The Feast Between Numbers

Written By: Rashan Speller

The pigeons would not consume him. That was the first thing Detective Darius Kane noticed.

Not the missing head or the blood. Not the obscene little insignia inscribed into the dead man’s chest. The pigeons, Hundreds of them crowded the riverwalk that morning, their gray bodies crammed together like loose stones in a graveyard. They fought over cigarette butts and stale bread. One had its beak buried in a crushed soda can. But around the corpse, they had left a perfect circle. A ring of untouched concrete. Darius stood behind the yellow tape and watched the birds. One pigeon strolled forward and stopped. Its neck twitched, then it backed away. “Jesus,” Detective Mara Bell murmured beside him. Darius said nothing. The corpse lay facedown in the damp grass.

A jogger Thirty-seven— wearing Expensive shoes, a Blue running shirt and one hand still curled around a fitness tracker. The other was missing and so was his head. The medical examiner had covered what remained with a sheet, but the wind kept lifting the corner like an impatient child attempting to peek beneath a blanket. Blood had soaked into the grass. It looked almost black

beneath the morning sky. Bell swallowed. 

“You ever seen anything like this?” Darius looked at

the chest. A circle had been carved into the skin. Inside it was a vertical line. Beneath the line were three tiny dots. It looked less like a symbol than a wound pretending to be mathematics.

“You recognize it?” 

“No-”

“Then why are you staring at it?” Darius crouched.

The smell reached him like iron or Mud was rotten beneath it. He leaned closer. The symbol had been cut recently. But around its edges, the skin was a dull gray. Not dead-gray Or old-gray. As if the wound had been waiting inside the man’s body for years. Darius stood. 

“I think whoever did this wants us to think it’s a message.” Bell looked toward the pigeons. “And you think?” Darius watched another bird approach the body. It stopped four feet away, Its head snapped toward the

river. Then all the other pigeons did the same. Thousands of black eyes veered around together—

Darius followed their gaze. Nothing stood across the water. Nothing human yet Still, he felt watched. “I think,” he said quietly, “we’re looking at the wrong corpse.” The second body arrived eleven days later. Then the third, then the fourth. The city began giving the killer names

the way frightened children give names to things under their beds. The Night Runner. The River Devil. The Butcher of Seventeen. The Television hosts smiled beneath studio lights while discussing mutilated bodies. Psychologists pointed at diagrams. Former FBI agents described childhood trauma.

Everyone wanted the killer to have an explanation. A bad father, an abusive mother. A broken marriage. A pornography addiction or a religious obsession. Something normal enough to put inside a box. Darius didn’t believe in boxes anymore. He had spent twenty years placing people inside them. Criminals, Victims, Witnesses, Missing or Dead. He had realized that human beings loved classifications because categories made the world feel house-trained.

The killer was foreign. The victims were different, but he symbols were identical. Every victim had been running. Darius started plotting the locations. He pinned photographs to a wall then maps, along with street coordinates. Red string crossed the city like veins beneath transparent skin. He stayed awake four nights. On the fifth morning, he stepped back. The pattern looked wrong it wasn’t the line or anything else. The murders weren’t forming a symbol. They were forming a place setting. Sixteen points, Sixteen chairs and Sixteen empty plates. And one position in the center — for him. Dr. Evelyn Shaw lived inside a house that smelled like old

books and rain. Darius found her sitting beneath a skylight, surrounded by manuscripts.

She didn’t ask why he had come. She looked at the map then at him. Then she looked back at the map. 

“You shouldn’t have drawn the lines.” Darius scowled. “Why?” 

“Because now you can see it.” 

“See what?” 

She touched one of the photographs. Her finger quivered. “The invitation.”

Darius almost chuckled. “I’m investigating a serial killer.” 

“No.” She looked at him. “You are attending a dinner.” Shaw told him about Brigid Vale. An Irish woman who had lived in Liberty City more than a century ago. A woman who claimed certain places were thin. Not haunted but

thin. She assumed the world was less solid than people imagined. That reality was a sheet of ice floating over something black.

Sometimes, she said, the ice cracked. And when it did, something underneath could smell us.

“She called them listening rooms,” Shaw said. Darius turned a page in the old newspaper. There was a photograph of Brigid Vale. Her eyes were pale. The photograph had been damaged around her face, as if someone had rubbed the image with a dirty thumb.

“What happened to her?” 

“She disappeared.” 

“How?” 

