FICTION - Hunger

The cereal box depicted a Sikh man, wearing a turban with a bright, glowing jewel at its centre. He was smiling. It was a strange thing, to see a Sikh used in the language of capitalism, sitting there on the supermarket shelf. This place had been abandoned by capitalism some time ago. It only took a few floods.

The tendrils of the botanical invaders continued their slow, methodical invasion inward, looking for spectrums of light they could use, and any moisture they could extract from within the ruined plaza.

The lights of the store had ceased functioning a decade ago, cut off from the grid by a flood that had engulfed the region. It was evacuated, and everything was left as it was. The landscape was to now be forever more eroded by the projected re-occurrences of the flood.

The town, the little store had been abandoned, like so many others. The town, written off as unviable by a committee in an office somewhere cared not for the displaced populace.

It was all a matter of perspective.

This cereal box was on a high shelf, and the perennial flood waters failed again and again to wash it away. The floor, or rather, what now made up the floor told a different story. The decaying clumps of packaging, product, and calories, made up a damp, compacting, warm, composting slurry. A welcoming place for the likes of Earthworms and exploratory plants seeing nutrition and a place to grow their roots.

They were hungry, not just for fertiliser. As the vegetation closed in on all sides, even the tallest shelves would be engulfed by the enquiring network of branches, vines, leaves, and flora, seeking to flourish in a place from which it had been excluded, until, at least, the next flood would come.

Survival wasn't a guarantee in this place. It was a constant battle. Sprawl too far from an oasis of nutrition, without finding more, and perish. Rot, and feed the next generation. Seek nutrition in multiple places at once, and run out of energy. Rot, and feed the next generation.

The plant life went through a cycle of renewal and decay, and eventually, slowly, mercilessly, it would crawl the shelves to the roof of the building and crack it open, exposing the radiance of the light to all below, excepting what it greedily took for itself.

With a prompt of just hunger, I failed to think of anything other than the Florence + The Machine song of the same name. Therefore, it took me about four or five false starts to give this story a bit of an original slant. Though, it probably isn't all that original. Some part of me will forever live in Jeff Van Der Meer's Area X, from Annihilation, as it is a book that touched me deeply for its poetic descriptions of decay, renewal and how nature will always win.