Hunger Or Heartbreak

Jakub stood uncomfortably by the door at the end of the subway car. The TTC was never a particularly comfortable ride, he reflected, though it certainly was component enough—compared to the GO Train, at least.

While the TTC served its purpose, he couldn’t escape the feeling Toronto’s line paled in comparison to his native Métro. He laughed to himself as he remembered his home. Ironic, he found it, that the only thing he really missed about Rue St-Denis and his old haunt was the damned subway.

Nevertheless, the ride home remained as medicinal in the Anglos’ world as it was in the Francophones’. He’d grown to love public transit in the city, if only because it gave have time to collect his thoughts and afforded him an ever-shuffling array of people to watch. He relished the short break from the workaday world.

He was not afforded the same luxury today, however. He’d come to realize he had an ailing condition. The disease he suffered from became clear as he was soon confronted by a sea of striking, suited business-women and gorgeous university girls who frequented the Yonge line.

He felt malnourished.

He’d a hunger for which he simply did not have the utensils necessary to satisfy himself. At present, his mind was transfixed on this hunger—it felt like unsolicited, irrational envy that he was sure he would take to the grave. Envy wasn’t quite it, though. He struggled to find the proper description.

Anxiety and depression set in shortly thereafter. His disease was one entirely in his head, but the effects that this conjured ailment had on his body were both real and damning. It wasn’t a cough or congestion that pained him, though; it was a deep, inopportune nausea.

At first, he couldn’t quite suss out what triggered the waves of nausea that would sweep over his at seeming random during these trips home. It began as a distinct twist-and-jump sensation in his stomach, as though he were on a roller-coaster or a free-falling elevator.

The train stopped. He looked up in relief before he was, again, filled with horror.

As the doors opened, the masses began to huddle on. The pain came rushing back. Shapeless, faceless bodies poured into the subway car. His stomach turned sharply. One after another. Body. Body. All of them bodies—each one more distressing than the last. The sensation heightened; his pain deepened. The stream of bodies flowed relentlessly. Another boarded, and another, and yet another. He clutched at his stomach as he was struck with dizziness. Even as the doors closed, they continued to sneak in and began to huddle around him on the increasingly-congested train. H&M scarves and wafts of Dior and Escada perfume abound. Assault! Assault, his senses cried as though the now-fragrant air was gas and the now-temptuous landscape was the walls of a chamber.

That’s when he realized it. He needed, nay, craved that which made him weak, that which made him sick. The painful ride home left him with only one topic to ponder: how can a starving man, who hasn’t the energy to lift his arms, find salvation in a morsel of food a mere arms’-length away?