I thought someone at work was stealing my lunch. I was very, very wrong

So, I’m just a regular guy. Your coworker, your roommate, your weekend hiking buddy. I had a good job, a boring but healthy routine, and a manageable case of the Sunday scaries living in a big city.

Or I was that guy.

Now, I’m starving. And nothing I do can stop it.

I used to care about my health more than anything. My dad has cancer. My mom struggles with her mind. I figured my best shot at avoiding either was keeping my body clean. So I ate simple: oats and eggs for breakfast, lean meat for lunch, rice and chicken for dinner. Boring, maybe, but I believed in it.

Was I jacked? Not even close. I’d sneak in some late-night Uber Eats or a pizza at work. And I loved grabbing a few pints after a good hike. I’d climbed most of the New Hampshire 4,000-footers, but weekend hiking doesn’t build a six-pack. I was just a classic weekend warrior.

Anyway, one weekend I convinced my newlywed friends, Patrick and Rachel, to join me on a short trail. Three miles out and back, barely any elevation. Easy. They invited their friend Emma, who I’d met a couple of times at potlucks.

Emma was chill. Friendly. Social. And she made this dangerously good mac and cheese. At one potluck, my kimchi dumplings got completely ignored while everyone scraped the last bits of her dish out of the tray. I had to know why.

“Emma,” I asked, “why won’t anyone eat my dumplings?”

She smiled and said, “Let me try one.”

I grabbed a chopstick and held one up. As I moved it toward her mouth, her smile dropped. She grabbed my wrist.

“What’s in this?” she asked.

“Kimchi.”

A strange silence fell over the room. Rachel looked horrified.

“Don’t you know Emma’s allergic to pickles?”

A pickle allergy? Never heard of that before.

After that potluck – and the hike – Emma and I started talking more. Eventually, we got together. It didn’t happen overnight. There were a few long conversations about her going back to her exchange town in Europe, about her anxiety and insomnia. But she was easy to talk to, fun to be around. It worked.

Things were great. We did all the typical couple stuff: drinks, movies, ceramics classes. Even a few hikes together. Honestly, I was surprised at how easily she kept up on some of the steeper inclines.

Then something changed.

After one hike, we grabbed burgers. I couldn’t finish mine, so I offered it to her.

“Are you sure?” she said. “I don’t want to get hurt again.”

“Over a burger?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, locking eyes with me. “Are you sure you want to share your food with me? There’s no turning back.”

I laughed. “It’s all yours.”

She devoured that burger and fries like she hadn’t eaten in days. It was the first time I ever saw her eat something I didn’t prep. At the time, I thought nothing of it.

But the next week, my meal prep containers at work started showing up nearly empty. My turkey breast, gone. The cod I cooked Sunday night? Mostly eaten, with just a few neat bites left.

I figured someone at work was stealing my food. So I filled a container with blue paint and left it in the fridge as bait. No one opened the fridge all day. No paint on anyone’s hands. But when I checked later, the container was empty. Clean. Every drop gone.

That’s when I started getting scared.

Back home, things got worse. I’d crack eggs and find only shells. My overnight oats would vanish overnight. Rice would turn to smoke in the pressure cooker. Meat would deflate when I touched it with a fork.

Protein bars from the store came in empty wrappers. Emma started complimenting my physique, telling me I looked “lean.” I didn’t mention what was happening. I figured her anxiety didn’t need the extra weight.

I tried eating out. Placed a $100 delivery order – bag arrived completely empty. I went apple picking. Every apple was hollowed out like Swiss cheese. I was out of energy and retreating to my room more and more.

Emma said I should eat more. That I was probably just hiking too much. I couldn’t tell if she was pretending not to notice, or if she genuinely didn’t know.

Weeks passed. I lost so much weight, I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. If my mother had seen me, she’d have burst into tears. I still had the frozen kimchi from that first potluck, so I decided to make dumplings again – for Rachel and Patrick’s fall get-together.

I was a skeleton by then. My wrists had thinned, my eyes had sunk, and my chest felt like it could fold in half. Emma said I looked “disciplined.” That maybe I was finally reaping the rewards of clean eating.

That night, I made the dumplings and went to bed.

At around 2 a.m., I woke up to coughing from the kitchen. Strange, because all the lights had been off when I went to sleep. I grabbed my flashlight and followed the sound.

The coughing wasn’t from an adult. It sounded like a child – wet, raspy, weak.

As I turned the corner, I saw her.

Emma. But not the Emma I knew. Her skin was blotched with red hives. She was hunched over the freezer, kimchi dumpling in hand. Her eyes met mine.

“You didn’t tell me they had pickles,” she said.

Then she screamed.

Her body erupted in flames. It wasn’t like a kitchen fire – it was light, heat, force. She stayed upright, shrieking, her mouth frozen in agony as the flames consumed her. The heat pushed me back. When it stopped, she was gone. Just a blackened silhouette on the floor.

That was the last time I saw her.

But it didn’t end there.

Food still disappears. Always. Except the kimchi. It’s the only thing left untouched. I eat it when I can, but it’s not enough. I’m wasting away. I don’t have the energy to work or leave my room.

If you message me next week, I probably won’t be here.

I see them at night. Shadows moving in the kitchen. Shapes near the office fridge. Slithers of motion just out of view. Whatever they are, they feed when I’m not looking.

If you have any high-calorie meals with kimchi… send them my way.

Before it’s too late.