The Man Who Ate the World

John had always had his appetites. His wife, the discretionary fund, and the board could all agree on that. But today was different. Today was supposed to be his final stand against the board, his great show of strength when they imagined him defeated by Tariq’s investigation. They expected him to slink home or to a meaningless desk somewhere, thankful he still had his freedom. His stomach churned visibly beneath his tailored shirt while he strode through the middle of the hallway toward the food court, trusting that seeing the CEO on such a mission would be enough to clear his way. Worse, he’d missed breakfast that morning. On a normal day, he might have called his secretary, Gabrielle, into his office and teased her into running to get him a sandwich, but she was out for the day, something about her son having come down with the flu. His interns, all buttoned and laced, would have served his appetite nicely, but they were squirreled away with Tariq in H.R. and, at the moment, he didn’t care to dwell on why, just as he hadn’t cared to dwell on it when he’d been notified that Tariq’s formal investigation would conclude today.

##

It was with that thought in mind that John saw Tariq coming down the hallway, his attention occupied by the open manila folder in his hands. John’s stomach squeezed tight and rumbled irritably at the sight of the sharp-browed H.R. director. It wasn’t that John was scared of Tariq or even disliked him, John thought, scanning the hallway for a place to duck out of sight. It wasn’t even that he didn’t appreciate the investigation Tariq had been conducting into John’s supervisory relationship with his two interns, wonderful bouncing girls. No, John wasn't afraid of him but he was a big enough man to admit that it may have been a misstep to allow the board to hire such a zealot as the new H.R. director, even though, in exchange, the board had granted him some time to deal with Destiny and her accusations.

No, the real reason that John’s stomach tightened at the sight of Tariq was simply that he knew all too well Tariq’s tendency to talk and make pleasantries all while tiptoeing around the actual reason he had stopped by, which was often to prod through John’s records in the name of some inquiry or fact-finding mission. In his present hungry state, John didn’t have the time to endure such a conversation. That was all. So, without further hesitation and before Tariq could look up and see him, John turned and opened the door of the nearest office, shutting it with a quiet force once he had deposited himself inside.

##

John didn’t know it was Destiny’s new office until he entered it. They hadn’t told him where she’d been moved while the investigation was going on, so it was quite a surprise to turn and be confronted with that nightmarish mask, familiar from her previous office, but so alien. He sensed Destiny off to his right, standing behind her desk, tense and ready to bolt, waiting for an explanation. He didn’t even look at her. Instead, he examined the African mask hung on the wall opposite the door to her office. It had large round eyes and a beaked mouth with pointed teeth shining through the maw. And, although John ignored this part of the display, there was a plaque explaining that it was a nwantantay, a mask used by the Bwa people of Burkina Faso and Mali. 

“John? Can I— Can I help you with something?”

“Do you have something I could snack on, Destiny?” He kept his eyes on the mask’s painted white teeth and the shadowed darkness folded between them.

“Sorry?”

“A power bar? Crackers? Anything?”

“No, John.”

John broke his gaze from the mask. As if reawakened, his stomach howled and gnashed its juices beneath his shirt. Destiny’s skin was dark and, perhaps because of his violent hunger, he found himself making a number of cliché comparisons to chocolate and sweets.

On a different morning, John might have produced a wicked smile and said that he had a meeting with the board later that afternoon to discuss the investigation and, at that same meeting, they would be looking for talented people to lift out of management in order to have them head up a new division in the thin-aired heights of the company. He might have leaned intimately against her desk and asked her to get in touch with Ms. Tate, as he called Gabrielle on such occasions. He might have done any number of things on another morning. This morning, he was exceptionally hungry. His stomach churned and he felt its acid swirling up into his throat. Was it too much to ask for a “Yes, Mr. Amerigo” or “Of course, Mr. Amerigo. Right away, sir”? Had those days gone by? Was he now trapped in Tariq’s world, forced to tiptoe around others’ feelings and monitor his own behavior to avoid offending anyone’s delicate sensibilities? His stomach lurched and pulled him forward a step toward that hideous open-mouthed mask. His hunger pounded in his ears, roared in his hands.