Shaw looked toward the window. “She walked into a room.” 

“And?”

“There was no room when they went looking for her.” Darius stared. Shaw continued. “She left a note.” 

“What did it say?” 

Shaw hesitated. Then: “The dead do not haunt the living.” She turned the page. “The hungry do.”

The eleventh victim was Dr. Evelyn Shaw. They found her in Room 17. She was sitting upright in a wooden chair. No blood, no weapon, no broken skin. Her eyes were open. Her mouth was full of dirt. Darius stood over the body. The room smelled like a grassland after rain. The walls were covered in numbers. Not written but Black digits pushed through the wallpaper like mold. Some were upside down. Some backwards. Some looked nothing like numbers at all. Shaw had left a portion of paper beneath the chair. Darius picked it up.

Seventeen numbers. Sixteen corresponded to murder locations. The seventeenth was blank. Underneath them: THE TABLE IS SET. And beneath that: DON’T EAT. They found Caleb Rook two days later. He lived outside the city in a house with every mirror extracted. Darius noticed that first. No bathroom mirror, No hallway mirror. Even the windows had been covered from the inside. The walls were covered with numbers. Caleb sat at his kitchen table. He looked depleted. Not tired. Just Consumed. His cheeks had sunk into his face. His eyes looked like two wet stones. 

“You’ve been counting,” Caleb said. Darius placed photographs on the table. 

“You know these people? Caleb glanced at them. 

“I know the menu.” 

Darius stopped. “The what?” 

Caleb looked toward the ceiling. His lips trembled. “The menu.” 

Darius leaned forward. “Who are you working for?” 

“No one.” 

“Then who killed them?” 

Caleb smiled. It was the saddest smile Darius had ever seen. 

“You’re still thinking like a policeman.” 

“I’m listening.” 

“No.” Caleb tapped one of the photographs. “You think murder is the event.” He tapped another. “You think the body is the event.” Another. “You think death is the event.” His finger stopped.“It’s not.” 

“What is?” Caleb looked directly into Darius’s eyes.  “Being noticed.” 

Bell disappeared that night. Her car was found outside the old hotel. The engine was running. The driver’s door was open. Her pistol lay on the seat. Her phone was still recording. Darius played the final thirty seconds. Static. Bell breathing. Then her voice: “Darius?” A pause. “There’s someone here.” A second voice answered. Darius froze. His own voice. “Mara, don’t turn around.” Bell whispered: “You’re not here.” Then screaming. The recording ended. Darius played it again. His own voice. Perfectly. But there was something beneath it. A second sound. A wet clicking. Like teeth counting. 

Darius went to the hotel. The building had been abandoned for thirty years. Yet the lobby smelled of fresh bread. Warm butter. Cinnamon. Roasted meat. His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since morning. He climbed the stairs. Each step creaked beneath his weight. At the end of the hallway stood seventeen doors. Darius counted them. One. Two. Three. He stopped. The corridor seemed longer than before. Four. Five. Six. His mouth went dry. Seven. Eight. Nine. The wallpaper appeared to pulse. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. A smell of oranges drifted through the hallway. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. He reached the final door. Seventeen. Someone was humming behind it. An old song his mother used to sing. Darius closed his eyes. His mother’s voice came through the wood.

“Darius.” His hand moved toward the knob. “Dinner’s ready.” He pulled his hand away. The voice laughed softly. “Don’t let it get cold.” 

The room beyond the door was enormous. Impossible. The hotel could not contain it. A dining table stretched farther than Darius could see. Candles floated above it without holders. Their flames were blue. Sixteen plates covered the table. Sixteen chairs. Sixteen places set with silverware. At the seventeenth chair sat Detective Mara Bell. She was alive. Her skin was pale. Her lips were blue. “Darius.” He ran toward her. She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t eat.” 

“What?” 

She shook her head. “Don’t.” 

He looked at the table. The plates weren’t filled with food. They were filled with memories. On one plate, a little boy stood beside his mother’s hospital bed. On another, a woman watched her husband leave. On another, a soldier dug through rubble. Another showed a man staring into a bathroom mirror, unable to recognize himself. Another contained a little girl hiding beneath a bed. 

Darius saw his father. He stopped. His father’s memory sat on a porcelain plate. A younger Darius was standing in a doorway. His father was leaving. The boy said something. Darius couldn’t hear it. His father closed the door. The memory began to bleed. Darius stepped backward. Across the table, something smiled. It wore his mother’s face. But its eyes were too deep. Its skin seemed stretched over an enormous absence. 

