Fit In_a post-apocalyptic survival thriller

by B. R. Paulson

  “Look, I don't want to fight with you. But you can’t eat that. Have the French fries, if you want. Have some of the salad. I got some mousse over there, too. But you can’t eat that meat.” Would she be happy with that? Was I offering her enough?

  Arching her eyebrow, Jasmine thrust her jaw to the side. “I can’t eat the meat? Why? What is it? Baby meat?”

  I'd never had baby meat. Babies were taboo for me both in human and animal form. Just didn't seem right to eat innocent meat on any level.

  I'd heard about the tenderness of veal and lamb but there weren't a lot of resources on the tenderness of a baby human.

  Not that I could do it anyway. The people I did eat were older than eighteen and their families had signed a paper giving away some of their parts to science or organ donation. I considered myself a scientist. Even organ meat was amazing, but dangerous because you didn’t know who had what diseases until you got their medical records.

  I would never be able to eat a child. And old people were just nasty.

  I never looked at the faces of any that I intended on eating. Who could do that?

  “You know I don't eat baby meat.” I couldn't lie to her. But at the same time, I couldn't tell her everything. I'd never told a soul. My natural instinct to keep this part of me hidden roared up inside me. Even if I wanted to, my mouth wouldn't open. The basic instinct for survival refused to let me say anything.

  “Tell me. Why can’t I have this? I can have anything I want.” She watched me as I watched her in silence. She grabbed the fork, pulling it to her mouth. “I'm eating it anyway. You're being stupid.”

  She opened her mouth. The food halfway went through her lips. I wanted so badly to let her. Join me. Join me. My inner cannibal was lonely, had been for so long. But I wasn’t inhuman. I had a firm grasp on what was wrong and right and taking away her freedom to choose by not informing her fully wasn’t right.

  I swallowed, the room suddenly warm which wasn’t possible, it was a damn freezer. “No. Jasmine, it's people meat.”

  Jasmine froze. The fork with the bite clattered to the table. She swallowed, glancing around the room at the bodies covered with plastic sheeting.

  She backed away from the table, hands outspread. “What do you mean people meat?” Her eyes had widened and then a sharp burst of laughter made her double over with her hand over her stomach. “I’m sorry, that sounds stupid. It must be late. I’m jumping to all kinds of conclusions here.” Jasmine glared accusingly at me, like it was my fault she was about to lose it.

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “It's nothing to get dramatic about. I just didn't want you to do something that you weren’t aware you were going to do.” I straightened my shoulders, rubbing my inner thumb with my forefinger. Throw it out there, Cooper. Get it over with. “I mean it’s leg meat from a man, a dead man. That’s what I mean by people meat.”

  She passed into wild-eyed worry as she looked around the room.

  I'd always wondered why she didn't freak out about being around dead people. But I think it finally hit her.

  She was in a room with dead people, standing across from a man who ate dead people. The reality assaulted her. I could see it work its way through her.

  Her denial. Her abject denial. Her worry. Her fear. And yet she still ended in disbelief. “I don't understand. How long have you been doing this? Is this… Is this why you bite me?” She brought up one of our foreplay moves.

  Hell, yes, I bit her. She had this heady taste to her skin. I had never quite experienced it before. How did I tell her that over the many times we slept together since we started dating, I'd often licked her skin wondering what her muscles would taste like?

  I shook my head, trying to catch her gaze as it flitted around the room over and over in a circular panic. She reminded me of a deer I'd seen once which was caught in someone’s backyard, people coming outside. The deer had looked around for any way out, and then had jumped over the fence.

  Jasmine was about to run.

  I stepped forward slowly, hands outstretched. “Honey, it’s still me. I haven't done anything new or become anybody different. Now you're just seeing how my—”

  “Don't. I don't want to know. You are not the same person that I thought you were. We are over. I don’t want you to call me.” She sobbed, throwing her hand over her mouth. Running from the room, she pumped her arms and her heels clicked in a fast staccato on the floor as she fled. The bottom hem of her skirt had gotten stuck in her panties and her finely muscled thigh rippled as she ran.

  I wanted to be anybody or anything else at that moment. If she gave me a chance, I could suppress what I was for her. I loved her. The fact that she just left because of the monster I am tore me apart.

  Monster. That’s me.

  But I completely expected it.

  If I was honest with myself… and with you… I expected her to run, or I would’ve told her who I really was a long time ago.

  So, yeah, if you couldn’t hear that long sigh, it was a looong one.

