

***

Guy pulls the truck to a halt.

Jules looks back at Fallen, who is chained to the back of the truck.

Jules wipes away his tears. “He’s not a criminal, Father.”

“You heard Dr. Gaspard. He could be dangerous. Besides, we can’t take care of him anymore. I can’t prove it, but I think Fallen took down one of our cows. Like Dr. Gaspard said, we could be next.”

Jules looks around at the circus’s drab-colored tents, concession stands, and gaudy signs advertising the performers.

A clown walks past, guzzling from a bottle of scotch. A bearded woman follows, winking saucily at Guy.

“Fallen belongs here, son. These are his people.”

***

Over the next several months, Fallen appears content, eating the same raw meat that the circus feeds the wild animals. The circus’s Ringmaster and owner, Jean-Claude Basson, is equally pleased that Fallen eats the mountains of garbage left behind by the crowds.

Basson raises his megaphone. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Fallen, the human garbage dump. Fallen can eat anything: rocks, crates, even a Peugeot. His performance is not for the squeamish... Marvel at his insatiable appetite!”

The crowd applauds as Fallen swallows corks, rocks, a bushel of apples, and a steering wheel.

Before Basson can stop him, Fallen attacks one of the elephants, dragging it to the floor.

The crowd’s applause turns to screams as they run out of the big top.

Fallen tears into the elephant, eating a quarter of it before falling asleep.

That’s when Basson has him taken away in chains to a sanatorium.

***

“Are you sure he’s sedated?” Nurse Mercy Petit asks.

“I gave him enough sedatives to knock out all of Hannibal’s elephants,” Dr. Pierre Vidal replies. “He’ll be out for at least eight more hours. Check his pulse.”

The thirty-eight-year-old psychiatrist has treated men who thought they were dogs, soldiers twitching from shell shock, and patients who thought they were invisible. The weight of helping those patients and others has turned his once midnight-black hair silver, given him ulcers, and strained his eyes to the point that he now wears thick glasses. But Fallen is an altogether new challenge.

Portly Nurse Petit maintains a stern exterior, but the more she complains about a patient, the more she cares about them.

“I question my decision to work with the mentally ill whenever we get a case like this,” Nurse Petit says. “Is it true he’s got hyperphagia?”

“Yes. The most extreme case of having an insatiable appetite that any of us has seen. I was told he ate a meal intended for fifteen people during one of his circus performances. When he got offstage, he ate an assortment of live cats, snakes, lizards, puppies, and eels.”

“Did you figure out what’s on his back?” Nurse Petit asks.

“It’s like Basson said. The two objects protruding from his back are bones. Basson is sure they’ve grown since he joined the circus.”

“So, he really is a Greek god. I wonder what he did to get cast out of Mount Olympus and be cursed with eternal hunger?”

“…He’s like Tantalus…,” Dr. Vidal utters. “Maybe he is Tantalus.”

“Who?”

“It’s a Greek myth. Tantalus was a king who was supposedly the son of Zeus. The Gods so favored him that he often dined with them. He stole ambrosia from the Gods and betrayed them by revealing their secrets to humans. It’s also written that he tried to trick the Gods into killing his son… by eating him. For his punishment, he was made to stand in a pool of water underneath a fruit tree with the fruit just out of his grasp, and anytime he tried to drink the water, it would recede before he could quench his thirst. We took the word ‘tantalize’ from his name.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“Endless interrogations. Painful exams. Dissection. We eventually kill what we don’t understand.”

***

Fallen wakes up, rising to his feet. Pointing at his mouth, he utters dryly, “…I hungry…”

“Well, I’m not the special of the day,” Nurse Petit says, backing away.

She runs down the hallway, screaming for help.

Still barefoot and wearing a hospital gown, Fallen bolts toward the exit.

He’s nearly there when a small boy darts into his path.

The boy smiles at Fallen.

“I hungry.”

“Hi, I’m Jacques Lemaire. Everyone calls me Jackie. They sent me here because I saw my Momma and Poppa get blown up by a bomb. They say I went into shock, but I’m almost okay now. I got some cookies. You want some?”

Fallen follows Jackie into his room.

***

A pair of police officers searches the rooms on the floor. When they come to Jackie’s room, the first officer drops his gun. The second sinks to his knees, sobbing.

Blood is smeared on the walls and is pooled in the bed. All that remains of Jackie are his shoes.

Fallen is found two days later, sleeping under an apple tree, surrounded by dozens of apple cores and the carcass of a Guernsey.

***

Smoke streams from Colonel Roche Gautier’s pipe as he paces back and forth in his tent.

“I don’t understand why you took Fallen,” Captain Aubert Marchand says to him. “He’s a criminal and a freak.”

“He also can’t feel pain. Surely that can be of some value to us.”

“I tried to show him how to fire a gun. He swallowed it.”

