Consumed- The Complete Works

by Kyle M. Scott

  The loud CRACK and the burst of fire that blasted forth from the shotgun had soon eradicated that possibility, along with half of his dear brother’s head.

  Nathan should have looked at more picture books.

  Roland had returned home that long-ago night, with no fresh meat for mother to cook and down one family member. All that was left of dear Nathan was a mostly headless, disproportioned corpse and the brain matter and chunks of skull that had spattered on Roland’s frock as his brother went down. On returning home, Mother had been furious – heartbroken too, but mostly furious – that he hadn’t brought back Nathan’s carcass. At least that would have fed them and made up for his inadequacy as a hunter/gatherer.

  He could still remember the beating he took, each burning lash of the whip, the exquisite parting of his flesh, the smell of his freely flowing blood.

  It was a memory he would return to in moments of loneliness, seeking comfort and peace.

  Mother had never come to realize he enjoyed receiving pain with almost the same dumb enthusiasm with which he enjoyed inflicting it. For Roland, it was simply another means to be close to her.

  ***

  Roland sat in his cave, watching the rain fall through the narrow entranceway and listening to the wind whistling amongst the pines, allowing his mind to become lost in his memory. He felt a keen and bitter loneliness these days, and he was hungry…always hungry

  Since Nathan had lost half of what passed for his brains on that campsite floor, the forest had become a far more dangerous place. There had been manhunts for months afterwards as word reached the local community of a clan of monsters running wild in the deepness of the woods. Eventually, of course, the searches and the panic had died down to become mere rumor, and life had gone back to some sort of normalcy for Roland and his poor mother. The hills were far less populated in the days and months that followed Nathan’s demise, save for the occasional thrill-seeking teenagers who entered the woods looking for proof of the local legend: ‘The Tennessee Terror’.

  They often found that proof, and a whole lot more besides, thought Roland, smiling.

  At least those kids had provided a source of nourishment.

  At least they had done that.

  The last year had seen the hills offer forth an ever-diminishing choice of prey. Mother had said that all legends fade away after time, and that’s just what Roland believed had happened. The thrill-seekers lost interest, and the locals - knowing the woods could house many deadly things - knew better.

  This winter had been the worst though, an unending struggle to survive the harsh and bitter cold and scrape through on the miserable rations they could scavenge. Their hillside sanctuary lost much of its warmth and comfort. It had, in fact, begun to feel like a tomb. Roland and mother had fed when they could on the creatures of the forest and had managed to etch out a lowly existence for themselves, but the lack of man-flesh was becoming very telling on both their psyches and their health. Roland had grown far thinner, much quicker to anger, and had great trouble thinking or holding thoughts.

  As for Mother…well, Mother had simply ceased to be sane.

  He’d often wake at night to find her babbling to herself in strange tongues or furiously pleasuring herself with a leftover bone from the previous night’s meager meal, pushing it deep inside herself and grunting like an animal as she did so. Frequently, on returning from yet another unsuccessful hunt, she’d be found doodling on the cave walls with her own shit, whistling as she worked her feces into the stone.

  The final straw had been when he’d awoken one winter night to a ghastly wailing, and found her gnawing off her own fingers, one by one. Her agonized wails had alternated with moans of hungry satisfaction and she swallowed the flesh she’d ripped free with her broken, jagged teeth.

  She’d already worked her way through three of the gnarled, stunted digits - and was hard at work on the forth - when he’d rushed for her and, in his fear, had yanked her to her feet and attempted to bring her to her senses. She had laughed as he cried, even as he slapped her across her cheek and, when that failed to bring her to her senses, smashed her face into the hard stone to shut her up. She laughed even as blood dribbled from her ears and her skull cracked open like a rotten, bloated melon.

  She’d laughed all the way into oblivion.

  Later, when all the commotion was over, Roland had learned, to his great surprise, that his mother had died while pregnant with child.

  The child, of course, was his.

  That had been four weeks ago.

  The meat had kept relatively well.

  ***

  Now here he was, gnawing on the last of his own mother’s withered feet. There was nothing else left of her, though she’d been more useful in death than she had become in life. Her flesh had sustained him this far, but now…now he was right back to where he started.

  He glanced over at the pile of stripped-bare bones, at his mother’s caved-in skull, and he sighed. This had truly been a most painful winter. He missed his family dearly. His loneliness was growing to be all-encompassing. And his stomach…his stomach was growling like a wild dog.

  Roland rested his misshapen head on the soft sheets that lay spread across the cave’s surface and drifted with his dark thoughts. Where to go from here? His family were all gone, his home nothing more than an empty shell, full of stinging, hurtful memories, and his belly…a clutching, cramping, constant reminder that times had changed for the very worst.

  In time, his thoughts turned to all he had learned from his magazines and picture books. To those fast, whizzing metal beasts called cars. To the cinema and its moving pictures and endless magical adventures.

  To long journeys on the choo-choo train, traversing the great American landscape without moving a muscle. It would all be so fun.