  Even though I’m writing this, I still can’t believe everything that has happened. I know more is coming. I just want to be normal, but it’s too late for that.

  This is me telling you why I am the way that I am, who I am, and maybe it's more for me to figure out just who exactly you are. What type of a person reads about cannibals? Reads about the intrigue behind the crazy life I lead? Could those people be the same people who sent me their cut off fingers and toes to “chew” on perhaps?

  What I eat can't define me. Who I eat can't define me.

  It's not like I'm a zombie for crying out loud.

  I’m a living, breathing person. I don’t kill people. Not on purpose.

  No.

  No.

  My name is Cooper.

  But you already know me as The Cannibal.

  Fear Set In

  Chapter 5

  I hurriedly packed away my dinner. I couldn't even eat at a time like that.

  The emotional upheaval over breaking up wouldn’t hit me until later. I’d hidden my whole life. I’d become a professional at hiding who I really was.

  Nobody knew what secrets I hid.

  There was a woman running around outside scorned. What did they say about a scorned woman? Something about don't mess with them, right? Course she was mad. Who wouldn't be mad? She was probably disgusted with me and I wanted to be upset and feel like I was the one who had been rejected, but I knew deep down, she’d been the one hurt.

  I was mad at myself, horrified at times with my choices. But I couldn't stop. It was who I was. I made it through elementary school, high school, even my college years without anyone knowing. Nobody suspected I cut meat out of the bodies I worked with. I would eat the meat and refill the empty space with cotton or firm plaster.

  Nobody knew that as a little kid I had wandered into my father's mortician shop, and accidentally tried a bite.

  I had smothered that memory for longer than I cared to admit. As I write this down, more and more memories are flooding me. I snorted. Funny, how I referred to the first incident in my memory as an accident. Who the hell ate something accidentally?

  I've been fascinated ever since that first bite, though.

  How does one accidentally try a bite? It's a good question. My memories of that day were fuzzy.

  I remember the person on my dad’s table was a car crash victim. The meat in the leg was mangled and Dad would have to get it into pants.

  Mom took my brothers to an appointment and dropped me off at Dad’s work. I hadn't eaten all morning because I’d gotten up late.

  Normally when Mom dropped us kids off at Dad’s work, we were supposed to stay in the front waiting area or go in the back kitchen and staff area. I wouldn’t have left the safety of that small room with its TV, if there’d been donuts or something else I could eat.

  I wandered down to my dad’s office on the bottom floor to get some money for food. I was seven or eight, maybe. I can't reme
mber exactly. I do know there was a little Mom and Pop bakery next door from the funeral home and they had the best scones my mom had ever had.

  Meat had sat on the scale, unattended. I wasn't old enough to know what was wrong with the picture. I wasn’t tall enough to see too high above the table, to see the face or even know that it was human meat initially.

  I wasn't even sure if I remembered what was going on. My mom later told me to get back in bed, stating I had a high fever.

  But I don't remember being sick.

  I was slightly dizzy and I’d bumped the table my dad’s coffee maker and the scale were on. The scale toppled to the side and tipped over to mix with the coffee maker.

  Panicked was putting it lightly. I wasn’t supposed to be down there without my dad around. Meat sizzled on the hot part of the coffee machine. The smell that reminded me of bacon or ham overwhelmed me. My mouth salivated.

  My curiosity got the better of me and I scooped up the loose meat and plopped it onto the righted scale, wiping my hand on my jeans. I watched as the edges of a bite-sized piece of meat curled and popped under the direct application of heat. It sizzled like bacon. A lot like ham.

  That piece of meat sizzled like meat my family ate openly.

  Meat my family loved.

  It smelled like bacon as it cooked, but different, a little bit more… what’s the word? Meatier, maybe?

  I flipped the chunk over to evenly cook it.

  Glancing around as far as I could see, I waited another minute for it to brown up and then I popped it in my mouth.

  I'll never forget my first bite. I'll never forget the moistness of the morsel.

  After I realized the meat was human, I was horrified with myself. I had to have been horribly ill to even consider it. Maybe I’d been delusional. There were so many what-ifs. So many…

  But I took my chance again a few weeks later, to make sure I hadn’t dreamed of the best bite of meat I’d ever had. Obviously, I wasn’t horrified enough. I was fairly sheltered and we didn’t talk about things like eating each other.

  The second bite was better than the first.

  Over the years, I slipped bites here and there. My dad never suspected. When he had me come in and start to help him, it wasn't a hard transition to make. I didn’t even fight the move like many people thought I would.

