"The Hungry Heart"
So, I'm doing this project I call "Bad Dates."
If you follow me on Facebook, then you've seen my sketches. It may end up being an old school zine, though one person suggested I offer it as a coloring book.
One of the things that will be in it is a little story I'm working on.
An illustrated story about someone with a hungry alien heart that the owner has to keep fed. It actually has to feed, or it will consume its host. It can take its meals bit by bit - a boyfriend or girlfriend fills the bill for a while. It will sleep placidly after a meal but eventually it needs to feed again. Eventually, it ends up just consuming the host’s boyfriends/girlfriends wholecloth.
Where most people have a relationship track record or “notches on the bedpost,” the owner of the hungry heart has a body count.
But what the owner really wants to meet is someone else who will understand, someone else with a hungry heart.
They meet them. At first, they feed together on the people in their environment and go on a bender of just eating everyone around them, with abandon. They scream their joy at finally feeling met, finally feeling understood.
Eventually they’re alone, though - with nothing left to feed on but each other - and they consume each other’s host, and both die in the process.
It doesn’t need a happy ending, because it’s a parable.