“That mask,” he said, “I believe it violates company policy.” Then, John stepped forward, his stomach screaming and howling, and wrenched the mask from the wall, leaving behind dangling brackets and gouged plaster. 

“What are you doing?!” Destiny yelled, grabbing for the mask. On a different morning, John might have paused to appreciate this image, her stepping around the desk and reaching for him with a desperate need.

With a final stomach gargle, he swung. Both hands gripping the faceplate, he brought the end of the mask down onto the side of her head with a dull thunk that he felt in his gut, satisfying his hunger for a moment. Destiny lurched forward and bumped into the desk, before crumpling against the legs of the cushioned chair facing her desk. John looked down at her. Hands shaking, he bent and replaced the placard that had fallen to the floor. He found himself praying that Tariq had already turned the corner of the next hallway. Perhaps the H.R. director was, even now, crossing the threshold of John’s office after having knocked and gotten no response.

Before moving to the door, John turned the mask in his hands, inspecting it a final time, the smear of blood across its white squares, the splintering of the wood along its spine. He laid the broken mask down next to her and, stomach churning once again, fled.

Back in the hallway, he nodded to a few curious heads sprouting from the tops of cubicle walls, causing them to shoot back down. He stood by the door for a moment, breathing heavily, until the gentle click of office keyboards and quiet phone calls had resumed. He walked to the elevator. When the doors opened on a crowd, he cleared his throat.

“Ground floor.”

##

In the elevator, John’s stomach slowed to an anticipatory boil. He patted his belly with a pale hand, attempting to soothe the writhing beast.

For the past eight years, he’d had a vision for the company. It was the same vision he’d had for every company he’d ever worked for, the same vision that his father had reminded him of at every football game, every business deal, every father-son moment: come out on top. John had been forced to plan around the obstructions of the current board. Since hiring Tariq, they’d attempted things their predecessors never would have dared. Despite spending weeks stewing and trying to strategize, he still had no plan. He talked; he charmed; he saw the big picture. He didn’t bother with the board’s petty maneuvering. He followed his gut and got results. He noted the spot of blood drying on his white cuff and smiled. Well, perhaps that would be enough of a plan after all.

As soon as the doors parted before him, his stomach dragged him forward into the smells and hum of the international food court. 

“Good to see you, Mr. Amerigo.”

In reply, John nodded to the entrance guard. Then, he took a small metal sheet tray from the stack. He eyed it, taking a moment to examine this hip new departure from cafeteria plastic. When he’d started at the company, they’d had smoking lounges and ashtrays so mounded with cigarette butts that you could no longer see the logo branded into the bottom.

His stomach gave a disgruntled tumble and he waved a hand to disperse the curling smoke of memories. There were a few rich-cushioned booths around the edges of the dining area, but most of the outer edge of the large room was dominated by one long blue counter that snaked its way in front of all the restaurants, connecting each one to its neighbor. He stalked its length, his gut purring in anticipation. This early, all the tables in the center of the room were deserted. Only a few scattered napkins and garbage-laden trays dotted the tables, looking like picked-clean corpses waiting for the blue-aproned sweepers and table-wipers to cart them off. A table of swaggering chefs, clearly on break, bickered good naturedly from a booth in one corner. A father on his lunch break, perhaps waiting for his wife to come back from the bathroom and take charge of their children, attempted to read a newspaper while his two young girls made a game of sliding in and out of their booth and babbling with serious faces.

Normally, John might have taken the time to sail back and forth along the great blue length of the counter, taking an eggroll here and a few grilled spears of asparagus there. Today, he took a much more direct approach. He prowled the length of the counter exactly once and tortured his stomach from its delighted purr into another fit of growling and snapping. Then he began by launching his assault against The Falafel King. He filled two plates before moving along the counter to another familiar destination, Beijing Grill. He spotted a young Chinese man stirring a mound of fried rice behind the counter and shouted, “Benny!”

The young Chinese man, who one day had found himself answering to the name Benny, looked up from where he was stirring. “Mr. Amerigo! Good to see you, sir,” he said. He eyed John’s overflowing tray and asked, “You haven’t been abandoning us for that old Falafel King, have you?”

“No worries about that, Benny.” John patted his twisting stomach. “I’ve brought my appetite today.” 

