It was a drunken lark. A gag. Eric and Tony got hammered out of their skulls on a box of cheap wine and then went tearing through the Red Mantis Buddhist Prayer Gardens at two in the morning.

They giggled like schoolboys when Tony filled his pockets with bars of soap from a steam room and exchanged his running shoes for a pair of wooden sandals placed neatly beside the doorway. They laughed heartily as Eric rampaged through carefully tended rock and cacti gardens, flipping stones and gravel through the air, cleaving cactus in two with an iron bar he'd found near the fence right before they'd hopped over it.

They traversed the maze of hedges as they neared the center of the gardens, tearing out flowers and plants alike as they went, kicking or tipping over anything that got in their way. It was mostly chairs and benches, but they'd stumbled across, and managed to flip completely upside down, a heavy swing chair made of lumber and crawling with dying ivy.

They rounded a corner and headed straight into a clearing.

And that's when they saw it.

Through bloodshot, bleary eyes, they spotted Buddha himself.

Bronze-colored and cross-legged, he was sitting meditatively, calmly, with his eyes closed and his palms upturned on a plaster pillar. He was at the apex of a mound of auburn colored crushed rock that was encircled with cedars at the center of the garden. The pair looked at each other, grinning.

"I could use that to fill out the living room," said Eric. "Or maybe up on the bedroom dresser since Sheila shattered the mirror."

"What a cunt," reinforced Tony, nodding solemnly. "Come on, I'll help you move it."

They ascended the mound together, and, after a brief and slurred discussion about weight balance and the uneven footing below them, managed to lift it off the pedestal and make the downward slope of the mound back to the safety of the garden hedges. Once they got back to the chain link fence they'd hopped to get in, they heaved the statue over the top.

The Buddha thunked head first into the soft ditch on the other side, and the pair clambered over after it.

At the pickup, they tossed it into the back.

Tony drove, poorly, back to Eric's apartment. The two then hauled the statue up six flights of stairs before finally getting it into Eric's apartment, and finally, into the bedroom.

Sheila wasn't home yet, thankfully.

"Going home now," Tony said breathless and panting. The Buddha sat peacefully on the oak dresser. "Gotta sleep."

Eric nodded in agreement, and was passed out on the bed before Tony had slammed the door behind him.

Eric dreamed.

He was floating through a red haze. The crimson speckled his face. It was cold and wet, and its taste, copper, lay heavy on his tongue. He grinned uneasily and reminded himself it was just a dream, checking to see if he was naked.

Yeah, he was.

The red ebbed and flowed in tides of alternating heaviness, the colors layered like bands of red sand all around him. Through the mist, dark shapes floated formlessly and black like blood clots. And as he drifted quietly towards one; aimlessly and uncontrolled, the umbra parted to reveal its nature.

It was a huge mouth, three times as tall and as wide as he was. Its blackened lips peeled back as he floated nearer, and a purple-veined tongue lolled obscenely, licking at square blocks of yellowing, cracked teeth.

Inside, beyond the teeth and tongue, he could see a pale form, lodged deep at the back, partially obscured by its uvula. It was Sheila, naked as well, and he knew she was calling to him, although Eric could hear no voice.

She motioned, gesturing with one carefully-manicured hand, and Eric shook his head in response, spreading his arms out before him in a vain effort to slow his approach. Ever-drifting, pushed by the flow of red fog that swirled around him.

Pushed ever closer, towards the blind obscenity that hung, as he did, in that red mist.

When he woke up, the Buddha had changed. Sitting up in the bed, Eric stared at it.

It's face.

The Buddha's eyes were wide and bulging. Its mouth was open wide, leaving a black hollow pit that appeared to actually curve all the way down into its stomach. The mouth was complete with crooked teeth that did not exist the night before. And its face was stained. Two rusty red streaks of bloody tears ran down its face and disappeared into the bronze creases that formed around its yawning maw. Eric's stomach growled.

"Um."

It sat upon a puddle of crimson that seemed to ooze out from beneath its welded legs and dripped down the front of the dresser. It stained the white bedroom carpet bright red. A low hum emitted from the statue. Not, however, from its mouth.

