The rain is coming down hard again. Everywhere is under the shadow of night. I find my way back to the river. There’s life everywhere, and I see it, extending out from people’s bodies, back decades and decades behind them, or just one decade, or just years, or just weeks. Perhaps it’s because I’ve ended a life, because I’ve consumed one, but I perceive it now as a solid thing, as a material, as if it were cloth, woven from something like a fine silk. A child looks at me as he goes past with his dad and I see four years of time trailing behind him and a multitude of years meandering into the distance ahead of him; in between is his body—soft and sweet, big eyes, raincoat hood up, red cheeks—the vulnerable part of his life I could pick up and empty, to get to the rest of it. I stay in the darkest shadows, close to the buildings, under the trees; I savor Gideon’s past and what I took of his future. Memories fill my mind, as though they are my own, of not just events from Gideon’s life, but of various flavors and textures: breast milk running easily down into my stomach, chicken cooked with butter and parsley, split peas and runner beans and butter beans, and oranges and peaches, strawberries freshly picked from the plant; hot, strong coffees each morning; pasta and walnuts and bread and brie; then something sweet: a panna cotta, with rose and saffron, and a white wine: tannin, soil, stone fruits, white blossom; and—oh my god—ramen, soba, udon, topped with nori and sesame seeds; miso with tofu and spring onions, fugu and tuna sashimi dipped in soy sauce, onigiri with a soured plum stuffed in the middle; and then something I don’t know, something unfamiliar but at the same time deeply familiar, something I didn’t realize I craved: crispy ground lamb, thick, broken noodles, chilli oil, fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk, tamarind . . . and then a bright green desert—the sweet, floral flavor of pandan fills my mouth. I run. I feel good. I open my mouth and the rain washes over my tongue. Cyclists and runners move out of my way.

On my way back to the factory, I go down side roads, looking for other people. I want to eat more. I’m still hungry. I want to try other flavors. I find one around the back of a newsagent’s, a lit cigarette held between his lips, and he doesn’t even have time to say anything, but he looks me up and down and starts walking toward me, smirking. When I bite into his neck, the cigarette stays between his lips for a moment and I inhale and taste smoke and ash through the blood. I munch through the skin and muscle and bone, tasting chips and steak and gammon and soft-boiled eggs with bread soldiers dipped in, and reach a strange knot of flesh that I pull at with my teeth. It’s his tongue and it hangs from my mouth as I drop the man’s body to the floor. The tongue gently lands on his chest and then I say to the body, “Thank you.” I almost say the whole grace my mum and I said to pigs. But I don’t; instead I just listen to my voice ringing out in the silence and it is beautiful.