The Flavor of Gluttony

My first meal was a bitter one. Wrath.

It was a fire, an ugly one, that sent convulsions down my body, my throat closing, my stomach twisting, revolting against the sensation.

I wanted to kill. I wanted to maim. I wanted to hate.

This was the demonstration my benefactor provided me, that unholy demon. He gave it to me as a first meal, a small taste of the future I was to inherit.

When the all-consuming fire abated, I was left with a strange sense of satisfaction, a sensation that I had almost forgotten.

I was full. Full of energy, sustenance, life. As revitalized as if I'd just enjoyed a hearty breakfast.

It had been so long since I'd felt that. Years, perhaps. Maybe even a lifetime.

Despite the hate-filled nausea lingering in my stomach, I smiled.

And thus began my sampling of sin.

Lust tasted of cinnamon candy, burning and sweet all at once. I felt intimate moments, both tender and violent, and I savored them the way a kid savors halloween candy, the flavor often lingering within me for days.

Wrath was perhaps the most variable, with flavors ranging from pure agony, as my demonic master had shown me, to simply spicy. On the worst occasions, the flavor of murderers or criminals, it tasted of rot and decay, an unholy sensation that coated my tongue for days. The only thing that seemed to relieve this taste was that of Pride, although for what reason I cannot say, as it is my experience that Wrath and Pride are often accompanied by one another. Perhaps it is that the ultimate sin of murder is one that you cannot take pride in: you cannot brag of watching the light drain from someone's eyes, or of wrapping your hands around an innocent, fragile throat. The sin cannot be told. It is forced to fester, to rot alongside the dead.

Pride was unique in that there is no comparable taste. It was more of a sensation than anything else, a warmth, a confidence, seeping into every pore. I always found these meals the most satisfying. With Pride in my stomach, I felt as though I could do anything. However, it always weighed heavy in my gut, and I found that although it had the best flavor, it was the least energizing. I almost always followed these sweet meals with a long nap full of pleasant dreams, only to wake up and realize that my time for productivity was slipping away.

Greed tasted of copper and metal, like pennies settling on the tongue. I grew accustomed to this taste, as I found avarice to be the most common of sins— even more common than its sugary-sweet counterpart, Pride.

The consumption of Envy always left me hungrier than before. The taste of women who felt they were fat, men who felt they needed to be stronger, people who were constantly in search of betterment, so obsessively that it came at the cost of their own health. It was the taste of starvation, a taste I knew all too well, and so avoided at nearly all costs.

Sloth, on the other hand, was even more filling than Pride, although considerably more bitter. It tasted of sweat and crumbs, of static and exhaustion. It was this sin that made my eyes droop, and yet I found it to be the most motivating. In every lazy man, there is a deep pit of shame. The feeling of "I should be doing something... but I can't." The disappointment, the stagnation... the taste of it is enough to make even the most resolute of degenerates stand up and begin the process of betterment.

And at last, the finest taste of all: gluttony. I taste the meals of every man, the finest of cuisine, the richest of culinary delights. Through the rich man I savor the most expensive of dishes, and through the impoverished I feel the relief of a meal, however humble, after so long. I taste of excess and luxury, the finest of flavors.

The taste of Gluttony is what truly cemented the benefit of my decision. I knew I'd made the right choice in accepting the devil's deal.

And in feeding on the sin's of others, I found a way of perhaps cultivating my own sin's. Not intentionally, of course, but rather as a side effect of my condition. With my whole life defined around the consumption and discernment of sin, it was perhaps inevitable that I fall victim to it in some form.

That form came in the shape of a business venture: a weight loss clinic. A confessional for the desperate. Here I could feast upon Gluttony, revel in Envy, and satisfy my own greed. I could take away their sins... for a price. Thus I kept myself fed and clothed, all in one. I thrived on the insecurities of others. I kept them coming back, month after month, offering just enough progress for them to feel accomplished, but just enough subtle sabotage to prolong their sin, to satisfy my dietary needs for as long as I wish.

I continued along this path unhindered until the day I tasted a new flavor. It was the unmistakable cinnamon taste of lust, but there was a new flavor there, a deep, rich flavor, smooth as silk.

It was coming from my most devoted client, a woman I'd been seeing for nearly the entire duration of my clinic's lifespan— going on 3 years now, and 5 since my... dietary shift. She was married with an infant son when she arrived, and was struggling with her weight and diet as she recovered from her pregnancy. Her son was now three, but her destructive eating habits remained.