The clock on the nightstand said it was already a quarter past eight. Eric was going to be late for work. Luckily, he was still dressed from the night before, and did not have to go near the thing on the dresser to put on clothing. He exited the bedroom, and paced the apartment floor in circles.

The phone was ringing but Eric did not answer it. Instead, he shut the bedroom door and wrote a quick note to Shelia in case she turned up.

"Gone to work. Don't go in the bedroom. Love, Eric."

He pinned it to the refrigerator with a magnet, and was almost out the door when he stopped. Spinning on one heel, Eric returned to the bedroom, peeking first through the crack in the door.

The Buddha sat bleeding on his bedroom dresser.

He quickly pulled out his wallet, grabbed a dollar and, snake-like, jammed the bill into its mouth. The green paper disappeared down its black throat as if being sucked into a vortex.

Eric stepped back and happened to glance at the clock. It was twenty after eight.

He was going to be late.

By the time he had made the jog to the bus stop, Eric realized he had needed that dollar for the bus. After some protest, he wound up giving the driver a twenty.

In response, the driver scowled and reminded him that he wasn't a bank. Eric sat down.

It was a bad day to be late. The summer was a particularly brutal one and the ice cream parlor swarmed with tourists and their screaming children, crying endlessly. They came in, screamed their orders at him, changed their orders on him, and throughout it, Eric scooped mechanically in his paper hat. His mind was elsewhere, back in his bedroom still. His lack of concentration created mistakes, ice cream scoops that suddenly materialized on the floor, and angry, angry parents in Birkenstocks wielding digital cameras.

He met all of it with utter apathy. He thought about the dollar and what had possessed him to give it up like that. He thought about how hungry he was, and how he didn't dare steal bites from the children's ice cream cones.

And where was Sheila?

By the time his shift was over, it was a little past noon, and Eric was gripped with an uncontrollable urge to eat and feed. Before getting back on the bus, he stopped at an ATM machine and withdrew a little over eight hundred dollars. It was all the money he owned.

When he got home, he was half-relieved to find Sheila's car parked on the curb outside the building, a rusting Rabbit from 1988 that was barely holding together and had holes in the floor on the driver's side. He hurried up the stairs, taking two at a time, his pockets stuffed with cash. Hoping, hoping, she wasn't really home.

Sheila was indeed home.

The bedroom door was open a crack, and the note on the refrigerator was gone.

He could hear her, speaking quietly behind the door. Talking to it in hushed murmurs.

"I'm home!" Eric screamed.

The voice behind the door dropped an octave, followed by a "Shhhhhhh" and a giggle.

"I'm home!" He screamed again, clattering dirty dishes around in the kitchen sink.

"HOME!"

Sheila stormed from behind the bedroom door in a blur of blonde hair and stomped across the apartment. She paused by the couch to grab her jacket, scowling across the room at him.

"I heard you the first time, Eric. GOD."

"What did it say to you?" He demanded.

"Do you ever shut up?"

"Do you?"

Her response to his last question was to walk over to the door and leave.

Eric couldn't help but smile. He hurried into the bedroom.

He sat at the foot of the bed across from it. Blood had now stained the floor far beyond cleaning, clots of it were forming in the shag, and the carpet had been turned into a bloody swamp of stinking tissue in a two foot radius around the base of the dresser.

"What did you tell her?" He asked it, peering into its yawning mouth.

It didn't reply, but he wasn't really expecting an answer.

Eric took out the wad of bills he'd procured from the ATM machine and took a twenty off the top. He leaned forward and jammed the bill into its mouth.

Just like with the dollar, the Buddha sucked it down.

He took another bill off the top, and fed it again.

And again.

And again.

He fed it until his arm ached and the last twenty he help in his hand was gone. He was out of money. And still hungry. Dazed, Eric glanced over at the nightstand clock - It was four in the morning. He'd have to be up for work soon in three or four hours.

So hungry.

He went to the refrigerator and opened the door. It was empty, so he went under the sink for the plastic garbage bin they kept there and dragged it back into the bedroom with him.

The garbage bin was full of old coffee filters, Spaghetti-O cans, sandwich meat packages, egg shells, and half-eaten bags of chips.

He grabbed a bag of old chips, digging out anything that looked bad, and raised a chip to his mouth, sniffing at it.

His mouth watered.

