Strange Appetites

Marcus opened Instagram at 9 p.m. on a Thursday looking for connection—eight months later, he discovered he'd invited something ancient into his bed that had been feeding on him the whole time.

I. August Heat

It is evening, one of those Harlem evenings when the August heat sits on your chest like a hand you can't see, and Marcus has made a promise. He is forty-three years old and no longer believes in breaking his word, not even to himself, not even when his bed whispers salvation and his body begs for mercy. He has just booked The Fire Next Time—a new musical about James Baldwin—his triumphant return to Broadway after two years of teaching rich children how to emote on cue. Tonight warrants celebration. Tonight demands witness.

But loneliness, Marcus has learned, is a patient creature. It waits.

Music crashes through his brownstone—Beyoncé, always Beyoncé—I wanna go missing, I need a prescription—and Marcus sings along while pulling on jeans that still remember the shape of him, a white t-shirt that shows off shoulders that carried eight shows a week for twenty years. He looks in the mirror and sees what he needs to see: a man who hasn't surrendered yet. A man who can still make strangers look twice on the street.

The music stops. Silence floods in like water through a cracked hull.

Marcus sits on the edge of his bed, phone heavy in his palm, and waits. The text comes: Boxers. 9pm. Don't be late bitch.

He looks at his bed. White sheets. Cool. Clean. A novel he's been meaning to read. Wine breathing on the nightstand. Peace that feels revolutionary.

I'm too old for this.

He doesn't reply.

Instead, he opens Instagram—that digital confessional where lonely men kneel before the altar of validation—and begins to scroll. Gym thirst traps. Engagement rings. Mykonos vacations he can't afford. The endless inventory of other people's joy.

Then: a message request.

Belial.

The name glows at the top of his screen like a match struck in darkness.

Marcus hesitates. Something in his chest tightens, some ancient part of him that still remembers when survival meant listening to your instincts, when ignoring a warning could cost you your life. But he is lonely, and loneliness makes fools of us all.

He clicks.

The profile loads slowly, deliberately, like a curtain rising on a stage. Light-skinned—not quite passing, but close enough to make white people comfortable and Black people suspicious. Eyes the color of burnt honey, almost amber, too bright to be natural. Somali cheekbones. Ethiopian jaw. Beauty so sharp it could draw blood. Twenty-six years old. Actor. Model. Every photo a study in shadow and seduction—black-and-white shots that look expensive, captions about desire and desperation written in lowercase like they're too heavy to capitalize.

The message is simple, direct, devastating:

I've been watching you.

Marcus's thumb hovers. Every cell in his body screams RUN. But hunger is a kind of madness, and he has been hungry for so long.

He types: That's not creepy at all.

The reply comes instantly, as if Belial had been waiting, watching, ready: You don't want normal. You want to be consumed.

Truth lands like a fist.

How would you know what I want?

Because you look like me. Lonely. Brilliant. Tired of pretending.

The words slice through Marcus like scripture. He should close the app. He should block this stranger. He should go meet his friends and drink overpriced vodka and dance until his knees hurt and his ego feels temporarily satisfied.

Instead, he stays. And talks. And talks. And somewhere in the conversation, without realizing it, without meaning to, opens a door that was supposed to stay locked.

An hour passes. Then two. Marcus forgets about his friends, about his promise, about everything except the stranger on the other side of the screen who speaks to him like they've known each other for lifetimes.

You look like you taste like sin, Belial writes.

Maybe I do.

Good. I'm starving.

Reality snaps back suddenly, violently. Marcus looks at the clock: 10:47 p.m.

Fuck.

He texts his friends: Running late. Don't hate me.

He grabs his fanny pack—when did he start following Gen Z trends? This should be around his waist like the '80s, like his generation, like dignity—and runs out the door, phone still buzzing with messages from Belial that he shouldn't be reading while walking but can't stop reading anyway.

II. Boxers at Midnight

Boxers smells like weed and shea butter and expensive cologne masking cheaper desperation. All-Black crowd tonight—the kind of crowd where everyone is beautiful and no one is honest. The DJ plays Aaliyah, and something in Marcus's chest loosens temporarily, that old muscle memory of what it means to be young and Black and free in a room full of people who look like you but don't really see you.

