IV

Cranial Culinary Academy

Kaveh woke up cotton-mouthed. His head was throbbing, his stomach hurt, and he was hungry. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten.

He looked around. He was on the floor of a bank, but he didn't know how he'd gotten there or why he was so hungry. He got up, and something fell on the floor. It looked like sausages. He'd never been this hung over in his life.

Everything seemed far away, like he was looking at the world through a dirty window. His body was heavy, and moving took his full concentration. Still, his feet dragged on the floor, and his arms propped themselves rigidly in front of him.

There were more people on the floor, but none of them moved. He stepped around them and went to the door. There was a desk in the way, so he moved it. The door was locked, so he tore it open and stepped out into the night.

The parking lot was on his right, three cars sitting silently. Was there something missing, something of his? He couldn't think what it could be. He put one foot in front of the other, keeping his eyes on the edge of the sidewalk as his feet swerved crooked lines down the street.

He wandered without a destination. Each time he came to an intersection, he would choose a new direction by instinct.

At one point, his feet stumbled off the curb in front of a car. He tried to get out of the way, expected the panic and adrenaline to make him move faster, but they never came. He couldn't avoid the crash, but that didn't come either. The car wasn't moving. Nobody was at the wheel.

He shuffled out of the street and looked at the building in front of him. He knew this place. It was his restaurant. The doors were boarded up, but he'd never gone in through the front. He stumbled around back to the kitchen entrance and stopped so he could search his pockets. He couldn't find his keys. He couldn't remember where they might be.

He reached out, running his fingers down the surface of the door and noticed the padlock was gone. He pulled the door open and stepped inside. It was dark in the kitchen, but he sensed there was something in here, something he wanted.

"Kaveh?"

Someone had spoken. Kaveh stumbled towards the source of the voice.

"What happened to you?" they said. Kaveh got closer and saw the speaker, a fat man with white hair. "Did you get the money?" asked the man.

Kaveh tried to answer him. Something inside him made him think the answer was important, but the only noise that came out was a long dull moan.

The man backed away. "They got you?" he said. Kaveh followed him. He couldn't say it, but he was hungry.

The man backed up against the wall and reached for a shelf above his head. He grabbed a small sauce pot and hit Kaveh with it. Kaveh doubled over, but he didn't feel the blow, just the uncontrollable hunger. The old man's fat stomach was in front of him. He leaned forward and bit.

The man screamed. Kaveh chewed as blood poured out of the stomach, soaking the white apron.

The man tried to shove him away, but Kaveh grabbed his hands, got a hold on the sauce pot and pulled it away. He needed more. His hunger consumed him.

The old man groped along the wall and found a paring knife, but Kaveh brought the sauce pot down on his head. The man's skull caved in. His body went limp, and he fell straight down. The pot was warped into something unrecognizable, so Kaveh let it go and knelt over the white haired corpse.

He ripped off bits of flesh and devoured them, but they didn't come close to dulling his hunger. He ate the stomach, the liver and intestines by the yard, which might have worked if he added a little cilantro or saffron, but he wasn't satisfied. He reached into the fractured skull, got a handful of the brain and took a bite.

It was a revelation.

He finished the brains that were in his hand and went back for more. He could do something with this, make something delicious.