Jack cut an excruciatingly awkward figure as he pushed his trolley through the aisles of the local supermarket. It was his weekly task, to do this thing.

Impossibly tall, bird-like, and gaunt – he was made of nothing but sinew, gristle and bone as he engaged in a never-ending quest to keep his beloved wife fed.

His trolley overflowed with a veritable cornucopia of steaks, chops, sausages, eggs, pate, pasta, chicken fillets (breast and thigh), yoghurt, butter, bacon, cheese, potatoes, crisps, chocolate, baked beans, tinned stews, pickled eggs, Spam, and other sundries that might – just might – placate his wife’s ever-increasing appetite.

He had long grown used to the curious and horrified stares he drew from other shoppers – there he was, a Birdman incarnate, pushing this freakish eyesore of foodstuffs that he simply could not eat.

He loved that woman, though; he had no choice. She could barely move on her own volition; nor could she do simple things like cook or work. But he loved her all the same, for she was the only love he’d ever known, and he solemnly took responsibility for keeping her alive.

The food costs were exorbitant, but he himself subsisted on scrappy bags of greens: cabbage, spinach, lettuce, and the occasional radish or carrot was what kept him alive.

Many were the days and nights where he quietly nibbled on these threadbare veggies as he attempted to drown out the ravenous and dreadful feedings his wife would engage in four times a day.

He needed to feed himself, of course. A cursory whisk through the produce section ticked that little box off as he plucked leaves of lettuce and spinach and rocket (but never too much of that, as a little spice always went a long way) and shoved them into the strangely fragile plastic bags provided by the IGA. Salads were all he seemed to be able to eat these last few – weeks? Months? Years? He couldn’t remember. Time was a mere concept punctuated by dark and light. Time dragged heavy like a lump of fat he was incapable of digesting.

He looked at the veins in his arm as he released the tongs in the rocket bin; marvelled, as he always did, at how blue and pronounced they were beneath the alabaster skin that covered his bones like a sheet.

“Mummy, look.” A voice. A child’s voice. The hairs on the back of Jack’s ears quivered and he found himself turning towards its source.

The mother was in the middle of steering her daughter away from his line of view when Jack locked eyes with the little girl. So small, so innocent; her piercing blue eyes were incapable of the dishonesty and lies that in the future would overtake every facet of her being.

“It’s not polite to stare,” the mum began, but even she bore that expression Jack had grown so used to. “Oh,” she stammered. “I’m so sorry. Manners.” The little girl was hiding behind her mother’s skirt, and began to cry.

Every ounce of dignity that Jack had been attempting to salvage during this shopping quest slipped away with the heaving sobs of that little girl. It was almost as if he’d made a sculpture in the sand representing who he wished he could be, only to have the damned ocean creep ashore to reclaim the sand that wasn’t his, and never could be.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Jack whispered, but he still wasn’t really sure what it was he was apologising for. He couldn’t get to the checkout counter fast enough.

“Need help with your groceries?” The bagboy asked Jack this every fucking week, as if one day the answer would be different.

“Yes, please,” Jack replied meekly, as he always did. The groceries – all that fucking food – were subsequently stuffed into the boot of his silly little car.

Once loaded, Jack sat in silence and prayed – oh, how he prayed! – that he would arrive at the house on top of the hill and there would be an air of stifling silence and maybe just maybe his darling wife would have died in her sleep.

But – that girl. He just couldn’t shake the thought of that frightened little girl.

The car groaned unhappily as it made its way home with a load that weighed nearly as much as it did.

Once home, the food was unloaded, bag by bag, and ferried into the house where, from within its darking and stinking bowels, there arose a faint rustling as his wife came to. “I’M HUNGRY,” she bellowed.

“Yes, dear, I know. Let me get the groceries in proper,” Jack pleaded, but his statements always fell on deaf ears.

“I’M HUNGRY NOW.” The rustling got louder, and Jack heard the bed squeal with relief as she managed to move her gargantuan weight onto her long-suffering wheelchair.

Then the cooking commenced, all the while his wife screaming a florid jumble of obscenities at him. He was never fast enough, you see. But how could he be, with that ravenous appetite of his wife to contend with?

She never used utensils, nor did she make any differentiation between types of food as she scrambled over her plates with sausage fingers grabbing whatever looked good at that moment and shoving it into her gaping maw.

The pork chops laid haphazardly over a bed of mashed potatoes smothered in butter and gravy were enveloped by her paws with the accompanying linked sausages and spears of cut cheese drizzled with jam. She drank the cabernet merlot blend straight from the bottle, her mouth still stuffed full of half-chewed steak, cheese-covered cauliflower, and chocolate pudding. She gnawed anything with a bone right down to that bone, and then broke that bone to suck out the succulent marrow, letting out a low-pitched rumble of a belch to signify that the food had arrived at its intended destination.

But would she ever be truly sated? Probably not, because Jack would be in the sitting room planning her next meal over a salad of wilted lettuce and tomatoes when the empty wine bottle would be thrown to the floor and his wife would bellow, “I’M STILL HUNGRY. MORE.” This signified that it was time for dessert, and this was his cue to serve up a tin of chocolate cake covered with a dense layer of whipped cream with caramelised strawberries and a bottle of brandy.

But Jack was thinking long and hard today about his predicament – for that’s what this was, now, wasn’t it? A predicament. He recalled the look of abject fear and loathing directed at him on the little girl’s face, and the piercing pain that had convulsed in his heart. He shuddered.

The words bubbled reluctantly on his lips as he decided then and there that his wife had finally had enough. Every nodule in his brain cried out in protest as the words left his lips: “No. No more.”

His wife’s screams and cries were deafening; an unfettered rage had built up and up and up and finally he just couldn’t take anymore. “I’m going to bed,” he said simply and sadly. “You should do the same. I love you, but I don’t think you need anymore.”

She just sat there at the wrecked table and stared at him, her eyes little black spots that smouldered through the folds of flesh and fat of her face. Her mouth, which seemed obscenely small set against her other features, settled into a lewd approximation of poutiness as she mentally ticked off a series of unseeable boxes in her mind. She said not another word; she merely wheeled her chair in an about-face and headed back to the bedroom. Jack could hear the bedsprings endure another savage onslaught.

And that, dear readers, was what comprised the final meal of day one; with only six more days to go until it was time to shop again and start the madness anew.

The next day saw Jack awakening from strange and unsettling dreams to find that his wife was not already awake and hollering for food. The house lay oppressed beneath a morbid cloud of silence. He arose from his rest on the threadbare sofa and made his way softly down the dark hallway to the bedroom.

Jack’s eyes could not believe what they were seeing. The bed was empty. The wheelchair was lonely in the centre of the room, on its side. A stained curtain fluttered nervously in the wan sunshine of the day’s early rise; they were the only movement there in that stiflingly dreadful room. Jack shuddered.

A clink, coming from the kitchen; Jack wandered slowly back down the hall to investigate. How on Earth did his wife manage the trip by herself? He tried, but he was simply unprepared to evaluate the question properly.

There, in the doorway of the kitchen, Jack took in the sight of the refrigerator door ajar, all its contents spilling out onto the greasy linoleum floor like a ruptured and rotten cornucopia. He only took one step into the room when – as he turned towards a presence he felt behind him – he was struck forcefully on the back of the head. A flash of white light blinded him, and he wondered dully what it was that had hit him.

That was that. He fell to the floor like a sack of boneless meat.

“I’M HUNGRY,” his wife bellowed as she grabbed his skinny little neck with sausage-like fingers and throttled him, much like one would a chicken.

She sucked his bones clean.