His friends scream when they spot him, pulling him into hugs that smell like home and accusation.

"Two hours late? That's a new record even for you."

"I was busy," Marcus says, which is not a lie but not the truth either.

They dance. They drink. They laugh at jokes that aren't funny but serve their purpose. Marcus feels young again, or at least less aware of not being young. But by midnight—his body's built-in alarm, that biological clock that says this is when responsible adults go home and moisturize—he's ready to leave.

His friends protest weakly, but they understand. They're all over forty. They all have day jobs. They all know that staying out until 3 a.m. is a privilege reserved for the young and the foolish.

Marcus heads for the exit, weaving through bodies slick with sweat and want, and that's when he sees him.

The back of a man's head. Curly hair—loose coils catching the strobe lights like a crown. Something in Marcus's chest yanks tight, a hook buried deep in his sternum pulling him forward without permission.

Follow him.

He doesn't question it. Doesn't hesitate. Just moves.

He chases the stranger through the crowd, his heart pounding in a rhythm that doesn't feel like excitement or arousal but something older, something primal—prey recognizing predator, rabbit spotting wolf, antelope watching the lion's slow approach through tall grass.

The man turns.

Belial.

Their eyes meet across the dance floor, and Marcus feels gravity shift, the earth tilting on an axis he didn't know existed. Belial smiles—slow, knowing, inevitable—the kind of smile that says I've been waiting for you to catch up.

Then he turns and disappears into the crowd like smoke, like a dream evaporating, like something that was never really there to begin with.

Marcus stands frozen, his phone buzzing in his pocket like a heartbeat.

I saw you tonight. You looked beautiful. Like something I could ruin.

III. Monday Morning

Rehearsal for The Fire Next Time starts on a Monday morning in a dingy studio on 42nd Street that smells like old wood, stale coffee, and deferred dreams. Marcus arrives early—armor of professionalism firmly in place, script annotated, coffee cooling in his hand.

The cast filters in. Introductions. Pronouns. Pleasantries. The usual Broadway ritual of strangers pretending they might become family.

Then the door opens.

Belial.

Marcus's coffee goes cold in his hand. Time does that thing it does in movies, that slow-motion bullshit that you think is fake until it happens to you and you realize oh, this is what they were trying to capture, this moment when reality fractures and you can feel every single second passing like a knife.

"Well, well," Belial says, grinning like this is fate and not a calculated ambush. "Didn't know you were in this, Marcus."

The use of his name—casual, familiar, possessive—sends ice down Marcus's spine. "I didn't tell you my name."

"Sure you did." Belial's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Last night. Instagram. Remember?"

Marcus’s Instagram name was a mask, a shadow he wore to keep the world from brushing against the raw pulse of him. And yet… somewhere in the dark, somewhere he couldn’t remember, maybe he’d let Belial taste his true name—slipped it like a whisper he couldn’t call back. But he nods anyway, because what else can you do when reality starts bending and you're not sure if you're losing your mind or finally seeing clearly?

They sit next to each other during the read-through. Their knees touch under the table. By lunch, they're inseparable.

IV. Shared Wounds

They spend every day together after that. Then every night.

Belial talks about his childhood—foster care in Baltimore, group homes where boys learned to survive by becoming monsters, a mother who disappeared when he was six and left him with men who understood "love" as a synonym for violation. Marcus shares his own story: the deacon who cornered him in the church basement, the mother who chose Jesus over her son, the therapist who said "forgive them" when what Marcus needed was permission to rage.

"We're the same," Belial whispers one night, naked in Marcus's bed, fingers tracing scars Marcus doesn't remember getting.

"Yeah," Marcus breathes, because it feels true even though some part of him knows it's a lie.

The sex is violent in its perfection. Belial doesn't just touch Marcus—he takes him, like he's claiming territory that was always his. Every nerve ending screams yes before Marcus's mind can catch up. It's not gentle. It's not safe. It's the kind of fucking that rewrites you from the inside out.