At the last moment, however, as he was just about to eat it, he reached out instead, and placed it in the Buddha's dark vortex. It disappeared with a single crunch.

The garbage only lasted him about an hour.

When it was done, Eric stripped off his clothes, and, careful to avoid the mess on the floor, curled into a ball on the far side of the room. He put both hands over his head and slept; as the Buddha's incessant humming buzzed onward.

He dreamed again.

But this time it was far worse than before.

There was blackness - everywhere. Cold, wet, and dark. Eric was suffocating, naked and shivering, and the meaty, slime-covered walls that he could not see, yet felt, wrapping him tightly and snugly in a tomb of mucous and membrane, revealed where he had ended up after the dream of the night before.

He panicked, struggling, and the throat (for he had no reason not to believe he was now wedged in the owner of that monstrous mouth's gullet), constricted tightly around him, crushing and squeezing him. He clawed wildly, reaching desperately for a handhold, something to grab and pull himself out. There was nothing, only smooth, wet darkness, and the sinking feeling of going down, farther, towards whatever awaited him at the bottom of the throat.

It WAS just a dream, but still - The dreams had to stop.

They had to stop.

"Wake-the-fuck-up!"

It was Sheila. She was standing over him, nudging him in the ribs with a single, high-heeled boot. In her arms she carried a large grocery bag.

Eric rolled over, pressed his nose against the wall, and moaned.

"It's ten o' clock. Get up!"

She kicked him in the back.

Eric rolled back over and sat up, supporting himself against the wall, pulling his knees into his chest.

"I'm so hungry," he croaked. "Do you have food?"

Sheila smiled and sat on the bed, taking the box out of her grocery bag. On it, a glossy picture displayed a set of electric knives, a meat tenderizer, some onion shoots, and a large steak laying on a cutting board.

"Look what I bought us!" She said, beaming. "There are six different sizes of electrical knives, and they come in their own case!"

He could see the Buddha sitting on the dresser behind her. Its mouth, open, endlessly. It wanted more, but there was nothing left to feed it. Sheila had not gone grocery shopping, except to buy knives.

"Why'd you buy those?"

Sheila shrugged.

"Let me see them." He said.

Her eyes brightened, her smile widened. She was always so happy when he took interest in her interests. Eric smiled and nodded weakly.

He was so tired, and hungry. And so late for work.

She tore the top off the box and threw the Styrofoam filler across the bedroom. She took out the case and opened it, displaying a full set of brand new discount electrical knives.

"Do they work?" He asked.

She grabbed the largest sized knife; one that looked like it could cut through frozen ham, or a block of wood, and switched it on. It hummed to life, buzzing loudly in her hand.

"I think they run on a battery charge," Sheila said.

Eric got to his feet.

"Let me see it, Sheila," he said, holding out his hand, making a "gimmie" motion at her.

Hungry.

She passed it to him. It hummed in his hand. It felt heavy.

So hungry.

"You dropped your pocket," Eric said, pointing with his free hand at the floor.

She looked, leaning over beneath him.

And Eric jammed the blade of the knife into her back.

Its blade screamed as it cut through her dress, then her flesh, then her bones.

When he was done with the new knife set, Eric dragged her body over to the foot of the dresser. He grabbed the smallest knife from its case. It was slim and light and he could carve properly with it, getting fat and muscle off the bone with great ease.

Slowly, he carved.

And, hungry as he was, fed the Buddha.

He had lost track of time.

Gripped by panic, at some point he'd grabbed the alarm clock with red-stained arms and attempting to jam it into the Buddha's mouth, shattering it into hundreds of plastic shards and electronic bits against the statue's head with the force of his failed effort.

He called Tony. He needed the pickup, the Buddha needed to go back to its place in the garden.

NOW. Tony wasn't home, or wasn't answering. It didn't matter.

He was out of things to feed it.

"Well, fuck," said Eric.

He considered calling re-dialing Tony, but decided against it.

As badly as he needed his truck, there were more important matters to attend to.

Dizzy and nauseous from the smell, Eric shrugged helplessly at the humming, screaming visage that sat, stoically as ever on his bedroom dresser.

Eric stepped over what was left of Sheila.

So hungry.

Eric bent forward and lowered his head into the Buddha's waiting mouth.