I haven't stopped eating for forty-seven days.
My name is Daniel Locke. I'm thirty-four. I live in a small town in Vermont where nothing ever happens—until it did. This will be my last entry. If anyone finds this recording, burn it. Burn me.
It started with hunger. Not the usual sort. Not like skipping breakfast or missing lunch.
This was different.
It woke me up in the middle of the night. My stomach wasn't growling—it was screaming. Writhing. Like something inside had turned against me. I stumbled into the kitchen, clutching my gut, thinking maybe I had food poisoning or gas.
But I opened the fridge and—
I couldn't stop.
I devoured everything. Cold cuts, leftovers, raw eggs. Butter straight from the stick. A week-old steak I'd meant to throw out. I ate until I vomited, and when I was done vomiting, I ate again.
My throat bled from the acid. My lips cracked. My vision went white around the edges, but I couldn't stop.
I thought it was a parasite. Or a tumor. Something horrible pressing on the part of my brain that says "enough."
But the ER doctor found nothing. "Maybe stress," he said. "Grief does strange things to the body."
Grief.
He meant my brother.
He'd died two months earlier—found in his apartment, collapsed next to a mountain of half-eaten food. No signs of trauma. Just... empty. Emaciated despite the mess.
They'd said he had some rare metabolic disorder. But the way he looked—sunken, clawed fingers, tongue bitten in half—it didn't match up.
I didn't want to believe I was following in his footsteps.
But the hunger kept growing.
By week two, I was eating every hour. Pounds of meat. Raw. Cooked. It didn't matter. I raided grocery stores. I ordered thirty pizzas in a single night. My bank account dwindled. I started stealing pet food.
I told myself it would pass. That it was in my head.
Then I began eating things that weren't food.
Cushion stuffing. Soap. A shoelace. Paper. Plastic wrappers, chewed and swallowed like gum. I even gnawed through a pack of batteries, metal and all, and only stopped when I tasted blood and sparks.
I cried for hours.
But I never felt full.
Sleep became impossible. I'd dream of teeth, endless rows grinding in the dark. A tunnel made of mouths. A voice whispering: "Feed me. Feed you. Feed us."
My skin started to loosen, sagging off my bones. I looked like I was wasting away, even as I ate enough for ten people. I went to doctors, clinics, online forums.
None of them believed me. "Anorexia," one said. "Delusional hyperphagia," another wrote down. They all smiled the same way—as if trying to gently dismiss the horror in front of them.
But one man reached out.
A private message from an old account with no name, no image. Just a single line:
"The Starve is inside you now."
Attached was a video.
I clicked it.
Grainy footage. My brother. Naked in a filthy room, surrounded by gnawed furniture, chunks of drywall missing. His voice was raspy, lips black with sores.
"It feeds on absence. Not food. Not calories. The void. It grows inside us—those who taste it. It isn't about eating. It's about never being able to stop. Because you already did. You let something die in you, and now it eats to fill the grave."
He smiled.
His teeth were gone. Just pink, bloody gums.
Then he leaned down—and bit into his own arm.
I stopped the video.
I tried not to believe it.
But the more I denied it, the louder the hunger grew. It spoke. It had words.
"You miss him. You miss her. You miss who you were. Feed. Until you forget."
By day twenty-five, I couldn't keep clothes on. My skin blistered from the inside out. I was down to 110 pounds, even though I consumed over 20,000 calories a day.
I broke into the morgue.
I don't remember doing it.
I woke up on the floor, surrounded by open drawers. One of them was empty.
My hands were stained red.
I tried killing it.
I swallowed bleach. It threw it back up, screaming through me in a high-pitched screech that made my eyes bleed.
I tried starving.
It chewed me from the inside—I could feel it gnawing my stomach lining, writhing against my ribs like a trapped rat.
It isn't a parasite.
It isn't a demon.
It's grief made flesh. Hunger given thought. Something that found its way into the soft place left behind when you lose someone and don't heal.
It doesn't want food.
It wants absence.
Today is day forty-seven.
I can feel it moving beneath my skin. My bones are brittle. My intestines are riddled with holes. But the hunger is still there. More than ever.
There's a mirror in front of me.
I no longer see myself.
Just a mouth.
A gaping, open maw where my face used to be. No eyes. No nose. Just rows and rows of teeth spiraling into a black abyss.
I understand now.
The Starve isn't inside me.
I'm inside it.
And if I die—if I let myself go silent—it will leak out. Find the next broken thing to crawl into. The next empty human.
So I won't die.
Not yet.
I'll keep eating.
As long as I can.
And when I can't...
Burn this tape.
And me with it.
Please.
One Week Later – Medical Examiner's Report
Subject: Daniel Locke
Cause of Death: Unknown
Found in a boarded-up house. Kitchen ravaged, all food sources consumed. Furniture gnawed. Body emaciated, bones cracked, jaw unhinged beyond natural limits. Stomach cavity empty except for cloth, plastic, glass shards.
Eyes missing. Tongue severed.
Lips stretched permanently into a smile.
A final message carved into the wall with fingernails:
"Still not full."