“Are you... feeling okay, Mr. Amerigo?”

“Fine, fine. Hungry, though.” He laughed and began piling egg rolls into a pyramid in the free space on his tray. He pinched three or four more with a final scoop of the tongs before snapping them sharply together and laughing again. Benny flinched. “That ought to do the trick for now. Thanks again, Benny boy!”

“Mr. Amerigo!” Benny called after him.

“Don’t worry about the weight, Benny!” He responded over his shoulder. “Just charge me your proverbial pound of flesh. Whatever you think is fair.”

John sat at the head of one long table and felt a momentary pang at the thought that he would have made such a strikingly paternal figure if the table were full, as it was when he had sat at the head of the board. Even Destiny or his wife, sitting at his right hand, would have made for an impressive image. He set his jacket on the chair beside him, rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and placed a napkin in his lap. His stomach croaked and lashed about, pushing at the buttons of his shirt. One of the little girls had stopped her game with the booth and was staring across the room at him as if waiting for him to perform a bit of magic. He smiled at the girl, lifting a pita to his mouth and letting his whitened teeth shine.

His teeth snapped together once around the first half and immediately sprang back open for him to shove in the second half, pinkies flicking forward and back out of the way like mandibles, lest they be snapped up too. John lifted the second pita and saw the young girl tugging at her sister’s arm and motioning in his direction. Snap. Snap. He wiped his hands on the napkin and began popping in egg rolls as if they were candies. He licked his fingers and looked down at the empty tray with a vague feeling of surprise. He pushed his chair back, expecting to expel a sigh of satisfaction or feel pleasantly overstuffed. Instead, John’s gut pulled him to his feet. He gave it a soothing pat but pulled his hand back when it shuddered and forced him forward a step.

He got another tray. From Perfect Thai, he took two bowls of curry. From Naan Express, a stack of kebabs and a small hill of basmati rice. He realized he’d accidentally gnawed off half a kebab spear without noticing. Still, his stomach rumbled forward and he grabbed another tray each from Panamania and then Taco Love. He dropped those trays at the table and circled around to Havana Days for more. He made a side trip for a burger and fries and trailed a few crumbs when he finished them on the way back. The girls’ father was now staring over the bent top of his newspaper.

The plates no longer seemed big enough to John. Had he used a plate for those empanadas? Why were there shards of plastic scattered around his chair? Surely he hadn’t eaten a plate as his mother had always warned him he might. The food court was silent now. The booth of chefs had fallen quiet and they were all watching him. His shirt cuffs cinched above his elbows, so he tore open the sleeves, popping off buttons with hands that seemed suddenly large and graceless. He began piling food right onto the trays, slopping pounds of mac’n’cheese next to a pile of Polish sausages. He took the scoop back to the table and began using it to heap cheesy noodles into his gaping mouth.

It was while he was finishing the sausages that he heard his name being spoken along with Destiny’s, from the entrance guard’s walkie. So, they’d found her. He moved to stand, but fell back when his engorged thighs started to lift the table above them.

“Benny, bring over the rest of those egg rolls, will you?” John pushed at the pile of trays in front of him and cleared a space. Bowls clattered to the ground and sprayed bits of curry onto the tiles.

“Here!” He pulled a fifty dollar bill out of his wallet and gestured to Benny. “I know I’m eating you out of house and home here, so this is a little thank you. Now, bring it over, quick.”

“Mr. Amerigo…” Benny trailed off from behind the counter where he’d taken shelter, as if from an armed intruder. 

“The egg rolls, Benny. Come on.” John pulled his entire wallet from his pocket and set it atop the first bill.

The security guard had lowered the walkie volume and was now holding it up to his ear and looking in John’s direction.

Benny pried up the pan of egg rolls with a butter knife and pushed through the waist-height door in the counter while cradling the still-hot pan. He stepped carefully over and around the spilled bowls.

“Here you go, Mr. Amerigo,” he said, leaving the money on the table.

“Thank you, Benny.” 

