Hunger

It was hungry, gnawing at my insides as if there was an animal trapped there, making me feel sick. I rolled onto my stomach, folding my arms under the cool pillow. It was a useless attempt – now that I had woken up, now that it had woken up, I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep unless I ate something.

Stupid Mira, I thought bitterly. It wasn’t really her fault, though – she was just uninformed. Nobody had told her that those infected needed more food than normal humans. Nobody told her that the need, the hunger, came at all hours of the day – or night.

And it wasn’t like we couldn’t make our own food. Even Oscar – who couldn’t even make cereal correctly – could make something edible if his hunger came.

I sighed and got up, straightening my nightgown as I looked at the clock. Three a.m. Mira was so going to kill me if she caught me sneaking into the kitchen. Screw her.

There was no light in my room – not digital clock, the lights on my computer that were permanently lit were smothered under a piece of velvet, and my charging cell phone was off. Even though the curtains were closed, blocking out the weak moonlight, I could still see, my vision perfectly clear, thanks to it.

As I walked past the vanity toward the door, I couldn’t help but glance at the length of thick dark cloth that covered the mirror. A year ago, when I moved in, it had been necessary to keep me from going bat-shit insane, even on the pills. Now, though… I reached my hand out toward the mirror, my long fingernails inches from the fabric. Then I pulled away.

No. I shouldn’t experiment now, not when it was so hungry. If I was going to leave my room, then I needed to be sane.

I took a deep breath before pulling on my bathrobe and opening the door.

The old wooden stairs were creaky, but I walked on the edges and made it to the bottom without any noise giving away my presence. Going across the living room was no problem, and neither was going down the stairs to the kitchen. I didn’t care about being quiet so much anymore – it was screaming at me.

Amazingly enough, the kitchen door was unlocked, even though Mira swore she’d keep it locked from eight p.m. to seven a.m. (Even if I was human, I’d have a problem with that schedule.) From inside, I smelled the tempting aroma of bacon.

Someone was inside.

It didn’t care though, demanding that I go inside and feed it.

When I pushed open the door slowly and poked my head in, I saw that it was only Levi, piling bacon onto a plate. I sighed in relief and closed the door behind me.

“Thank God it’s only you,” I whispered, closing the distance between us and wrapping my arms around his waist.

“What are you talking about?” he asked innocently, raising his pierced eyebrow and running a hand through his spiky black hair. “Are you mad at someone?”

I rolled my eyes. His jacket smelled so good – sunshine, soil, pine trees. He’d been out in the forest. “No, but Mira closes the kitchen from eight to seven. I think the sign on the door is mainly for her though – she might be on a diet.”

It growled at me, unhappy that I was so easily distracted. I reached under Levi’s arm and grabbed a piece of bacon. It was mollified for now, glad to see that it would be fed soon enough.

“That’s stupid,” Levi muttered, annoyed at Mira. “Doesn’t she know about them?”

“She knows that we’re different, but she doesn’t know about them,” I explained. “But she thinks that we can get enough food in the daytime.”

“I think Jeff should get divorced.”

“Or infect her,” I said. “I mean, that would take away the need for a diet. And we’d get our kitchen back.”

“It’d make her look like a junkie,” Levi reminded me, shaking his head. I hadn’t seen my own appearance in more than a year, but I was used to the others’ strange looks. “She’s too into fashion and that sort of stuff. ‘Junkie’ doesn’t fit in with the look she’s going for.”