“Good thing you didn’t start with a grenade then, eh?”

“I might have done us all a favor if I’d pulled out the pin and tossed one at him,” Captain Marchand replies. “You heard what the doctors said, he’s not even human. He killed a child. I saw his debauchery firsthand when they brought him to us. He jumped out of the wagon and, despite his slight build, dragged his heavy chains and the two men guarding him across the camp to the field hospital. He ate one of the corpses! Surely, sir, there’s no place in the French army for a psycho cannibal.”

Colonel Gautier’s pipe lets out a stream of acrid smoke.

“I think there is one task he’s suited for.”

***

Captain Marchand holds a cat at arm’s length. He offers it to Fallen, who greedily snatches it.

He tears open the cat's abdomen with his teeth, sucks out its blood, and eats its carcass in seconds, spitting out bones and fur.

Captain Marchand looks away, gagging.

“Now that you’ve had your snack, you should be ready for your mission,” Colonel Gautier says.

He hands Fallen a metal tube the size and length of a cigar.

“Bottoms up.”

Fallen swallows the tube.

“Now, go to General Marc Laporte. He’s on the front lines in a villa two miles from here in Avignon. He’s expecting you.”

“I hungry.”

“General Laporte has two fat goats waiting for you in Avignon. If you want them, deliver the tube you swallowed. Don’t get captured, understand?”

Colonel Gautier salutes Fallen, who returns the salute by waving goodbye.

Captain Marchand groans as Fallen sets off for Avignon.

“We’re taking a huge risk, Colonel, putting our secret battle plans in that freak’s stomach.”

“I know. That’s why a second courier carrying our real battle plans will shadow Fallen.”

“So, if Fallen gets caught?”

“Then he becomes the Germans' problem.”

“I sure wouldn’t want to be the soldier who has to wait for those fake plans to reappear.”

***

Dressed in the uniform of a German soldier, Fallen wanders down the road, eating some green apples he’s picked from a tree.

A pair of German soldiers appear in the road.

One shouts “HALT!” in German, raising his rifle. Fallen continues to walk toward them.

The wall of stench that hits them makes the soldiers’ eyes water.

Twenty-eight-year-old Heinz Graff suppresses his sympathy for the man. Heinz’s porky, hirsute features and bowlegs had made him the focus of derision growing up. Conversely, Fritz Gundermann’s Aryan looks and his devotion to the Kaiser make him the ideal German soldier.

Fritz fires off a round at Fallen’s feet, noting, “He is wearing the Tenth Infantry’s insignia.”

“They were all killed or captured,” Heinz replies.

“Then he is a spy. And a very poor one.”

***

Heinz and Fritz beat Fallen until they are gasping for air from the effort, and Fallen’s face is a bloody, swollen pulp.

Colonel Konrad Strasser’s rapier-like teeth clench his gold cigarette holder. He blows a cloud of smoke in Fallen’s face.

“Gott im himmel, you smell like a pile of manure! You English should bathe more often. How stupid do you English think we are? And how desperate are you to try such an amateurish trick?”

“I hungry.”

Colonel Strasser bites down on the cigarette holder, snapping it.

“Hungry? Tell us what your battle plans are, or the next meal you have will be your last.”

“I eat plans.”

Colonel Strasser turns to Heinz and Fritz. “Which of you is the junior man? Step forward.”

Heinz takes a step backward.

“Good. Corporal Gundermann…You will wait until this moron passes the plans, then bring them to me.”

***

Colonel Strasser places the hangman’s noose around Fallen’s neck.

“We waited twenty hours for you to produce your army’s plans. And what did we get? A few pages from Punch Magazine with cartoons mocking the Kaiser. In the meantime, your troops have overrun our army in Avignon, capturing four hundred of our best soldiers and killing six hundred more. No doubt, the English are calling you a hero. You will soon be a dead one.”

“I hungry,” Fallen says.

“You are, if nothing else, frustratingly consistent.”

“He is allowed a last meal, Colonel,” Heinz points out.

Colonel Strasser puts his new cigarette holder between his teeth, puffing on his cigarette.

“Very well. Give him whatever he wants.”

Colonel Strasser and his men watch in amazement as Fallen eats six steaks, two large pots of greens, sixteen potatoes, and four blueberry pies.

“Perhaps we should send him to a hospital to be examined,” Heinz suggests.

“Yes. We will send his corpse.”

***

Colonel Strasser puffs contentedly on his cigarette as he places the hangman’s noose around Fallen’s neck.

Fallen closes his eyes, whispering, “Please, Father, bring me home. I have learned my lesson.”

“What is he saying?” Fritz asks.

“Just the final prayers of a madman,” Colonel Strasser concludes.

The back of Fallen’s shirt tears open. A pair of wings sprout from his back.

“I don’t feel hungry anymore.”

The soldiers watch as Fallen ascends into the sky.