  My hypocrisy rears its ugly head right now and I can’t believe how I’ve acted. I’ve judged my aunt and uncle and my dad as if I were more righteous. Was killing someone worse than stealing? Because that’s what I had done. I’d lied and been horrified when my aunt had me eat my uncle, but was I upset because of what I ate, or who? Or the fact that I knew that the actions I took would never be accepted by society?

  Many people didn't want to work with their parents or take over the family business. But me, I did, it was what I knew. It was what I was comfortable with.

  The move was natural and I didn’t have any other dreams in mind. Not when my favorite food was also supplied by the family business.

  Of course, Jasmine was mad. I had never told her anything about who I really was. Some secrets were secrets for a reason. Some secrets you just never told.

  But was this a secret like that for her? Would Jasmine be able to keep my secret? Would she even want to?

  Would she tell someone? What if she told her best friend, Xan? What if she told that woman and that woman told everyone else? Or worse yet, what if Jasmine didn't say anything? What if she hated me? What if she cut me from her life, as if I never existed? Would I blame her?

  I almost wanted her to say something. Take the stress of hiding from my shoulders. Of course, I’d have to be arrested. I would have to face some kind of consequence of what I was doing. Cannibalism wasn’t illegal, but it had to be wrong ethically.

  Right?

  With Jasmine scorned, I looked at my work with a more censored eye.

  An older woman had come in the night before from a car crash.

  She was over my cutoff date of forty-five. I liked to call that my expiration age.

  I worked quietly on her, the tools of my trade also my culinary tools. “Mrs. Janice Burke, you seem like a nice old lady. I'm not sure I would want to eat you. Looks like you had some kind of liver damage and kidney disease. You would not taste good.”

  My muttering became all-consuming as I worked through my stress. I motioned with my hands and periodically thrust the scalpel into the air as I muttered. “What do you think about my girlfriend? Do you think it's a problem I’m going to have to deal with later? You think it's going to be fine?” I often spoke to the bodies. At least the ones I didn't eat. It wasn't polite to play with your food.

  I finished my shift, my stomach roiling. Not only because I didn't get to finish my meal, but because worry had set in about Jasmine.

  My house wasn’t far from the office. Dad was out on vacation for a couple months, taking his very first retirement-slash-hiatus.

  He and Mom had separated a few months back. She had moved to the town closer to where my brother lived. I came from a big family, and everyone had spread out. Hell, I’m not sure I could even remember where my five brothers and sisters lived.

  Not me and Dad though. We lived in the same old town, population fifteen-thousand. Fortunately for us, there were enough dead people to keep us in business. We got enough overflow from the large town just twenty minutes away, we were plenty busy most of the time.

  Their population hovered at six-hundred-thousand. Much bigger meat market, if you asked me.

  My hands shook as I reached out to unlock my door. I didn't want to admit how worried I was. Even to myself.

  Mentioning it here is embarrassing. My shame. All of my shame and secrets out there for whoever wants to read about it.

  And no, my shame did not lie in the fact that I eat people. I don't kill them. My shame lies in how I treated the whole thing with Jasmine.

  It's not like she deserved anything. Not any of what I put her through, anyway.

  I closed the door behind me. Taking a deep breath, I called out to my silent house. “Hello? Jasmine, are you here?” Abysmal emptiness greeted me. Of course, she wasn’t there.

  Hanging my head for a drawn-out moment, I closed my eyes and forced shallow breathing so I didn’t hyperventilate. When I raised my head, significantly calmer, I realized she had been there.

  Her key and a note sat on the banister beside the stairs. I could smell her lingering scent of jasmine and vanilla – her trademark.

  Dread curdled in my stomach.

  I approached her offerings slowly, as if they would somehow jump out at me if I moved too fast.

  Her note read -

  Cooper,

  I need space.

  Jasmine

  She didn't say she wanted us to be over.

  Maybe she had called me. Maybe she wanted something else like to talk things out or something. Maybe she regretted her choice to run.

  I grabbed my cell phone from the table. I'd left it at home because I didn't want to talk to people at work. I wasn't one of those idiots who hung around their phone all day. More often than not it sat on my table, waiting for me to come home and find it.

  Seven text messages. All from my mom. Two missed calls. All from my mom.

  Great.

  The final message from my mom invited me home for the holidays. We had plenty of time before I needed to plan that kind of an event. I doubted I could handle that kind of drama anyway.

  I didn't have any calls from Jasmine.

  Would she tell?

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  Copyright © 2018 Bonnie R. Paulson/Captiva Publishing, LLC/B.R. Paulson

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