"...The aroma of the warm bread slapping against cheeks made Pio even more ravenous. He snatched the baguette with his teeth, tore it in half, and devoured with only a few breaths in between. "

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Missed The Last Chapters?

Ch 1 - Prt 1 | Ch 1 Prt 2 | Ch 2 prt 1 | Ch 2 prt 2

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This is an original STEEM series novel. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–I'll be writing a chapter in the series at least each week here on Steamit. Resteem, UpVote & Follow @ezravan

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Chapter 3 / Part 1

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Every since the night Zola had finally admitted the truth about the conception of Pio, that he was conceived by the seed of two men–the Russian and the Gnostic, his hunger had become something more than a normal earthbound bodily sensation. It was now the longing of existence itself that knows no satisfaction; a longing soul that wonders like a wooden doll aimlessly in its creator's wood shop finding none like itself.

The night after Pio's first words to his invisible brother Piero, his stomach growled furiously at the dinner table. Tiring of the noise, Zola reached across the table and began beating him with her baguette. The howl of his guts had begun increasingly to insight her rage.

The aroma of the warm bread slapping against his cheeks made Pio even more ravenous. He snatched the baguette with his teeth, tore it in half, and devoured the loaf with only a few breaths in between.

"Why can't you be more like your brother!" Zola cried, and ran to the kitchen to retrieve something more substantial to beat him with.

She turned out of sight and that was when Piero's bowl of leek and potato soup glided seemingly untouched across the table to Pio. Pio thanked his invisible brother with a nod and sucked the potatoes and leaks from the bowel in one colossal breath. He leaned back on the wall heaving for breath yet satisfied for the moment.

Zola returned with an iron pot and saw Pio with Piero's bowl in front of him, Empty. She threw the iron pot at Pio and screamed, "a boy that would steal food from his slight and frail brother is not worth beating. This pot is worth more than your life!" She looked as if she might continue but suddenly gathered herself with a slow breath that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. She patted her hot checks, pulled back the dark curly locks of hair that had fallen over her eyes into a tight knot and went–as she did every night–to boil the water for Piero’s bath.

Pio went to bed that night with his hunger, though still present, lessened by one bowl of leek soup. He enjoyed a feeling of deep satisfaction knowing that his big brother, though indeed invisible, was a real flesh and blood person. Hopefulness about his future returned to him.

But, for Zola, the night was too much for her. She was not a woman who lost control of her emotions. She was also not one to contemplate her own ways of being, but intuitively knew that if even one hair of her head was to fall out place, she would completely be unraveled. From then on Pio was made to sleep on the flat roof of their apartment.

She said, as if to dispel any thought that her decision to ban him from the apartment was based on the emotional outburst, that there was no room long enough to accommodate his great height; and, that the family could not sleep well with the grinding sound emanating from his guts in the night.

Pio had to admit that it was true; he could barely walk down the small hallway of the tiny one bedroom Bergamo apartment anymore and the growls of his stomach were enough to keep him also from sleep. It didn't matter if it was true. It deeply wounded Pio. Soon his hunger would become more hungry, more empty, more torturous than ever before.

Pio's Bed Of Olive

Zola instructed Elmo to construct a bed from the hard trunk of the olive tree. He built the bed with tenderness and quietness. He carved the great cities of America on the headboard and surrounded them with a border of stars and wings–each joined at the other’s crevasse. The bed was something to behold; fifteen foot by fifteen foot and a mattress made of dried seaweed so that the moisture would not mold the fibers. There was also a canopy that kept most of the rain out. It was held by four twisted olive tree trunks, carved each with the seventy-two names of God. When completed the bed was so heavy that Elmo, noticing the bow in the roof of their living room, had to reinforce the ceiling under it with four pillars.

The neighbor said Pio’s tears could extinguish the eternal flame of hell for he would cry himself to sleep each night on the roof. grumbles and snorts echoed down the old stone walls of Bergamo. As weeks and months past on the roof, his anguish and despair were of such great complexity, tears were no longer sufficient. His whaling was transformed into songs heaved from each breath and sigh, outflowing as a musical language the likes of which had never been heard in the small town of Bergamo.

Convinced that the song of Pio was an outpouring from the very hunger of God himself, The Hermetic teachers, in their secret chambers labored in vain to translate the odd language.

The song of his grieving entered the dozing minds of neighbors sleeping nearby. Some awoke, finding themselves in great mourning and prayer for the poor. Many awoke to a new reality of religious symbols, reporting visions; one shopkeeper awoke and ran naked through the street prophesying from the seventh heaven this secret vision: "The sacred breast of Mother Mary, is not a normal breast, but the very earth itself. Her nipple our beloved fatherland that all feed upon; the cross of her son, the beams that churn like the wheat mill on the river of the Sarnico; upon it: the sun, moon, and constellations in the sky–forever winnowing the wild oats of man into humbled food for the Gods."

The church proclaimed a revival at hand, and many lost souls were saved during those years of Pio's hunger. But the great awaking of the town had little comfort for his suffering, in fact the awakening depended upon the very cry of his sufferings.

In desperation he would sometimes catch the boney rats traveling the pipes that climbed the walls of the roof and swallowed them hole (so as not to taste them), but still, even after thirty rats, in the morning his stomach bellowed like a wild beast giving birth.

When there was no more food to be had in the little apartment, Elmo, who had remained very quiet in this time and had become even slightly more transparent, began bringing a satchel of Zola’s pig fat soaps to the roof every night for Pio so his stomach wouldn't disturb them as they slept. Pio would pop soap bubbles that formed in his mouth with his tongue at breakfast. One morning, with the combination of the night’s soap and rats combined with the morning’s 'pigeon egg cabbage soup', Pio belched a balloon of a bubble that was as large as his head. It floated towards his mother; she popped it with her spoon, tasted it, then sent Pio to the roof hungry.

To Be Continued...

Read Chapter 3 Part 2 (The Swine vision) Now >>>

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Missed The Last Chapters?

Ch 1 - Prt 1 | Ch 1 Prt 2 | Ch 2 prt 1 | Ch 2 prt 2

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Let me know if you enjoyed reading, Thanks @ezravan