Hey, I’m Charlie and I’m a cannibal. Well, I was a cannibal. I grew up living in a cave. What a cliché, eh? Other than that though, I’m not your typical cannibal. I don’t mean the whole vegetarian thing. I wasn’t always like that. I wasn’t born in a cave either. While my parent s are both cannibals, they live a completely normal, middle class life in suburbia.
Maybe I should go back a little. Before I was born my parents had been living the cannibal life style for quite some time. They had it down to a fine art of taking people no one would miss and they would store enough meat that they didn’t have to do it too often. They had always wanted to have a child but they had decided to raise said child as a cannibal. What they didn’t want was the restrictions of everyday living to impair the child’s sense of freedom. After many months of discussion they had reached an agreement that they would raise their child in the wilds, almost like a feral child. Both of them loved to camp and spent most of their spare time in the woods. It also allowed them a chance to occasionally hunt in the wild without being quite as careful as they would when they killed drifters for food. Both of them ran their own businesses so each had a great deal of control over their own free time. I don’t think at the time they had realised how difficult it would be to have one of them with me at all times at the cave until I was old enough to fend for myself though.
As the years passed by I was left on my own for longer and longer periods of time. The whole feral child idea was a no go from the start as I was almost never alone through my formative years. I learned to talk as they were always talking to each other when they were both there. My father taught me how to hunt small animals and what foods I could scavenge. He also taught me how to creep into campers camp sites while they slept and steal food and various other items from their bags. They both knew I was too young and small to try and kill others but they always brought human meat with them when they came to visit.
The years passed by and my body matured. My parents came to see me less and less. I think they just wanted to see how capable I was living in the wilderness on my own. From the early days of when they started leaving me for long periods, they would always return with hundreds of questions about what I had been doing and seemed mainly concerned and seemed focussed on whether I was happy or not. I told them each time that while I liked living in the woods in my cave that I would prefer to return home with them when they went. They always told me that it was a cruel world and that I was better off where I was, that they knew best. By the time I was twelve I had decided I wanted to start hunting my own human meat. Due to the length between visits I would often run out of the preserved meat that I was left before my parents returned with more. I was an excellent hunter by this time but the small animals I caught were nothing in comparison to the succulent flesh of another person. I told my parents I was ready when they next came back but they told me I was still too young and that I should wait until I was eighteen and my body was stronger. I knew from the campers that I watched, that I was stronger than a lot of them already but they made me promise I wouldn’t hunt until they said it was okay and that they would bring me extra meat on their next visit.
Over the next two years my temptation to make my own first kill was almost unbearable. I wondered if the meat tasted sweeter if you killed it with your own hands. I wondered what it would be like to watch the life drain from my dinner’s eyes. I began sneaking into campsites more frequently and staying for longer each time, wondering if someone would wake up and find me, leaving me no option but to take their life. It never happened. I think deep down I was too scared. Not of the campers but of what my father would do if he found out.
My cave contained an assortment of goodies I had taken from the campers over the years. Everything from old toys, clothes, pots and pans, lighters, books, packaged food and a load of other junk. It was the books that had interested me the most over the years. My mother and father refused to teach me to read. They said that a child of the wild should be unencumbered by such nonsense. I had spent hours poring over the picture books that I had taken, and taught myself the basics, and as the years passed by I picked up more and more. I always wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that my parents were academics or if anyone, given the time and patience, could pick up reading on their own. Either way, I learned and the books I read were a great source of comfort in my times of loneliness. At the age of fourteen I was still reading books aimed at a much younger audience but I still enjoyed the stories.
After one particularly long wait for my parents to return I decided I had had enough. I sought out two of the hunting knives from the massive pile of junk at the back of my cave and strapped the sheathes to my belt. I wasn’t one of those, ‘run about naked’ type of cannibals. I lived in a cave, not really through choice but it was pretty cold a lot of the time so clothes were often a necessity. I crept through the woods to a campsite that I had spotted earlier that day. The young couple weren’t much older than myself and I was already more muscular than the male of the pair. I spent a while just sitting outside their tent listening to them sleep. My mouth watered as I imagined cooking the fresh meat over the fire. Over the years I had killed someone in my mind thousands of times, in every method imaginable but when it all came down to it, I felt a little nervous. I quietly slipped into their tent and slit the guy’s throat first. As the female started to wake, I quickly slit her throat too and sat back on my haunches to watch them both bleed out. It was unspectacular. Other than grasping at their throats as the lifeblood drained from them they didn’t do much other than die. The kill wasn’t as thrilling as I expected, but I had fresh food. Maybe I would have to give chase to my prey. Maybe that was where the thrill came in. I made a mental note to make sure I had to chase my next victim. I dragged each of the bodies back to my cave, one at a time and returned and removed the items I wanted to keep before burning the remaining camping equipment.