  Much of the fun Roland, or his brother Nathan, had ever truly enjoyed was in the simple act of fishing, something their mother had taught them very early on in life. The small river where they had fished and found sustenance in their happier, boy-years was all but a swamp now. A man-made oil slick, fit for no living creature, and certainly not fit for hunting. They had often thought of moving onto pastures new, to cleaner, deeper, greener lands where they could hunt freely and live off the land. Of course, that had never happened. In the end, they had to stay close to Snivilisation, because, after all, human flesh was the most tender and delicious of all meats.

  And hunting humans was even more fun than hunting fish.

  The morning dwindled by slowly as Roland journeyed down the half-remembered highways and byways of his addled mind. Morning turned to day, day to dusk, and dusk into a cold, starless, and seemingly unending night.

  His hunger was becoming a serious problem now. At regular intervals, he could feel the sickening, familiar agony as his stomach snarled, twisted and raised its hackles in anger. He hadn’t shit in three days.

  Not enough meat in me to even do m’business, he bemoaned.

  Roland, after much dull consideration, decided enough was enough. He must feed, he must fight, he must survive. It was in his desperation, and in his hunger, that he hatched his plan.

  ***

  With cramped muscles, spinning head and heavy heart, he rose to his feet and fought the demons of exhaustion. He lit one of the torches he had always kept handy just inside the cave’s walls with his ‘lighter’. - a device he had procured from a man named Harold. He and his brother had brought the nice man back home one night, despite his protestations. They had talked for long hours with the man, even though the man had seemed fearful of them and not at all too talkative. They had learned much of Harold’s life, his children, his job, and his home.

  They had talked and talked until boredom and hunger chased away humor and curiosity, and when they eventually took to Harold with knife and axe, they had made sure to kill him quick. One blow through the center of his skull had turned Harold from friend to food supply. And he had felt like that, like a friend.

  Perhaps Rol
and could make more friends like Harold.

  With his torch in hand, he made his way to what he liked to call his ‘toy store’, a small enclave at the very back of the den where he stored his many cherished things, all those wonderful, strange little ornaments from the world beyond his own - dolls, small plastic cars, a bike, something called a ‘camera’ (which he’d never figured out how to use), and a whole plethora of clothes, torn and bloodied from countless nights of rape and dismemberment.

  It was to the clothes that he was headed.

  From the witching hour till the onset of dawn, Roland tried on a variety of outfits which he thought may be fit for his plan. The children’s clothes were obviously no good, and much of the adult clothing looked like those of a child when adorned on his massive frame. It was a long, arduous task, but with time and perseverance, he finally found what he was looking for.

  Now all he needed was some money. And he had plenty of that.

  ***

  He sat on the cliff’s edge where he had sat so many nights before and watched the first light of the coming sun slowly illuminate the small town below. How many nights had he and his brother sat here watching the color run back into the world? They’d were plentiful, he knew that much. It made him smile at the thought…he, telling stories from his books, and Nathan, laughing alongside him, perhaps at his well-told-tales, perhaps at some drooling phantom thought inside his own head. It hadn’t mattered. They had been together.

  Of course, Nathan would look down on the small town and its inhabitants with a constant dread. And with Snivilisation seeming even more alien to his brother than it had to Roland, he would curse those down there, as would a mountain lion curse a herd, grazing across wild waters, so close yet so far. Those people down there were prey when alone or in small numbers, but in large groups - as Roland had assured his kin they were in the larger towns - Nathan had seen them as something to be feared. Accursed food, so close yet forever out of reach.

  Roland had no room for such fears anymore. He had only room for hope.

  ***

  The town was deserted as he made his way across a small stream and nestled himself among the close-grown trees and bushes that served as a border between the concrete world and the threshold of the wilds. He was close enough now to see that he was wrong in his assertion that the streets were empty of life. A few people were going about their day at this early hour. A man strolled by Roland’s hiding spot, unaware of watchful eyes as he puffed on a pipe and blew clouds of sickly-sweet smoke in the air. Two elderly women stood side by side at the far end of the street, deep in conversation about subjects that he suspected would be way beyond his thinking, while their two leashed dogs shat contentedly in unison. Other than these early-risers he may as well have been setting foot into a ghost town.

  These lonesome denizens of the dawn only held Roland’s attention momentarily, as his eyes set on an even more fascinating sight - the streets themselves.

  There was a wonderful display of dolls, all shapes and colors under the sky, in one window. Another was adorned with countless bottles of ‘alcohol’. He’d tasted many of these and even though they made him feel funny and a little sick after a while, he liked the taste very much. Here, there was wine, whiskey, vodka, and many more beautifully decorated bottles he’d never laid eyes on before. Over the street and to the south, another window boasted rows and rows of ’magazines’ similar to those he had back home. Some of them with cartoons on the front, and some with pretty girl-folk, the likes of which he’d seeded and eaten only very rarely.

  He had never, ever been this close to Snivilisation, and in being here, he felt a keen surge of fear and excitement, not unlike that which would overcome him on the many campsite raids he and Nathan had enjoyed. He wanted to dive in, to revel in this new, strange land of plenty. He could bathe in wine, feast till sickness, if he so wished.