That was when John heard boots pounding down the stairs. Security. He smiled and stood, pushing the table back and sending trays clanging to the ground. He had the feeling that the table and chairs and even Benny were smaller than they had been when he’d first sat down. He laughed again then, a great booming thing that nearly died from his own surprise at how loud and deep it had become. Benny started to step back. John reached out to clap him on the back, tell him to lighten up and live a little, but he felt his stomach twist and roll its attention as he turned toward the two security guards that had stepped out of the stairwell next to the elevator. John ended up gripping Benny’s shoulder and pulling him close, his head level with John’s writhing stomach. Benny was trying to twist and pull away from the monstrous hand that now enveloped his shoulder and most of his chest. John held tight.

Tariq appeared from the stairwell behind the guards. John’s stomach thrashed as he saw the man begin talking to the guard closest to the door. The stairwell door opened again and Destiny came out to stand next to him, a hasty bandage around her head. One hand, he was amused to see, held the mask at her side while she pushed past Tariq and gestured toward John with the other. His two interns appeared there as well, just a step or two behind Destiny. They had hard eyes and kept their arms folded over their chests. The elevator doors opened and the first load of the lunch rush started to spill out, only to be ushered to the side by the original entrance guard. John boomed another laugh into the air and watched it bend the crowd. 

“Help! Help!” Benny began to shout.

“Please, sir, calm down,” the frontmost guard said. He extended a hand toward Benny and approached with the other hand poised above his gun.

Benny flailed his arms so that they bounced off the back of John’s hand. He kicked back at John’s legs. John’s stomach was wailing and shaking with fury, but his hand stayed still. He marveled at his now-giant paw wrapped around Benny’s shoulder and chest. John tried tightening his grip experimentally and Benny made a harsh choking noise that the guard didn’t appear to notice in his steady approach.

“Just stay calm. We’d like both of you to step apart so we can ask you a few questions.”

“Of course, officer,” John said, raising his free hand above his head where it now brushed against the ceiling.

Benny made another faint choking sound and put a hand into the pocket of his apron. He pulled out the butter knife he’d used to pry the pan out of the buffet line and began to slash at the back of John’s hand.

“Knife! Knife!” At this, the second security guard stopped talking to Tariq and rushed forward, grabbing the gun from his belt.

“Put the knife down!”

Benny pushed the knife into John’s hand with weak arms.

“Put it down! You’re drawing blood!”

John smiled at Tariq across the room and released Benny, at the same time pushing him forward toward the guard. Benny stumbled forward, grabbing his throat with one hand as he tried to take a breath. The other hand, the one with the knife, he threw forward, bracing himself against falling into the guard.

John saw the gun’s open mouth rise up and cough out a flash of bright flame before the crack of it filled the room, pressing against the sharp corners and collapsing the crowd near the elevator into a screaming mass of thoughts and prayers. The sound pushed into Benny as the bullet entered his chest. It held him up for a moment before he stumbled forward and fell at the security guard’s feet. The guard lowered the gun and looked down at Benny’s body. John’s stomach had been shocked into a moment of silence while he thought about the years he had spent crunching into golden egg rolls while listening to Benny’s laugh. The guard looked up. He was quite a bit younger than John would have guessed at first. His face was round and shaking.

The security guard near the door shouted into his walkie talkie, “Shots fired! Shots fired!” 

Still screaming, the crowd crushed itself into the stairwell door, shunting Tariq, Destiny, and the interns aside. John’s stomach screamed in tandem, rolling and twisting, scraping its claws against the insides of his ribs. He fell forward onto his hands and knees. A sharp pain behind his navel pulled him forward until he was hunched directly over the security guard. The man looked up at him, eyes shining, and raised his gun again. For a moment, John looked back. 

John’s stomach howled and pulled him forward. John opened his lips to scream, but his mouth darted forward until it had enveloped the security guard’s head, then his chest, before pinning his flailing arms to his sides. His gullet swelled, snakelike, convulsing and choking over the man’s bent form. He reached a hand to his own throat, just as Benny had a minute before. He stayed hunched like that for several seconds before his stomach yanked back toward his spine so that he threw back his head and felt the guard slide down into his churning stomach. His teeth clicked shut just over the man’s polished black shoes and he swallowed him down before taking a ragged breath through his nose. 