The next few days I savoured the fresh meat and there was a small sense of achievement in the fact that I had acquired it for myself but it was fleeting. When my parents finally returned they smelled the rotting meat straight away. They tried to lecture me but I wouldn’t listen. I could no longer see what purpose my parents served. They turned up less and less frequently to feed me on their leftovers, while telling me I was lucky that I was free. I despatched of them both that evening. My father was ageing and the years had slowed him down. It wasn’t much of a fight. My mother watched in horror as I cut him to pieces, my mind wondering what he would taste like as I did. When I turned on her, she didn’t even try to run. In fact, I could swear I seen a small smile creep onto the edges of her lips as she stood there crying. Maybe I had become the wild boy she had always wanted.
Hours after I had killed them and had a portion of dinner from each, I cried. I didn’t know why. I didn’t feel like I would miss them and I had grown tired of the cured meat they brought me. Now I could be truly free as they had intended. I think they had lost sight of their own plan. I continued to hunt small animals and I learned how to prepare the meat myself so it lasted longer. I wasn’t out there killing people daily but I certainly preferred being self-sufficient than I did relying on my parents. I continued to steal books from campers and my reading continued to improve. It was only when I started to move onto more adult books that I started to question my actions. It would appear that campers seem to have a liking for horror fiction set in the woods. I could never quite work that one out but a large selection of the books I had taken, were about families going camping trips or staying in secluded cabins and being attacked by various types of monsters. I wondered if some of the monsters were real. I knew from the kids’ books that some monsters were made up for the purpose of telling a story but surely some of them must be real. A few of the books were about cannibals hunting people in the woods. That was what I did. Were there others like me? Surely some of the other stories must be based on the truth.
Things really became problematic for me when I started to sympathise with the characters. At first I enjoyed the chase and loved the scenes where someone was torn apart. Mostly the cannibals in the books ate the meat raw. It wasn’t quite my thing but I did enjoy the imagery and excitement. It was when I read afterwards about grieving mothers and wifes and the likes that I started to think about the kills as more than food. I had never really thought about anyone missing the people that I killed. I often killed their partners too and didn’t think much beyond those ties. I had never been close to anyone apart from my mother and father and I had killed them in the end. From reading the stories though, it was clear that others had closer relationships. That some people relied on others for survival. I had never felt like that, even from a young age, but I could understand. I began to sneak into campsites and then leave again before my victims woke. I felt a sense of joy at letting them live, knowing that they would see their loved ones again all thanks to me. It was more exciting than the chase or the kill. Sometimes I’d even follow them for a while as they left their site and just listen to them talking.
I began to eat human meat less and less often, trying to control the urge. The more I read the more sensitive I became to other animals too. I still stole from the campers and I had begun to read everything I could get my hands on. The more I read the more I thought about everything until it got to the point where I could no longer eat any animal. It was a gradual thing over the course of a few years but it got to the stage where I couldn’t put a piece of meat in my mouth, no matter how much it watered for the flavour sensation. The thought of swallowing meat from a dead animal that I had killed sickened me. I had been raised to kill, raised to eat meat, especially human meat and now I couldn’t bring myself to harm a squirrel.
The one thing that did not sit well with me was the foods that were available in the woods. There wasn’t much and flavour wise it was a nightmare. The vegetation could keep me alive but it was an unjoyful event each meal. I started to take any non-meat types of food from the campers bags to try. Some of the things that I found made me ill and others were like nothing I had ever experienced. It was finding some of these unexpected wonders that started me thinking about what else was out there. I had learned some things from the books but I still didn’t understand a lot of what they spoke of. I knew some of the things I had read about would be easier to understand if I could just see them. I wondered if I would be able to sneak between all the people out there unnoticed like I did in the midst of the night around their campsites or if they would spot me straight away. Did I act different? Did I look different? I didn’t really know. I continued to take what I needed from the campers and while I never came to miss my parents I did miss having conversations with others. I got more books and read as much as I could from them. The more I read the more I realised that people weren’t all that nice as a whole. I read about people being tortured, starved, abused and many other acts of hatred against each other. I know you may judge me as I have killed but I killed to eat. As I grew and learned, I made a choice to be a different type of person. I read about so many horrible things going on in the world that I began to realise that no one would notice me if I joined society. No one would pay attention it seemed. Others may even see me as a victim if I am seen to be different. I fell asleep a few evenings smiling as I imagined someone trying to put me in the role of prey.
That very year, as the weather began to heat up, I made my decision. I would join the rest of society. I didn’t know where I would go as I had no idea how maps worked although I had seen many in campers bags. I didn’t really know where anything was but I did know that the woods couldn’t go on forever so I would just walk until I came to the end of them and see where I ended up. As I looked around my cave, I had nothing of sentimental value. Wearing only the clothes on my back I left and walked into the woods. I never even looked back. It took me a few weeks to make my way to the other end. Now that I stand at the end of the woods, my old story ends and my new story begins. A life in the city.
Recently I’ve often dreamed about killing again. I know I wont do it because I believe I can have more from life. Well… I’m pretty sure I wont do it again. At least not often. I do miss the taste of flesh though.
The End
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #30 ‘Charlie the Vegetarian Cannibal’ by Kevin J. Kennedy – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