Marcus's body shatters—vision whiting out, every muscle convulsing like something possessed. He can't breathe. Can't think. Can only feel Belial everywhere—inside him, around him, consuming him whole. The release is so complete it feels like dying.

Afterward, Belial holds him while Marcus shakes and weeps, whispering things in a language that shouldn't exist—guttural syllables that taste like blood and ash, words that burrow into Marcus's bones and make a home there. Marcus doesn't understand them. But his body does. His body recognizes them like a lock recognizing its key.

"You belong to me now," Belial says.

And Marcus—broken open, hollowed out, remade—believes him.

Because after sex like that, how could he belong to anyone else?

V. What We Overlook

The signs come slowly at first, then all at once, the way buildings collapse.

Belial never eats. "I'm fasting," he says. Always fasting. For what, he never explains. Marcus watches him order food, push it around plates, let it go cold. Never a single bite crossing those perfect lips.

Belial avoids mirrors. Marcus catches him once, staring at his reflection in a storefront window, and the look on Belial's face is pure, unadulterated hatred—like he's looking at something monstrous that he can't escape.

Belial has no childhood photos. "Lost them in a fire." No yearbooks. No baby pictures. No evidence he existed before age eighteen, before he appeared fully formed like Athena from Zeus's skull, beautiful and deadly and somehow wrong.

Belial hates churches. They walk past a small Baptist church in Harlem—hand-painted sign, choir singing behind closed doors—and Belial crosses the street, puts an entire city block between himself and the building, won't look at it, starts breathing like he's drowning.

"You okay?" Marcus asks.

"Fine," Belial says, but his hands are shaking.

But Marcus ignores it all. Because Belial feels like the answer to a question Marcus has been asking his entire life. Like the missing piece. Like home. Like salvation.

VI. Disappearing

The cutting off happens gradually, surgically, expertly.

"Why do you need them?" Belial asks when Marcus mentions drinks with the cast. "Am I not enough?"

"They're my friends."

"I'm your family."

Marcus cancels.

Then Belial starts asking for money. "Just until my check clears, baby." Fifty dollars. Then a hundred. Then five hundred for rent that's always mysteriously due. The checks never clear. The excuses multiply like bacteria.

Marcus gives it anyway. Because love, he tells himself, means sacrifice. Because relationships require compromise. Because maybe if he just gives enough, Belial will finally be satisfied, finally be whole, finally stop looking at him with those hungry eyes that never seem full no matter how much Marcus pours into them.

One night, they argue. Marcus tries to leave—just needs air, needs space, needs to think—and Belial pushes him. Hard. Marcus hits the wall, shoulder first, pain exploding like fireworks.

Marcus calls 911.

Belial calls the cops first.

The officers arrive—two white men who take one look at light-skinned Belial's tears and dark-skinned Marcus's rage and make their decision instantly. Marcus knows this dance. Has known it his whole life. The Black man is always the aggressor. The lighter one is always the victim. The truth is always irrelevant.

"He attacked me," Belial sobs, and Marcus watches himself become the villain in real-time.

The cops take Belial's side. They always do.

Marcus should leave. Every cell in his body knows this. Every ancestor screams RUN. But he doesn't.

Because that night, Belial comes back. Crying. Broken. Beautiful in his devastation.

"I'm sorry," Belial whispers, and Marcus hears every man who ever hurt him, every apology that ever meant nothing, every promise that turned to ash. "I love you. Please don't leave me."

"I won't," Marcus says, and signs his own death warrant.

VII. Unknown User

Eight months pass like a fever dream.

Marcus is broke. Isolated. Thin. His friends stop calling after the sixth cancellation, the tenth excuse, the twentieth lie. The show closes. His savings evaporate. Belial stays.

They fight constantly now—screaming matches that shake the walls, neighbors banging on pipes, the kind of toxic cycle Marcus swore he'd never be part of but somehow can't escape. Belial takes his money, his time, his sanity. Marcus gives it all willingly, desperately, like a man trying to fill an ocean with a teaspoon.

Then the DM comes.

Unknown User: You're dating my husband of three years.