John’s stomach swirled and raged, pumping and convulsing beneath his shirt. Each convulsion ripped through his entire body. He felt sweat flood down his back. His joints popped and creaked as another convulsion rippled through his arms and into his fingertips. His shirt buttons popped and shredded with each subsequent breath. His belt cut into his hips and he plucked at the buckle with sausage-large fingers until he was able to pull it loose. When it was done, John remained kneeling, but sat back on his heels, panting. Benny’s blood was spreading out into a small pool and had begun to stain the knees of his suit. He pulled off shoes that had already begun to tear at the seams and then stood, kicking off what was left of his pants and brushing tatters of shirt from his back and arms. Mostly naked now, he towered over the room. With a brief sense of vertigo, he looked around and felt as though he’d returned to a place he had not visited since he’d been very young. The proportions were strange. The counter was too low. The lights, too bright. The angles were all wrong. The faces around the room were too small and they hung open in horror or shock. He looked at himself. He examined his hands, flexed his now-giant fingers in front of his face. Looking down past his chest was like peering over the edge of a cliff at his chest, his gut, his groin, his bare feet, and the floor well below. The two remaining security guards stared helplessly at him, clearly unsure how to process what had happened to Benny and their companion.

“I, uh...Mr. Amerigo, sir?” the security guard closest to him began.

“Xiao Guang!” John and the security guards turned as one of the chefs from the booth shouted and started running over to where Benny lay. The rest of the chefs sat paralyzed around the booth as one of them got up and began ushering the father, a daughter in each arm, from the nearby booth to the swinging metal doors of the kitchen and the service elevators beyond.

The chef who had shouted, an older Chinese man, reached Benny and slipped, falling to his knees. He sobbed and pushed his fingers into Benny’s cheeks.

John looked back at the remaining security guards and, in a voice that boomed from a chest that had grown to the size of a piano, yelled, “Leave!”

They ran toward the stairs. The interns had moved back in front of the door now that the crowd had cleared out. On a normal day, Maria and Kate might have run from him too. Today, the yelling interns tried to turn the guards around, back toward John. Unsuccessful, Kate instead ripped the gun from one guard’s hand and Maria, seeing this, bent and retrieved the other gun from where it had been dropped. 

John laughed when they walked toward him. Kate settled her feet and held tight to the rough grip, thinking of the time she’d spent on kickboxing classes and therapy sessions before she’d finally talked to Tariq. Maria held the gun awkwardly in front of her and tried not to remember John’s fingers digging into her thighs, just as she tried not to feel them when she closed her eyes at night. 

John advanced on them. With his first step, he kicked Benny’s body and the chef out of his way, ragdolling them both through the air until they slapped to the ground near the booth of cowering chefs. John kept laughing as he took another step toward the interns. He was still laughing when their twin shots raced through the air and sprayed over his stomach, penetrating layers of skin and muscle before careening to a stop in the fleshy mass of his abdomen. His stomach howled, spraying blood and acid from the ragged holes that had bloomed across it. John registered surprise that something so small could leave him in so much pain. He put his hands to his stomach and felt it gasping out a life’s worth of gluttonous blood.

He fell to his knees and looked up at Maria, coughed, and began to speak. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.” He turned to look at Kate, the shorter of the two. “I’m really a nice guy.”

It was then that John heard an angry scream and shoes slapping against the linoleum. Destiny was running toward him, holding the mask above her with both arms. She swung. His vision filled with the black and white squares of the mask before the bones of his nose crunched into his face and he stopped thinking.

##

On a normal day, John might have finished lunch and headed back up to his office, one of his appetites appeased for a few hours. Today, they carted away his body through the service elevator, which was now the only exit large enough for him. They also had to find some extra-large sheets to cover him and helpers to load him onto the flatbed cart from the kitchen when he wouldn’t fit onto the stretcher. The mess, they left to the sweepers, table-wipers, and psychologists. The union raised some questions about training and security guard policies after the details of Xiao Guang’s death came out, but these concerns were subsumed by the strange circumstances of the case. Thankfully, the food court was reopened after only a few weeks, during which time they’d been able to take care of some much-needed remodeling and updates that had been in the ten-year plan for the building. The board nominated one of their own to fill John’s position and, although the new hire wasn’t perfect, everyone agreed that their situation was greatly improved.