Page 44 of Aftertaste

The Reese’s Cup—the unmistakable texture of smooth peanut butter, of impossibly soft chocolate—should have given him pause, but nothing was going to stop the momentum of this night for him, especially not some needy ghost with a candy crush. He swallowed it back down, put it out of his mind, focused instead on Maura’s mouth as he kissed her again, the taste of her tongue, like beer, like butter, like salt, like everything he’d ever craved.

She kissed him back, deeper, hungrier, and he got the hint of something else, something familiar—delicious, smoky, sweet. Something indolent he couldn’t quite identify. It would be a long time before he understood what it was, why the death in her tasted so good to him, but here, in this moment, her fingers tugging his hair, her body pressed against his, he didn’t care what it was, only that he wanted it.

“Lead the way,” he whispered back, and followed her into the street, into a cab, into the perfect magic of a Manhattan night.

THE RIDE TOher place—city lights blurring through the windows as he kissed her mouth, her neck, inhaled the way her perfume mingled with her skin, like some kind of drug—was the longest seven minutes of his life.

They fumbled in the dark of her entry, kissed their way onto the rickety old elevator, tumbled through the wide mouth of her apartment door, insatiable along a never-ending hallway where they lost her sweater, his coat, her jeans, his shoes, and into the kitchen where she eased his tender left arm from his sleeve, the plastic still taut over his new tattoo, and paused for half a beat, tracing the scarred, glossy flesh of his right.

He scooted her onto the counter and she kissed him again, ravenous. He asked her what she liked and she whispered back words that made him see stars, blistering hot.

I want you to fill me up.

When she slipped his hand between her legs, made that sound, he stopped caring what room they were in, what city, what planet.

When he pressed his mouth there, to sweet, wet heat, when it traveled over his tongue, into his throat, the taste of her, he knew he’d never tasted anything—from this world or the next—that had ever made him as helplessly hungry.

In her bed, silk sheets, slick as glass. Skin damp. Hair sticking.

Konstantin.The way his name stops in her throat.

Watch me. He never wants to stop.

And in the dark, for half a beat, she’s gone, as if the life has left her eyes.

A trick of light, surely, this little death.

Because then she tumbles down beside him.

Gasping, laughing.

I want seconds.

Undeniably alive.

!!

ON A SCALEof one to suck, the Hunger’s an eleven.

You eat around-the-clock but never once feel full.

You’re trapped in the Food Hall, unable to move On.

You keep hoping things’ll get better. That your sister—the one who couldn’t let you go—will get therapy. Get laid. Find some other way to get her mind off you.

Spoiler alert? She doesn’t. She just stays angry, and sad, and stuck.

And so do you.

As time goes on, you feel a shift. Your hand, you think, has it always been this grey? Did your voice always echo when you spoke? It isn’t your imagination; this Hunger changes you. It transforms.

(Honestly? If you’d known it would be this much trouble being Dead, you never would have killed yourself.)

You wonder how it might end. What you might become if you never move On. If Maura—that’s your sister—dies before she ever lets you go.

Then you find out.

In a dark corner of the Food Hall is a place full of shadows. Filled with the empty husks of spirits who were once like you—haunted by their Living and never released. Only they’re not spirits anymore, and they’re worse than Hungry.

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