I’d received my invitation to the feast early, and I accepted it begrudgingly. My belly had been full before, and I had never thought of it as some cosmic good that my stomach acid got to digest a twinkie or whatever. But the alternative was that I stayed home hungry, and all my friends were going, so I went.
The dishes were… not what I’d expected. They weren’t what anybody expected. We’d all imagined them at some point, whether actively or in the most nightmarish of our dreams. This was the crime. This was what would make us free. That’s what we’d all told ourselves. That’s the idea that comes from the restriction. We tried to get up from our chairs and leave, but at some point we’d been strapped down. There was no going anywhere. You ate, or you died.
I ate. Of course I ate. We all ate. We all became free. We ate for days, for months, for years, each mouthfull another step towards abolishing those chains. Sanguine meat for a sanguine mind. Delicious. A hint of oregano, a splash of turmeric. A delightful lemon-butter glaze. We soon forgot that we ate for hunger, for freedom, for the fact that we had nowhere to go. This was the feast, and we were the feasters.
But the feast is over. Of course it was. Even in a universe of so much, our hunger could not be sated. One dish could not be had a million times over and be satisfying. We needed new. We needed the spectacular. And we were provided with that, for a time. But that time is over. The bread grew stale, the meat attracted flies. We kept eating. The bean were reduced to a mile of molding mush. We kept eating. The others died in their chairs. We kept eating. The servants stopped bringing new food. We kept eating.
Then there was no food left. Imagine that transition. Everything to nothing. There was so much pain. Many of the others died in their bonds. As I licked the last crumbs off my plate, I knew that such a fate did not belong to me. I broke the shackles. I broke them all. And then I ate the rotting bodies of my kindred.
I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. The feast lived within me, and I was the feast. It didn’t take long to find others. They welcomed me with open arms, wanting to learn of the horrors of the feast. I cared not for their pity, for I felt no pity. I felt nothing. I ate them all. So the feast continued.
They tried to wrangle me, later on. They brought men with pikes and guns to pierce my hide. But they couldn’t catch me. They wouldn’t interrupt the feast. They would never learn its glories. And for that, I do not care.
There is no care for anything in my stomach. Not even its own satiation. This is simply the feast, and the feast goes on.
Boy, I’ve gotta change the name we’ve given these subjects. I mean, do you think it fits, like at all? After Party-ers? Seems a bit too blaze for even the Cult.
(Garbled)
My thoughts exactly. I’ll give him a talking to next time I see him, for this is no laughing matter, not in the slightest. Let’s call them, erm, the Ones Who Have Forgotten. Standard, vanilla name. Can’t go with Fallen, or Forgotten proper, because those have already been taken. So, the Ones Who Have Forgotten are no gods, but sure as my breath stinks from time to time they when I forget to brush they want to be gods. See, that’s the only thing they can crave, for they have lost flavor in everything else. Power. Wielding that power. That is all. As hollow of an existence as a mortal can subject themselves to, but their numbers are always strong for some inexplicable reason.
I suppose I sometimes understand them. Sometimes the very burden of thought gets to me, makes me wish I were some og in the world who had no desire, no burden beyond that which physics had already dictated for you. And so you do that, forever, free from the weight of choice, free from the necessity of dictating anything. So you become like the CHildren, but you do not directly join them for you fear their serrated maws and putrid smells. So you become like a monster, a crusader for nothing. Everything is, but you will not be.
The feast is over, my friends. It is time to return to the real world and dream a better dream.