Hungry. Oh, am I ever so hungry. And thirsty, too. I would lick the damp, moldy walls that keep me here, but I already have, hours ago, to no avail. My stomach has imploded. I must sit here, twisted into a fetal position, to possibly survive the pain, the hunger. I try not to cry, so as to conserve the little water left inside my dehydrated self. I try to close my eyes, but it is too hard not to look, not to watch. Slowly, my eyes rise and stare, my lower lip trembling, at the table above. At the food above. My eyes stalk the food, the steaming plate of mac and cheese and huge bowl of salad and the ten layer cake and the platter of little sandwiches with olives stuck in them--I will die with the food right there, trapped like a goldfish who has jumped out onto the ground, it's nose pressed to it's glass bowl filled with water. Mmmm. Sooo thirsty... With one last burst of effort, I get up, and run at the table, jumping on it, jumping on the food. But yet again, like all the other nights, my fingers only touch hard, clear glass, sealed over the feast, my feast. One last longing glance and then I jump from the table, throwing myself again and again at the concrete door. My mind watches my body, is startled to hear a wail, an inhuman wail of the most horrible suffering, and watches as I collapse on the floor, shivering uncontrollably. To be the infant in her mother's arms, to taste the strong milk between my lips, to taste anything, to feel my belly full.
"I'll tell!" I whisper. "I'll tell!" I try to shout. To tell is to get food and water, to tell is to get mercy. Why won't they hear me? I'll finally tell, I am so Hungry. But no one hears. My voice too weak, a thin gossamer thread against iron cables. With one final breath, my voice breaks the cables, informing the world: "I'll tell!" No more breaths are drawn. I feel darkness close in, I succumb, just as I hear the heavy footsteps of my entrapper triumphantly storm into the room. My soul--shriveled as it is--rises and watches as the man comes in with a smug grin on his face that turns to puzzledness as he reaches down to check my pulse. His expression morphs to anger, to rage, to the prize dangling there and now, only just by a hair, lost, as he finds no pulse in my lifeless body. Now it is time for him to utter an inhuman scream to tell us "So close, so close!" To suffer, as he made me. Slowly, I smile, and turn, misting through the glass, to feast on the essence of the sustenance laid on that rough table. Yet I am hungry, Oh so Hungry.
