The fluorescent lights of Prolific Corp hummed a monotonous B-flat, a sound Arthur had learned to filter out years ago. It was the soundtrack to the slow erosion of his soul, a dull drone for a life lived in a beige cubicle. He stared at a spreadsheet, the columns of numbers wavering like a desert mirage. A low growl echoed in the quiet of his stomach, a familiar emptiness that food never seemed to fill.
It was 12:05 PM. Lunchtime.
With the squeak of worn-out casters, he pushed back from his desk. The office was a prairie of low-walled cubicles, each containing a life not so different from his own. He caught Brenda from accounting massaging her temples, her face a mask of weary indifference. Across the way, Tom from marketing spoke into his headset, his shoulders slumped in a posture of perpetual apology. Then there was Sarah, the new intern, still radiating a kind of hopeful energy that felt alien in this place. Give it six months, Arthur thought, not unkindly.
He navigated the maze to the breakroom, a windowless cell that smelled of stale coffee and microwave-nuked fish. In the corner, next to a water cooler that had been empty since the Clinton administration, stood the vending machine. It was a new addition, a featureless black monolith that had simply appeared one Monday. No branding, no logos, just a cool, glowing screen displaying generic options.
He’d never used it. His daily ritual involved a limp, slightly damp turkey sandwich brought from home. But he’d been in a rush this morning, a frantic scramble out the door that left his brown-bagged lunch sitting forlornly on the kitchen counter. He fished a crumpled dollar from his pocket. It felt thin and pathetic in his hand. He smoothed it against the machine’s face and fed it into the slot. The machine accepted it with a soft, mechanical sigh.
He scanned the options. C12: Salty Chips. D5: Sugar Bomb Soda. E7: Chocolate-ish Bar. Nothing really grabbed him. He was about to jab a random button when his eyes landed on the final entry, F9. The display beside it offered no picture, no clever name. Just a single, sterile word: “Lunch.”
He frowned. What kind of lunch? It was absurdly vague. For a moment, he hesitated, a prickle of unease on his neck. Then he scoffed at himself. It’s a vending machine, not an oracle. What did it matter? He pressed F9.
The machine’s interior whirred and clanked, a series of discordant sounds like a toy robot falling down a flight of stairs. A small, plain white box dropped into the collection slot with a dull thud. He reached in, his fingers brushing against the cool, smooth cardboard. It was heavier than he expected.
Back at his desk, the box sat on his keyboard, feeling like a lead weight. A strange mix of hopeful foreboding, heavy and thick as molasses, settled over him. It’s just food, he told himself, shaking his head. You’re being ridiculous.
He lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like shredded tax forms, was a single, raw animal heart. It was a glistening and slick, bloody ruby against the stark white of the box. The coppery smell filled his nostrils, and a wave of nausea buckled his stomach. He slammed the box shut, his own heart hammering against his ribs.
His head snapped up. He scanned the office, his eyes wide with a frantic, disbelief. Both horrified and confused. Why? Should I tell someone? Am I being pranked? He looked around more carefully, scanning for a perpetrator.
Nothing.
Brenda was now scrolling through her phone, a faint smile on her lips. Tom was off his call, typing furiously. Sarah was organizing a stack of papers. Everything was normal.
Except it wasn’t.
He shoved the box into his desk drawer, his hands trembling. He tried to focus on the spreadsheet, but the image of the raw, bloody organ was seared onto the backs of his eyelids. His stomach rumbled again, a low, insistent growl that was no longer just hunger. It was a demand. A strange, new kind of craving began to bloom, dark and thorny. He tried to ignore it, but the gnawing emptiness grew with each passing second. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He had to eat. He had to.
With a shaking hand, he retrieved the box from the drawer. He opened it and stared at the heart. His stomach churned with revulsion, but the primal craving was stronger. He picked it up. The cold, slippery flesh sent a shiver through him. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and took a bite.
The taste was metallic and raw, the texture a shocking combination of yielding flesh and tough sinew. It was the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted. And the most satisfying. The gnawing hunger vanished instantly, replaced by a profound, unnerving calm. He finished the heart in two more bites, his mind blessedly, terrifyingly blank.
He tossed the empty box into his wastebasket and turned back to his screen, the taste of blood lingering on his tongue. He didn’t understand what had just happened. He only knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that some invisible line had been crossed.
The next day, Arthur brought a sandwich. A robust, home-prepped roast beef on rye, packed with lettuce and sharp mustard. At 12:05, he unwrapped it defiantly. He would eat his own food. He would not go near that machine. It was a thing of nightmares, the whole scene from yesterday. The memory replayed through his mind over and over like a worn out needle skipping on a broken record. Relentless and ever-more unsettling.
At 12:15, as he bit into the safety of his own sandwich, his cell phone rang. It was his neighbor, Janet, her voice tight with panic. “Arthur, it’s Mittens. Oh, God, Arthur, I’m so sorry. He darted into the street… there was nothing the driver could do.”
The world dissolved into a muffled roar. Mittens. His cat of fourteen years, the one warm, living thing that greeted him at the door each night. The sandwich turned to ash in his mouth. He mumbled something to Janet, hung up, and stumbled to the men’s room, where he was violently sick. He didn’t eat another bite all day. The hunger that evening was a hollow, aching grief that he could not discern from the deep sense of loss he felt for his beloved cat. Every woeful, consuming feeling devoured all the happiness in the world, and left him in soulful pain, the single worst feeling he had ever experienced. Mittens was a thread of life in a spiral of death that was his pathetic existence.