  The strolling man had long since passed by now, heading to whatever wonders awaited him over yonder hill, and the two women were still lost in their own little world, as Roland gazed with eyes anew on the wonders that sprang at him with every turn of his head.

  In the shade of a doorway directly in front of where he crouched with the stillness of a long-time hunter, stood a large, round bellied man dressed all in white, and the man was unmoving. Roland quickly recognized the man as being made of plastic and only pretend, and he understood that the word above the door, ‘Barber’, meant that this was a place where men came to have things done to their hair. He had of course, seen many strange ‘hairstyles’ before, and as scalping was something of a pastime for his dear departed mother, there were even a few of them adorning to the cavern walls as decoration back at home.

  Without knowing, his misshapen hands ran through his own hair. Long strands of his filthy, dirt-caked mane stretched and pulled apart as he peered out into this wonderful new world. He wondered whether he could have a hairstyle for himself.

  Before long, the inevitable pull of his hunger snapped him out of his reverie, and his fleeting good mood passed him by. He must eat. And it was just at that moment that, like a portent, a sight befell Roland like none he had ever dreamed to see before him. A sight that he’d marveled at for hours at a time in his picture books and magazines. A building of a very particular kind...

  Lights burned bright through the windows, revealing a veritable wonderland of vegetables, meats and beverages. Pretty clothing hung on plastic women for all the morning to see, and above it all, written in bold, blood red, was a sign. It read: Alistair’s.

  For the first time in his natural life, Roland’s sloping, bulbous eyes gazed upon a convenience store.

  And all his remaining apprehension fled.

  ***

  Jerry couldn’t give a rat’s ass about groceries. Or stock taking for that matter. His fuck-head of a father had set him up with this damned position straight out of high school and, this miserable shit-pile town being what it was, with no jobs and less opportunities, he had been stuck in this damned dump ever since. Still, it paid for his weed, and it was always nice to have a little cash to throw at the ladies.

  Not that Jerry was in the habit of treating the ladies to long drives and candlelit meals. Fuck no. The pittance he earned each week working at Alistair’s was put to far better, far more effective use. His technique was simple, too.

  Buy cheap liquor, find young girl, lie his way into her confidence, and then ply her with all the booze the bitch could handle. Get her good and wasted till she could tell up from fucking down, and then have his way with her.

  Tried and tested, ‘The Jerry Method’ as he boastfully proclaimed it to his buddies, was fool-proof.

  The little sluts never knew what hit ‘em. And in a town this small, no little girl would ever want her proud Daddy or his drinking chums knowing just what she’d been sucking and fucking on the night previous. As a safety precaution, Jerry made it clear as crystal just what would happen to them should they decide to blab. They’d keep their damn mouths shut if they knew what was good for them.

  And so far, they had. There was no line of shotgun-toting rage-filled fathers knocking on the door of Jerry Osmond. No Siree-bob…not a single fucking one.

  Last night had been something of a letdown though…

  He’d been eyeing young Lucy Peers for a long damn time, ever since high-school, in fact. She’d been three years below him at the time and was far too popular and above her station to ever even look his way, regardless of his older age. As Jerry saw it, all the young pussy was looking for an older guy. It gave them status among their slut friends. You have an older guy banging you, you rise to the top of the witch’s coven. It was written in stone. Lucy was different though. The holier-than-thou little dick-tease had strutted her stuff through the halls of Pinewood High like she owned the goddam place. Never once succumbing to Jerry’s many covert advances. Bitch thought she was too good for him, back then. That had all changed last night though.

  She was now in her last year of her fine
hometown education, and no doubt looking to the future with hopes and dreams that reached far higher than this dumpster-fire town could ever provide. She’d come of age.

  And with that, she’d gotten horny.

  Not that she’d showed any signs of being horny, or of wanting Jerry when he met her at Bill’s house party, but he figured it was a given. She’d been doing the rounds when he spotted her, flirting with the all the guys and acting like her shit didn’t stink none. She’d avoided Jerry at every turn, though he reckoned this was down to nerves. After all, he was a looker, and had been working out regularly since his high-school days. He was the sort of guy that makes a girl wet between the legs and dizzy in the head. He understood she probably felt intimidated by his presence. That was okay, he could wait.

  Sure enough, after a few hours and a few too many drinks, the bitch had overreached. She looked pretty fucking ill in Jerry’s estimation, though not so ill that she couldn’t or wouldn’t open her legs for a well-positioned knight in shining armor.

  He’d followed her outside as she stumbled into the cool evening air, presumably for a breather, and had offered her a ride home. She’d looked wary at first, sure, but soon Jerry’s softly spoken words of compassion and understanding had won her trust. The whole conversation had bored him half to death. He couldn’t give a lick-of-a-dick about her home problems or her pending school finals. But he listened, and he smiled when required, and he let the prissy cunt spill her guts as only a drunken damsel in distress can, sighing when she unburdened her woe’s and laughing gently when she perked up. He was a good guy. It was obvious.