Page 26 of Demon Hunger
For the first time, we laid eyes on our subject in person. His hair was dyed blond, and he was short and slight—no more than 5’5” and one hundred and forty pounds. It seemed impossible that he would be able to eat more than a few hot dogs from his huge pile. Adding to that effect was the fact that the two guys next to him were about twice his size, both vertically and horizontally. Though, there was a girl about as slight as he was a few spots to his right.
He waved, then rubbed the back of his neck, looking terribly self-conscious. He had seemed more comfortable in front of the camera and his YouTube channel. He wore a flashy red and white T-shirt with the competition’s logo stamped on the front, matching all the other contestants. It had other logos on it like a brand of hot dog, bread, and mustard.
When all twenty contestants were lined up, the crowd went silent, which seemed like an impossible feat. But as soon as the buzzer went off, the loud cheering began in earnest.
I had never witnessed any sort of eating competition, and it was bewildering, to say the least. To my surprise, they weren’t eating the hot dogs in the normal way. Instead, they ate the wiener by itself, and while they did that, they soaked the bun in water to break it down, then scarfed the slush that was left.
“That’s disgusting,” Jenna said, looking green. She was a picky eater who didn’t like her food to even touch each other on her plate, so I could only imagine how this must appear to her. “I can’t watch.” She averted her eyes.
The contestants devoured one hot dog after another, the piles in front of them quickly growing shorter. Each competitor had a person assigned to them who was in charge of flipping a counter every time they ate another hot dog. The counter stood above each competitor’s head along with their name, which made it easy to determine, at any moment, who was winning.
At the moment, a tall guy with a bushy beard was ahead of everyone with fifteen hot dogs under his belt, literally. His technique was to shove the entire wiener inside his mouth, chewing a few times, then following with the soggy bun almost immediately.
When everyone moved past twenty-five hot dogs, I moved past the disturbing aspect of the competition and became really interested in everyone’s different techniques. Kody was also eating very fast, but seemed to be pacing himself a little more. He took several bites of his wiener, chewing in between before proceeding with the bun. Sporadically, he also washed down mouthfuls with water, took a break to burp, then continued.
“I would have died twenty hot dogs ago,” Sage said.
“I’m already dead,” Jenna put in. She was standing behind me, her back pressed to mine. “Who’s winning?”
“The same dude, Joey… Oh, wait, the skinny girl just passed him. How in the hell can she fit twenty-eight hot dogs in that tiny frame?”
“Maybe she has a hollow leg,” Benjamin suggested.
“Magic. It has to be magic.” This from Jenna.
The contest’s information online stated that the contestants were all Stales, and one of the judges was a mage in charge of detecting the use of magic. Anyone caught using spells would be immediately disqualified. Still, there was a possibility that someone had a better mage than the judge helping them, or that one of them was a Skew with an undetectable talent.
After forty-five hot dogs, things got more interesting. Some of the contestants started looking ill, their faces twisting as if they were about to throw up. Some patted their stomachs or rubbed them down, taking a break before resuming eating. Many threw pleading glances toward the large digital clock that indicated how long was left before the buzzer went off again.
There were four minutes left out of the initial ten, and even though fully replenished trays of hot dogs and drinks were brought in to replace the empty ones, everyone was slowing down, even the skinny girl in the lead.
It wasn’t long before a few contestants ran to the back of the stage and the sound of retching began.
“Oh, God!” Jenna exclaimed and started chanting. “La-la-la-la-la-la-la.”
She had plugged her ears, her greenish skin tone now turning gray. Poor thing. She probably regretted offering to help with this particular mission.
The puking contestants were quickly removed from the stage. Hearing them nearly got my own gag reflex started, and I couldn’t understand how the remaining contestants could keep on eating as if nothing was happening.
Kody was in third place with forty-nine hot dogs, followed by the state champ with fifty, and the girl with fifty-one.
“Should we be rooting for Kody to win or lose?” Benjamin asked.
“To lose, of course,” Sage said.
“But what if he needs the prize money to save his sick mother?” Benjamin contended.
“To save her from what?”
“I don’t know… she could be sick.”
“Let’s hope he’s got other motivations for doing this,” I said. “Hopefully something not so altruistic.”
There were only two minutes left. A few more contestants had dropped out, but there were still ten of them, valiantly trying to catch up to the ones in the lead. How none of them had exploded yet was a mystery to me. The girl was still in the lead by fifty-four hot dogs, but she was starting to look ill herself. As I watched, her skin seemed to turn gray, like Jenna’s.
She planted both hands on the table in front of her and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. The state champ next to her noticed her struggle and quickened his pace, breaking to rub his stomach down as if to make more room. Soggy bread squirted out of the corner of his lips as he shoved a wet bun into his mouth.
My stomach twisted, and for the first time, I thought I understood the term gluttony. Watching them eat like that suddenly became an obscene act. There were people all over the world starving, people who would have been happy to get half of one of those buns, and here they were eating themselves sick for the sake of… what? Worse yet, was the crowd viewing this as some sort of entertainment—not grasping the horror of the situation. And the announcers, narrating excitedly, making crude jokes as people upchucked.