“Why me?” he whimpered into his pillow. As he drifted off to sleep, unwelcome answers pressed into his dreams. The vending machine. The sandwich. Swirling visions mixed with images of sorrow, crumpled dollar bills, and nondescript white boxes.
The next morning, he had no food to bring. The refrigerator was empty, except a third of a bottle of old orange juice he was reluctant to throw away, but too repulsed by to drink. By noon, he was starving, and he stood in front of the machine again. He didn’t want to be here. He felt numb inside. Still reeling from the loss of his pet. Still haunted by his dreams. And, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to quit his job and just go home, but there was nothing there for him either. Not any more.
If Arthur wanted anything at all, it was to actually feel something. He needed to be grounded in the moment. And so here he was, at the machine, responding to a strange kind of magnetic pull he felt powerless to deny. The dollar bill shook in his hand as he fed it to the machine. F9. Lunch.
The box that dropped down was heavier. He knew, even before he opened it, that it would be something worse. He carried it to his desk like a bomb, his breath held tight in his chest.
He opened the box.
On a bed of dirt and dried leaves lay the severed head of his cat, Mittens. One eye was closed, the other stared up at him, a milky, vacant orb. A small, perfect horror. Arthur didn’t scream. The sound was trapped in his throat, a knot of pure terror. This wasn’t random. This was a message. You disobeyed. This is the price.
The hunger was back, sharp and cruel. It wasn’t a choice. It was a command. He looked at the head, at the familiar patch of white fur on its nose, and a sob escaped him. Then, with the methodical movements of a man in a trance, he closed the box, took it to the empty stairwell, and did what he had to do. The crunch of bone was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
The days bled into a horrifying new routine. He would try to resist, and the world would punish him. He skipped the machine on Tuesday, and by evening, his grandmother, ninety-two and in a nursing home, had a sudden, catastrophic stroke. The box on Wednesday contained a single, gnarled finger, her wedding ring still glinting on its knuckle.
He began to change. His already thin frame grew gaunt. His skin took on a pale, waxy sheen, and dark circles bloomed under his eyes, giving him a haunted, skeletal look. His coworkers noticed.
“Rough weekend, Art?” Tom asked, leaning over the cubicle wall. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Arthur just grunted, not looking up from his screen.
“Seriously, man, are you okay?” Tom pressed, his voice laced with genuine concern. “We’re all a bit worried.”
“I’m fine,” Arthur snapped, his voice harsher than he intended. “Just leave me alone.”
He could feel their eyes on him. He heard the whispers by the coffee machine. Brenda’s voice, sharp and speculative. “…must be drugs. Or maybe a gambling thing…” He was becoming a pariah, a ghost haunting his own life.
One Friday, a small white box appeared on his desk. Not from the machine. A note was attached, written in bright, bubbly handwriting. “Thought you could use a pick-me-up! – Sarah.”
He opened it. Inside was a perfect-looking turkey and cheese on rye. Wholesome. Normal. A lifeline. With trembling hands, he picked it up and took a bite.
It had no taste. It was like chewing on cardboard and packing peanuts. His body, now conditioned to a diet of horrors, rejected it. He gagged, spitting the mouthful into his trash can as his stomach heaved. The hunger, the real hunger, screamed in his gut.
He fled to the breakroom, his body trembling with a desperate, all-consuming need. He jammed the dollar into the machine. F9. The box clattered down.
He didn’t even take it back to his desk. He opened it right there, in the stale air of the breakroom. Inside, nestled on a bed of bright pink rose petals, was a single, perfect blue eye. It stared up at him, the exact shade of Sarah’s.
This time, he screamed. A raw, guttural howl of pure, unadulterated anguish. He dropped the box, stumbling backward, crashing into a table. The eye rolled onto the linoleum floor, its gaze unbroken.
He turned and ran. He fled the office, the B-flat hum chasing him down the hallway. He burst out onto the street, the sounds of the city a deafening, chaotic roar. He ran without direction, his lungs burning, tears streaming down his face. He ran until his legs gave out and he collapsed in a heap in a dirty alleyway, his body wracked with ragged, soul-shattering sobs.
He lay there for a long time, the city a blur around him. There was no escape. The machine had its hooks in him, and it would never let go. It had taken everything from him—his pet, his family, his sanity. The hunger was still there, a monster coiling in his belly. It needed to be fed.
Slowly, deliberately, he sat up. He looked at his left hand, at the pale skin, the long, thin fingers.
With a strange, terrifying calm, he brought the hand to his mouth. He hesitated for only a second, then bit down, hard. The pain was searing, white-hot, but beneath it, there was something else. A familiar, metallic taste. The texture was both disgusting and, in a horrifying way, deeply satisfying.
The hunger began to subside, replaced by the blank, blessed calm he now craved more than life itself. He was no longer a man. He was just a vessel for this monstrous appetite. And in the grimy solitude of the alley, he finally began to eat. This time, determined to be full.
©2025, Glenn Lyvers