Open Throat

by Henry Hoke

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

'An instant classic' - THE GUARDIAN

'A bloody masterpiece.' - MELISSA BRODER, author of THE PISCES

'Witty, emotional and gripping, Open Throat is a short but savage thrill ride' - THE INDEPENDENT

'Open Throat is Bret Easton Ellis meets mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills . . . it already has people talking' - THE SUNDAY TIMES

I’ve never eaten a person but today I might . . .

A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Fascinated by the voices around them, the lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing hikers complain about their trauma and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their own identity.

When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call 'ellay'. As they confront a carousel of temptations and threats, the lion takes us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: do they want to eat a person, or become one?

'Open Throat is what fiction should be.' - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

'A blinding spotlight beam of a book that I was completely unable and unwilling to put down.' - Catherine Lacey, author of Pew

Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, ELLE, Vanity Fair, Buzzfeed, i-D, Boston Globe, Nylon, Alta, Shondaland, Chicago Review of Books, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Literary Hub.

Release date: June 6, 2023

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 192

Sample

I’ve never eaten a person but today I might

I wake up in my thicket to the sound of whipcracks and look out and see a bulky man in a brown leather jacket and brown hat swinging the whip toward two other people a man and a woman

the woman holds a phone up and says you look just like him oh my god

the man with the whip smiles and cracks it again and I feel something in the bottom of my stomach that’s not hunger

I also feel hunger

the man without the whip lies down on his back and spreads his legs and lifts his feet up to the sky and shouts okay do it just flick ’em just lightly flick my nuts

the man with the whip snaps his arm back and forward and the whip hits the dirt in front of the lying down man and the lying down man says yes yes

the woman presses her phone and says be careful those are my boys

I try to understand people but they make it hard

the man on the ground is skinny and the woman with the phone is skinny but the man holding the whip is thick and his neck bulges against the collar of his tan shirt and I can see a vein and hear the blood running down through his arm and his arm flexes and gets meaty every time he raises the whip

the whip hits the ground and kicks up dust and it sounds like the torment of all big cats

fuck this guy

I can smell his insides

my mouth waters and the drool slides down and soaks my paws

I smack my lips louder than the whip’s crack and the people stop like they heard me and the lying down man stands up and the woman turns her phone in my direction and the man with the whip holds the whip at the ready

yeah I heard that says the woman like someone asked her a question

I’m not scared of their eyes

I’m the same color as my thicket and the same color as the ground

no one sees me unless I want them to

the whip makes the bulky man brave and he steps slow toward me and squints and leans in with his throbbing neck vein in full focus

my mouth opens and I judge the distance between the man and his skinny friends and try to decide if I can drag him into the thicket quick enough

I wonder if they’ll chase us or if they’ll run away

it’s been weeks since I’ve eaten anything bigger than a raccoon

I think of how many meals I can get out of this man and how if I store him down in the caves the vultures won’t find him and I’ll be able to come back over and over to eat a little more

I think of all the nights we’ll spend together

this man and his guts and me

let’s get food says the man as he coils the whip around his fist and pulls his neck away from the path of my teeth

the woman claps her hands and says yeah I thought I was totally over brunch but I guess I’m not

I watch them walk fast down the trail and I go to sleep because sleep takes my hunger away

when I wake up I hear the last of the day’s hikers passing my thicket

two girls with huge water bottles that bounce the sunlight through the branches and into my eyes

it’s not easy to sleep on an empty stomach but I guess I did okay

one girl says god I can’t believe it’s dark already

I know we have to start starting earlier says the other

she takes a sip from her bottle and says no matter how much I say no and cancel stuff there’s still no time and the first girl says that’s just your scare city mentality you have to work on that

yeah I just you know this you know I don’t like change says the second girl and the first girl says of course but we all live in scare city under capitalism so we all have to make an effort to deprogram a scare city mentality as like our central driving force

their voices get lower and then I can’t hear them anymore and I yawn and stretch my paws out and their water bottles vanish with their bodies in the sunset

I shouldn’t be here and neither should they

now that the hikers are gone I leave my thicket and go down into the dry ravine where lots of water used to flow and I eat bugs and suck at the little trickles to make my thirst less

I remember the last rain and I remember I wasn’t happy about it but I don’t know how long it’s been since

now I need water to come from the sky or anywhere else

I need more than a dirty sip

I think of the girl hikers and the shiny bottles they gulp out of and I paw the dirt for more caterpillars and eat them and I know I have to find somewhere new to drink

things are changing

a while ago I wouldn’t fantasize about eating a person

what the girls said makes sense

I’m not sure what a scare city mentality is

but I have it

here is called different things by different people

mostly they say ellay but they also say the park or hollywood

I hear that word a lot

I know I live below the hollywood sign because the hikers say oh look we’re below the hollywood sign and they say can we get all the way up there and they ask which letter would you jump off

I’ve been up there but at night lights come on and it’s too exposed so I stay down where I am now

views don’t matter to me anyway

the hikers say things like look at that view or say things like we have to do this more often get up here and get perspective

what they see makes them point or stop and turn and put their hands on their hips and breathe deep but the distance they love is an out of focus blur when I try to look where they’re looking

all I can see is what’s right in front of me

when the sun drops below the ridge I leave the dried up ravine and go to town

town is where my people live

there are four of them and they have three tents set up just a few layers back in the trees where the hikers can’t see

but I see in the dark

the people in town smell familiar to me a smell like warmth or the woods not the sweet hiker smell that makes my head hurt

and that’s how I found them a while ago and found their pile of trash and the smaller animals that come to eat their trash and offer themselves up to get eaten by me

the people build a fire some nights and I have to stay far away from the glow but they haven’t done that in months they’re afraid of the dryness like I’m afraid of the dryness

there’s a water pump in the clearing past town and that’s why they built town where they built it

it’s not a bad setup

I go to the water pump and there’s a deep puddle below it and I lap and lap and lap

I’m the secret member of town

I stay on the edges and don’t mess with their tents or their tarps and supplies but I hear them talk about me

the older man in the left tent calls me puma

the couple in the middle tent call me ley own

the young man in the right tent calls me a different name every day but it always ends with cat

fucker cat or shitfuck cat or goddamn fuck cat

I can take it

he’s kind otherwise and leaves his trash by a tree and tonight it’s a bucket of chicken bones but at the bottom there’s chicken

the meat and the bones taste like many people’s saliva and my stomach gets full and I get grateful and my eyes fill

I want to thank my people but I know if they see me it’ll fuck up our relationship

the first light means it’s time to go and I bring a bone back to my thicket

the hikers start early and I hear voices as soon as I’m settled in hidden and gnawing

or I hear one voice a man’s voice

I’m a good listener says the man and I see he’s with a woman who hikes beside him

the man says really I’m serious I want to listen you can tell me anything you want about us or me or the dinner anything I promise I’ll just listen and I won’t interrupt or project I’ll just I can take it you don’t know what a good listener I am without you or when I’m not around you when I’m with other people it’s just this specific stuff with us that makes it hard so I’m ready to listen I really am I promise I’m ready

this is my bedtime story today and I close my eyes and leave my ears open