Peripeteia

Peripeteia

Once upon a time is a safeguard: it tells us a story is only a tale, and happened long ago besides. Long ago can be years ago, or even months, or so long that it has passed beyond myth. This was not long ago. It is not a myth. There was a boy named Jay. This used to be important. He is hungry, and that is simply a fact. But there is hunger, and there is hunger. And there is being so empty that you will never be full again.

The Hunger walks the streets, moving between cities and towns and rural areas between one step and the next. The world rips open, the world seals up, and the Hunger does not notice. He has eyes, and they are wide and seeking eyes in a face that breaks the heart to see it. He is not a monster. That is the worst part about the Hunger. A monster one can understand. Some monsters one can reason with. The Hunger knows only hunger.

The world is not without protections known and unknown. There are governments agencies so hidden that even their members do not know they are part of them sometimes. There are magicians, and there are gods, and ghosts and monsters. And too, there are creatures from Outside the universe who live within it. There are pacts and protections, compacts and bindings, and the Hunger never notices a single one. He walks. He searches. He eats.

Foods. Ideas. Concepts. Centuries. The Hunger eats them all, barely tasting them.

“Please stop.” The voice in front of the hunger is also young. The boy is older than the Hunger, being fourteen and – like the Hunger – not really a boy at all. He is thin, so thin it should make people wince but it does not. Pale. So pale that white turns a deep grey in jealousy. Fire burns gently in his eyes and his hair is as pale as his skin, the veins visible underneath forming traceries and paths. Some of them fade. Roads. Rivers. Entire bends in the warp and weft of the universe vanishing under the Hunger’s unblinking stare.

“Don’t,” the boy says, voice thin and shaking, but the fire in his eyes gutters out.

The Hunger shudders all over. Gulps in air. Remembers that such things are done. “Winter?”

“That is a name I have, yes.”

“.... something is wrong,” the Hunger says.

“You –.” Winter sways. Thin has been replaced by gaunt, every bone visible in sharp relief under translucent skin. The eyes gutter out entirely, becoming voids. “You have a name too.”

“Hungry.”

“Noted.” Winter’s voice is dry, breath fogging the air. There is nothing around them, a space so empty the void does not haunt it. “You must stop. If you keep eating, there won’t be anything left.”

“Something missing. Missing,” Hunger insists.

Winter makes a sound, and is smaller than the Hunger, and sits down a moment later with no bones in his legs at all. “Stop this, Jay,” Winter says, and his voice is deep despite his circumstances.

“Jay?” the Hunger asks.

“That is your name. Stop this, or I will have words with Charlie and Honcho.”

“.... those are people?” Hunger asks. “Or things?”

“Stop,” Winter commands, and there is all of time in his voice, but there is no time left. He collapses bonelessly, trying to speak. Time always has second chances. Stolen moments. But they are gone.

There is someone else. He is called Moshe, and he is very beautiful and his story ends before the Hunger even realizes he is there; The Hunger shivers. It is scared, but does not understand why.

There is food. So much food. Some of it fights back, but that just makes the Hunger even hungrier to eat.

Until there is something that is not food. It is very big, and very angry.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” the voice demands, and the Hunger screams shrilly as memories leave it. Ravenous, it attacks the not-food, wounding something that had almost forgotten what pain was like.

“ENOUGH. ENOUGH,” the voice roars and the Hunger is undone. Only once. Even the Hunger knows it cannot be stopped long. But the once pushes it. Back into time that exists again. Back through space that is not eaten.

Jay is in a room, holding a cell phone. “We need to have an adventure,” he says, and Hunger eats itself before it can be born.

Jay shakes his phone, scowls. “Honcho, my phone is being an oops!”

The wandering magician walks into the room. There are bindings between them. So many that even Jay does not understand all of them. “Jay?” he asks, and his voice is very strange.

“Yup! And –.”

The magician takes his phone. Between one moment and the next, it is in the magician’s hand and then ceases to exist.

“Honcho?!”

And Jay stops dead as the wandering magician draws back from his tone. As he sees fear in Honcho’s eyes, directed at a Jay.

“Honcho?” he says again, and his voice is very small.

“Jay.” The magician hesitates. And then hugs him so tightly that Jay yelps in shock. “Never do that again. You can’t ever do that again.”

“Huh?”

“Do you know what happens when a Jay with so many jaysome bindings tries to force a certain adventure to happen?”

“Nope, but I want one with @denmystery woman and – .”

“One will happen. But not if you force it. Never if you force it.”

Jay blinks, staring at Honcho. “I did an oops?”

“No. It was far bigger than an oops could ever be.”

Jay gulps loudly, not able to think of something far bigger than an oops and doesn’t ask any questions at all. Honcho cries, trying not to be heard. And for the first time ever, Jay is (almost) so scared that he isn’t hungry at all.