“You remember,” it said. Darius raised his gun.

“What are you?” The thing looked at the weapon. Then laughed. Not loudly. Politely. Like someone being served an unpleasant appetizer. 

“I am hunger.” The candles bent toward it. “I am the mouth behind the mouth.” The walls breathed. “I am what your ancestors called the dark because they lacked the courage to call it by its true name.” 

Darius couldn’t move. The thing looked at the plates.  “Do you know why humans tell stories?” 

Darius said nothing. 

“So the dead can keep eating.” The creature lifted one of the memories. The image of Darius’s father trembled between its fingers. “You feed me every time you remember.” The memory disappeared into its mouth. Darius heard his father’s voice. “I’m sorry.” He hadn’t heard those words in twenty-four years. His knees nearly collapsed. The creature smiled. “Delicious.” 

Darius understood. The killer hadn’t been murdering people for the creature. The creature didn’t need the murders It needed attention. The killer had turned death into theater. The newspapers. The photographs. The television interviews. The symbol. The speculation. Every person who whispered the killer’s name had placed another dish on the table. 

Every nightmare was a course. Every sleepless night was wine. Every frightened child was dessert. Humanity had been feeding it without knowing. Caleb had been right the entire time. They weren’t victims, they were ingredients. Darius looked around the table. Sixteen plates. Sixteen deaths. Sixteen memories. And the seventeenth place remained empty. He understood what the final course was. Not his body. His mind. The thing didn’t want Darius dead. It wanted Darius afraid. It wanted him remembering. It wanted him watching. It wanted him to give it the one thing humans possessed in abundance. Attention. 

Darius lowered his gun. The creature smiled. “Good.” Darius looked at it. Then he closed his eyes. The smile disappeared. 

“Look at me.” 

Darius said nothing. 

“Darius.” Nothing. “Remember your father.” Nothing. “Remember your mother.” Nothing. “Remember Bell.” Nothing. The creature’s voice sharpened. “Look at me.” Darius breathed slowly. He thought of nothing. No monster. No symbol. No number. No murder. No door. No darkness. 

The creature began screaming. The room shook. The candles exploded. The plates shattered. The sixteen memories rose into the air like burning scraps of paper. The creature’s face cracked. For the first time, Darius saw what was beneath it. 

Nothing. Not darkness. Not a monster. An absence so vast that his mind recoiled from it. A hole where existence had forgotten to exist. The thing screamed. And Darius finally understood the oldest rule of hunting monsters: Sometimes the only way to kill a predator is to starve it. 

Darius woke in an empty field. 

Morning. 

Police surrounded him. There was no hotel. No table. No Bell. No Caleb. No bodies. Nothing.

The official report called it a psychological breakdown. Darius had resigned. The killings remained unsolved. Liberty City moved on. Six months passed, then a year —then two. Darius stopped dreaming. He stopped counting. He stopped examining the clocks. He understood how

to live with silence. Then, one winter morning, he opened his refrigerator. 

Inside was a porcelain plate. He did not own porcelain plates. On it sat a single photograph of his father. Young, Alive, Smiling. Darius picked it up and on the back someone had written: ONE MORE COURSE. His kitchen light flickered. Then the smell came. 

Warm bread, Butter, Cinnamon and Charred meat. Darius slowly turned toward the dining room. A table stood there—Seventeen chairs, seventeen plates. Sixteen occupied, one empty and the seventeenth chair pulled itself backward —Inviting him to sit. From somewhere beneath the floor came the sound of hundreds of voices whispering his name. Darius didn’t move. Then a voice spoke instantly behind his ear.

His mother’s voice, soft, tender and hungry. “Darius.” He shut his eyes. “Come eat.” And beneath the city, beneath the subway tunnels, beneath the graves, and hospital and bedrooms where frightened people praying into the darkness — something opened its mouth. The feast had never ended. It had only learned how to wait.

Rashan Speller is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whose work explores philosophy, identity, spirituality, consciousness, and the complexities of human experience. His writing blends poetic language with philosophical inquiry, often examining the questions beneath everyday life. His work has appeared in Unsealed, Collide Magazine, Flowermouth Press, Creation Magazine, DYONYZINE, and M.A.D Art Magazine. He continues developing poetry, creative nonfiction, and experimental writing.