WHO: Nicholas Rowland, The Antichrist WHAT: Just more fun WHEN: April 27th, 2016 WHERE: Joshua's basement WARNINGS: Starvation
By fourth day of his captivity, Nicholas felt the hunger clawing at his belly start to fade. The pangs all but disappeared and while he still felt incredibly uncomfortable, he now understood the meaning of the phrase 'so hungry you don't even feel hungry anymore'. The absence of pangs was a slight relief, but he also felt exhausted and he knew his body was now feeding on itself to stay alive.
On day five, Nicholas had to make a choice.
The light burned at his eyes, announcing Joshua's presence once again. "Brought you something," Joshua's voice drawled, and Nicholas could barely be bothered looking at him. He was curled up on the bed he'd been provided with and he intended on staying there. "Oi. OI!" Joshua poked at Nicholas' legs with his foot and when Nicholas still didn't pay attention, Joshua reached out and snapped one of Nicholas' fingers.
That got him up. White hot pain arched through his body and Nicholas scrambled away from it, into a corner of the bed. There, he pulled his knees to his chest and he stared at Joshua from behind half-closed eyes. God he felt sick. And then Joshua held out a small sandwich and Nicholas forgot completely about his pain.
"I did some research," Joshua continued, pacing slowly back and forth between Nicholas and the door. "Turns out starvation in it's truest sense only really hurts for a few days. And there's other weird shit that happens, but to be honest, it'll happen any way if you're only eating once every three days," he shrugged. "So here. Eat."
Nicholas stared at Joshua in horror as the sandwich was tossed onto his bed like it was nothing. Joshua hadn't even tried to disguise this as an act of kindness. He was literally trying to feed Nicholas to keep him hungry. And Nicholas could eat the sandwich and let him or...what? Refuse and starve anyway?
"Fuck you," he huffed out, glaring hard at the man who was keeping him here. He wanted to go home. "What do you even want with me?"
"Just experimenting," Joshua said with another shrug. "I'd love to do this to a saint, but I want to see how it affects a human first. And I know you're one of Herpes Mary's favourite playthings, and that idiot Irish leprechaun saint likes you, so why not you, hmmm? So, eat the sandwich, don't eat the sandwich, I don't give a fuck." Joshua turned on his heel and left then, but to Nicholas' shock, the light stayed on.
Not an hour ago, Nicholas would have killed for some light. The darkness had been feasting on his soul. Now, there was nothing to block out the view of that damn sandwich unless he just got around with closed eyes for however long. He couldn't look away from it. Just two days ago nothing could have kept him from shovelling the food into his mouth desperately, but it was different now. He knew eating would bring the pain back, and perhaps not doing so would mean staying relatively pain free. Starvation like this wasn't something he had really experienced before, so maybe Joshua was right, maybe it would remain painless and he would just wither and die, slipping away like he was nothing.
But he was going to be a father. And if he didn't eat- If he let the Antichrist do this to him without doing absolutely anything he could do to stay alive until he was rescued, what kind of father was he?
"Goddammit," he whispered, finally reaching out to grab the sandwich. It wasn't going to sate him. It was far too small. What it was going to do was reawaken his sleeping hunger like an angry dragon. Closing his eyes, he shoved the food into his mouth and finished the entire thing off in three bites. The food in his system made his head swim dangerously and he groaned sinking back to the mattress. He wrapped his arms around his stomach as it throbbed against his ribs and he let out a little wail.