Marcus's stomach drops. His hands shake. The phone feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

Screenshots flood his messages. Text chains between Belial and another man—I LOVE YOU, I'LL BE HOME SOON, JUST GIVE ME TIME—dated from last week, last month, throughout their entire relationship.

Three years. Belial has been married for three years.

Marcus feels something inside him crack open, some fundamental belief in reality shattering like glass.

VIII. Eyes Like Void

That night, Belial comes over like nothing happened. Key in the lock. Footsteps in the hall. That familiar cologne that used to make Marcus's heart race but now makes his stomach turn.

"Hey baby," Belial says, smiling.

"Who is he?" Marcus's voice sounds foreign to his own ears.

"Who's who?"

"Your husband." The word tastes like poison. "The man you've been married to for three years."

Belial's smile doesn't falter. If anything, it widens. "Does it matter?"

"You lied to me."

"Did I?" Belial tilts his head, and something about the gesture is wrong—too fluid, too inhuman, like a puppet whose strings got tangled. "Or did you just believe what you wanted to believe?"

Marcus's hands shake. "I trusted you."

"You wanted to." Belial steps closer, and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Marcus can see his breath suddenly, white clouds forming in August heat. "You were lonely. Desperate. Hungry for something that felt like love. And I gave you exactly what you asked for."

The lights flicker. Once. Twice.

"What are you?" Marcus whispers.

Belial's eyes go black. Not just the irises—the entire eye, white and pupil and everything, swallowed by darkness so complete it feels like looking into the void itself.

"You already know, baby."

The temperature plummets. Marcus sees it now—every moment, every red flag, every warning he ignored. The reflection that never quite matched. The way Belial never blinked. The way his skin never aged, never scarred, never bore the marks of living. The way he moved through the world like gravity was a suggestion rather than a law.

"You're not real."

"Oh, I'm very real." Belial reaches out, touches Marcus's face with fingers made of ice and memory and ancient hunger. "I'm the most real thing you've ever felt. I'm every doubt you've ever had about whether you deserve love. I'm every time you've looked in the mirror and hated what you saw. I'm every moment you've been so lonely you'd rather die than spend another night alone. I'm what happens when pain opens the door and desperation lets me in."

Marcus can't breathe. His chest feels like it's being crushed. "Why me?"

Belial's smile turns sad, almost tender, and somehow that's worse than the cruelty. "Because you called me, Marcus. You opened Instagram at 9 p.m. on a Thursday night and prayed for someone to see you. Someone to want you. Someone to make you feel like you mattered. And I heard you. I always hear you. All of you. Every lonely soul scrolling through screens at midnight, begging the universe for salvation. You think I'm special? You think you're unique?" He laughs, and it sounds like breaking glass. "I've done this a thousand times. A million. As long as there have been lonely people and locked doors, I've been slipping through the cracks."

The lights go out completely.

When they flicker back on, Belial is gone.

IX. Scroll Again

Marcus sits on his bed. Alone. The sheets are still warm where Belial had been. He opens Instagram. The profile is gone. Deleted. Vanished. Like it never existed.

He scrolls through his phone. Every photo with Belial is blurred—faces distorted, bodies warped, like the camera refused to capture him properly. Every video corrupted. Every message thread empty.

Marcus looks in the mirror. He looks older now. Hollowed out. Like something essential has been carved away and the space left behind filled with nothing but air and regret.

His phone buzzes.

Unknown User: Be careful what you wish for.

Marcus closes his eyes.

And wonders: how many others are there right now? How many lonely men sitting in their apartments, scrolling through screens, praying for someone to see them? How many doors are opening at this exact moment, letting in things that should stay outside?

How many of us mistake hunger for love, isolation for intimacy, desperation for destiny?

He opens Instagram again. Scrolls. Sees beautiful men with perfect lives and perfect smiles. Feels the familiar ache in his chest, that old loneliness settling back in like it never left.

His finger hovers over a message request from someone new.

Hey handsome. I've been watching you.

Marcus stares at the screen for a long time.

Then closes the app.

Then opens it again.

Then hovers.

Then wonders.

Then—

END