The emotion momentarily stunned me, and I stumbled to find my words.

She seemed to find my shock enticing, smiling at my blunder. And it was then that I realized what the difference was.

I was not just feeding off of her lust. The thing I was tasting was lust... for me.

I nearly laughed aloud. It was too good to be true. Here it was, the opportunity to have an endless source of food. I could feed off of her lust forever, indulging her forbidden pleasures while secretly satisfying my own hunger. It was too good to be true. Especially from one such as her, ripe with endless sin.

It was a delicate process, but I achieved it. With my insider knowledge of her feelings and insecurities, I could easily goad her into doing what I wanted... and all the while she believed she was goading me. It was a beautiful, complex dance of sin and deceit, and I relished every moment.

At first, our meetings were only once a month. Never before or since have I experienced such a delicious rush of emotions, both physically and mentally. It was, to put it bluntly, the best sex I'd ever had. The taste of her primal lust lingered in my mouth long after it was done.

We grew bolder, and soon we were meeting nearly every day. Sometimes even in her own house. Each time, her flavor grew stronger. Cinnamon and cream. My stomach, my tongue, my brain, was full of it. It became all I could think about. I wanted more. More. And more.

And finally, I got more. I achieved my ultimate satisfaction. In one of our meetings in her home, in her bed, bodies on display, at the culmination of our desires, I felt it, like the infusion of dye in water, spreading throughout each of my limbs. It was so deep, so complete, that I felt as if I would never need to eat again. In fact, I was sure this feeling would still remain in my system long into my old age, long after my body ceased to be able to perform.

I can only describe it as eternal bliss. Deeper than any orgasm, longer than any passionate love, purer than any drug-induced felicity.

For a minute, and then another, and then another... life was perfect. I could easily believe that this was it, I'd achieved the emotion that normal men could only dream of.

Then came the fire.

In the five years of meals I'd tasted, there were none as potent or painful as the first meal, the one given to me by the demon. No wrath, not even that of murderers, was ever as cruel or painful.

Now I understood.

The first meal was not a gift or an example.

It was a prophecy.

The demon was warning me, in his cryptic, mocking way, of the fate I would meet. The reason that the wrath was so potent, so cruel, so painful, was the same reason that my forbidden lover's lust was so much stronger.

Because it was directed at me.

Now, I was feeling the same fire that the demon had once fed me, though impossibly stronger and longer than I could have ever imagined.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Hell hath no fury like a husband cheated on.

My lover was sobbing. My body had not yet caught up to the shock. I was still erect in pleasure, still reeling from the violent shift between euphoria and agony.

Before I could react, before I could scramble for my clothes or run for my life, I found myself blooming with a new agony. At first, I thought it was a new, more potent sin. Then I tasted rot— the taste of murder— and I realized this agony was physical.

I had been shot. I was dying.

The world faded away into black. I waited for the end.

Instead, a familiar, grotesque face appeared.

"Hello, old friend," the demon said.

"What do you want?" My voice was stronger than I'd expected it to be.

"Oh, nothing in particular. I'm simply here to deliver your last meal." He chuckled to himself.

I flinched involuntarily, expecting an onslaught of wrath.

"No, no, nothing that violent. You've already tasted the worst I have to offer. There's only one sin you have yet to taste..."

"Oh yeah? And what's that?"

"Your own."

The demon raised his spindly fingers to my lips, and I felt the incoming onslaught even before I could taste it, like animals fleeing the scene of an earthquake or hair standing on end in anticipation of a lightning strike.

It was a meal like no other. I tasted the sweetest sugars, the bitterest unripe fruit, the distinct burn of spices.

The most overwhelming of all was the flavor of Greed. Copper pennies and salt.

I realized with a jolt that Greed did not just taste like money. It was not the sour flavor of metal that I was tasting.

It was blood.

The blood of all the people I'd exploited, all the sin's I'd encouraged. The blood of the wrathful man and his unfaithful wife that ended my life. The blood of the sick, the blood of the hungry. It might not be entirely on my hands, but it was in my mouth. I was tasting it. Drinking it like a vampire.

And then I realized I wasn't just tasting it. I was feeling it. The sensation of liquid was bloating my stomach, coating my throat. Hot and sticky, impossible to swallow. I found I was choking on it. Spitting it down the front of my shirt, yet still it kept coming. Filling ever orifice. My nose. My lungs. My throat. I coughed and spluttered, gagging on the invisible blood.

And thus it was my own sin that killed me.