Chapter 1: The First Feast
The air in Bea’s apartment was a solid thing, a greasy vapor that coated the tongue and clung to the lungs. It reeked of hot lard, stale beer, and something sweetly, unnervingly organic. Jack breathed it in, his mouth slack, as a bead of sweat traced a path through the stubble on his cheek and dripped onto the vast expanse of his own stomach.
The fluorescent light overhead buzzed and flickered, painting the slick, condensation-damp walls in pulses of sickly yellow. In the corner, an industrial fryer hummed, its basket submerged in a roiling vat of oil, tendrils of steam curling up to join the haze. The floor was a testament to dedicated neglect—a sticky mosaic of spilled feed pellets, hardened gravy, and half-chewed sausage links.
Jack shifted his weight on the reinforced couch, the vinyl squealing in protest beneath him. He wasn’t alone. To his left, Kevin from 4B was on all fours, snuffling intently at a trough of cold mashed potatoes, his speech having devolved into satisfied grunts weeks ago. Further down, a row of oversized, pale bodies lounged in the penned-off living area. Some still wore tatters of sweatpants or stretched-out t-shirts. Others, further along, didn’t bother. They were a herd of restless, squealing livestock, their humanity leaching away with every pound gained.
A news anchor’s voice, tinny with panic and round belly filled with pork and lard, cut through the ambient noise from the small TV mounted high on the wall. “…confirmed in every major metropolitan area. The phenomenon appears exclusively to affect biological males. Symptoms progress from increased appetite and docility to significant skeletal restructuring and… and dermal coarsening.”
Bea waddled over, a bucket in her hand. She was a stout woman with forearms like a butcher. “Lunchtime, my handsome boys,” she sang, her voice saccharine. She scooped a ladle of wet, grain-heavy feed mixed with leftover fried dough and drippings directly into Jack’s trough, which was bolted to the floor in front of him.
Jack didn’t need prompting. He lowered his head, the motion slow and ponderous, and began to eat. The pleasure was immediate, profound, a warm fog that settled over his brain. The crunchy-slop texture, the salty-fat taste—it was everything. The distant worry about his job, the mortgage, the crushing silence of his old life, all of it dissolved in the act of consumption.
“That’s it,” Bea cooed, scratching the bristly hair now thickening between his shoulder blades. “Eat up. Grow big and strong.”
On the TV, a field reporter stood outside a stadium. “Authorities are converting these facilities into containment zones, but the rate of intake is overwhelming. We’re receiving reports that subjects in the later stages, colloquially called ‘hogs’, can exceed eight hundred pounds, with cognitive function reduced to basic stimulus response.”
Jack heard the words, but they meant nothing. They were just sounds, less important than the next mouthful, less urgent than the deep, satisfying ache in his expanding joints. . A sigh of contentment rumbled from him.
“Good boy,” Bea said.
His friend Marcus, who still had mostly human eyes, looked over from his own trough. His speech was slurred, thick-tongued. “Jack… man… this is… we gotta…”
“Gotta what?” Jack mumbled around a mouthful, not lifting his head. Talking was hard. Thinking was harder. The feed was so good.
“It’s wrong,” Marcus grunted, the effort visible.
Jack paused. A fragment of his old self flickered, a ghost in the machinery of his new instincts. He looked at his hands—they were swollen, the fingers blunt, the nails thickening into yellowish slabs. He felt the immense, warm weight of his own body, a prison of comforting flesh. The ghost vanished.
“Feels nice,” Jack said, the words simple and true. He nudged his empty trough with his snout—was it a snout now? It felt broader, more useful. “More?”
Bea laughed, a sound of pure delight. “Always more for my best boy.”
The news anchor’s voice rose in pitch. “A mandatory curfew for all unaffected citizens is now in effect. Do not approach afflicted individuals. Their strength is unpredictable and their behavior, while largely passive, can be volatile when food is involved—”
The screen went black. Bea had turned off the TV. “Noise,” she said to the room. “Upsetting my boys.”
She refilled Jack’s trough, this time with a special slurry warm from the fryer’s drip pan. The smell was intoxicating. Jack submerged his face in it, eating with a rhythmic, grunting pleasure that vibrated through his entire being. He was aware, dimly, of Marcus crying. It was a thin, whining sound, like a distressed piglet.
Jack ignored it. The slurry was everything. The heat of the room was a blanket. Bea’s scratching fingers on his scalp were the only touch he would ever need. He ate until the world narrowed to the trough, to the feeling of fullness that bloated him into a state of perfect, mindless peace.
His last coherent thought, a final wisp of Jack the accountant, dissolved like sugar in hot fat.
This is easier.
He finished, let out a belch that echoed in the steamy room, and slumped into a heavy, contented sleep, his breathing a deep, porcine rhythm. He dreamed of endless troughs, of Bea’s approving smile, of a pleasant, eternal weight. Outside, the city screamed. In Bea’s apartment, Jack was finally, blissfully, home.