By Rod A. White

No one sees the feeders at first.

They gather where something has just ended: a breakup outside a subway, a man staring too long at a message that begins with we regret to inform you. The air bends, and something thin slips into the space where feeling goes rancid.

There, they feed.

I saw my first one the night I stopped sleeping.

My brother had died three days earlier. Grief sat in my chest like broken glass. I walked the city streets because staying still made the pain louder.

A figure perched on a fire escape. It was out of place, like a bird misremembered. Its head turned too far as it watched me.

More precisely, it watched the space around me.

I froze, trembling, as it leapt from the railing and landed before me.

The air shifted.

It leaned forward and pecked at something I couldn’t see. My throat tingled, and I breathed more freely.

Then it left, taking that heavy absence with it.

I understood, dimly, that what it took wasn’t just grief, but the tether that kept my brother from vanishing completely. When his voice began slipping from my memory hours later, I went looking for the creature.

I discovered there were many. They favored certain places, like hospitals, bus stops, anywhere the emotional air had become thick. I watched one feed on a woman sitting alone. Her shoulders drooped under an unseen burden. When the creature left, she stood and walked away, lighter.

She never even noticed the visit.

But I noticed, and a lucrative idea formed.

I had little trouble capturing one. I made bait from the grief of past memories until it was dense enough to choke on.

Then I waited.

When it came, I trapped it within mesh charged with anguish, crude but effective. It shrieked, releasing a pressure that squeezed my head.

“Sorry,” I told it. But I wasn’t.

The first buyer didn’t believe me. “Emotions?” he asked, eyeing me skeptically.

“Just the ones that fester.”

I let it feed on him, just enough. His face changed immediately, tension dissolving, insides softening.

Then he laughed. Clean. “How much?”

I became obsessed with its efficiency. Like the Strix, the Roman malevolent bird of witchcraft, it consumed human negativity.

I built more cage traps and caught more Strixes.

Business grew, and the cash in my pockets overshadowed the concern for my brother.

Wealthy clients came with curated burdens of guilt, regret, and quiet shame that kept them awake at night. The feeders took it with gluttonous joy.

But something unexpected happened.

At first, it was subtle. Then sharper. Apologies disappeared. Decisions came easier.

Without consequence, what stops a person?

“It feels amazing!” one client exclaimed. Ten minutes later, he robbed and murdered a man without hesitation.

The city shifted. There were more accidents. More crimes. More arguments that escalated from sheer pleasure. In the absence of consequence, a hollowness crept in, as if an essential element had vanished from the soul of society.

The wild feeders grew more ravenous.

I saw three fighting over one grieving man, overlapping, desperate for what used to be abundant.

That’s when I understood.

I wasn’t just selling relief. I was eliminating what was necessary.

I went back to the cages. The feeders pulsed, unstable, pressing toward something beyond their bars.

I opened one door, and the vulture of souls slipped free, hesitated, then turned toward the city.

“Wait,” I called.

It didn’t.

I released them all.

I begged people to remember with the hope of restoring balance. But they had tasted life without weight, and they didn’t want to return.

The feeders adapted. I saw them lingering around a new quality that was neither grief nor emptiness.

It was simply the Blank.

They fed on it slowly, as if they were acquiring a taste that didn’t quite fit their palates.

***

I still see them.

Sometimes, late at night, one finds me, drawn by what I’ve kept tucked away, a grief I refused to sell, a weight I wouldn’t let them take.

I let it feed. Just a little. Just enough to keep from slipping into madness.

But lately… it doesn’t want to stop.

It lingers too long, pulling deeper, past the sharp edge of loss into something older, quieter. My memories thin. My brother’s face blurs at the edges. His voice disappears completely.

I try to pull away, but it follows. Hungry. They all are.

I see them everywhere now, clustered around people who feel nothing, tearing at whatever emptiness remains, scraping for traces that aren’t there, ripping away their very souls, not for some burdensome emotion―there are few of those remaining―but for the essence of life itself.

Tonight, there are three outside my window. They don’t move like they used to. They’re without patience, without grace. Brimming with a fathomless need.

I can feel them pressing against the walls, sensing what little I have left to give.

I can’t take it any longer. I open the window and close my eyes, not in fear, but surrender.

If I let them hollow me out completely, there will finally be enough nothingness to starve them.

And they’ll stop being so damned hungry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rod A. White has operated a full-time writing/ghostwriting/editing business since 2010, providing articles, blog posts, ebooks, books, and other writing services to a global clientele. Rod also enjoys creating his own short stories, novels, screenplays, comic books, graphic novels, etc. He’s had several short stories accepted for publication recently.

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