It's All in the Pamphlet

A normal college student aspires to taste human flesh.

 

Introduction

 

    Does wanting to find out what the meat of a human being tastes like make you a bad person? Let me explain before you draw any conclusions. My name is Sam Bridges; I’m a young American male, just like any other young American male really. I have a father, a mother, a younger sister, and a girlfriend. I go to college, I rarely drink, and I don’t smoke. I grew up in a nice suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and I’ve never been convicted or accused of doing anything illegal by any police department; not even a speeding ticket. I was part of the national honor society in high school, I volunteered to help the residents of New Orleans after the Hurricane the summer of my freshman year in college, and I’m currently the President of the Environmental Science Club at Brown University, which is an Ivy League school. I have no desire to murder, maim, or steal any human being, living or dead, so I ask again: Does wanting to taste human meat make me a bad person?

 

    I don’t think it does. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being curious. I was taught it’s good to be curious. I was told by all of my teachers and peers that having an open mind is the key to an enriched life. I don’t see how tasting a corpse compromises my integrity as a human being.

 

    Does it make me a cannibal? Perhaps, in the literal sense; I would be, after all, eating my own species. But I like to think of a cannibal in more specific terms. I think a “cannibal” is someone who makes their own species part of their diet.  I don’t want to continuously eat people, I just want to find out what I taste like, without having to disfigure myself and prepare myself and cook myself for my self’s curiosity.

 

    Anyway whether or not you agree with me does not change the fact that I want to taste human meat, preferably whatever part of a human being would be the most fit for consumption. To find out what human part this is, I have decided to assemble a team to assess which area of the human body: 

 

1. Tastes the best.
2. Would be the best method to prepare and cook
3. Offers the best example of what a human would generally taste like.

 

    This team will consist of a butcher, a Chef, and a Medical Doctor. I have not assembled this team yet, partially because I probably haven’t saved enough money to hire them, partially because any of those three professions I’ve ever posed the question to refuses to comment, and the most important factor, no one has signed my release form.

 

    My release form is really just a legal document (or will become a legal document), basically just giving me permission to use their body as the base for my taste test. I like to travel to local stores and canvas the public for a potential donor. I haven’t had any luck yet, but I think I can find the right person…eventually.

 

    These were my plans…

 

Part Two

  

     …This is my story.

 

    “Let me get this straight,” a cross-eyed, glasses wearing man asked peering at my form. “You want me to sign this so you can umm…eat me…” he peered back up to me looking into my eyes. “…when I die?”

 

    I fumbled with my papers for a second. “Well, no sir, I…well, yes, I mean, sort of,” I replied looking around the room. “I’m not going to eat your entire body; I’m just going to eat the part of your body that my team would find most suitable for consumption.”

 

    The man dropped the arm holding my paper to his side swiftly, taking off his glasses and slightly leaning into my body bubble. “Your team?”

 

   “Well sir, I plan to assemble a butcher, a…” I began.

 

    The man handed my paper back to me. “You know what, just stop there,” he said promptly pulling his wallet out, fishing through it and finally handing me a business card. “My friend…she’s a psychiatrist. She can get you the help you need.” 

 

    I took the card, examined it, and put it in my pocket. As he walked away I shouted. “Do you want my card in case you change your mind or know someone who…” I didn’t bother to finish, he was waving me off as he trotted into the store.

 

    Perhaps this is where I can mention that I have been thrown out of so many stores that my shopping in Providence, Rhode Island, which is to say, the State of Rhode Island, is very limited.

 

    “When did this…fascination start?” the psychiatrist, Dr. Andrea Miner asked me as she sat cross legged, staring at her little note pad. I called the University after that man gave me her card, to see if her care would be covered under the University’s health insurance plan. They said it would be, so I figured if nothing else I could find out what her opinion on the matter was; maybe even procure a body (I brought a release form with me). 

 

    “Well,” I replied taking a swig of water provided by her office. “When I was in high school, I was eating at KFC one time, and I just thought to myself…’what would a human taste like?’ I didn’t actively begin trying to find out until I’d been accepted to Brown…I understood such a question could hurt my chances of getting in.”

 

    “After you’d been accepted to Brown, you pursued the matter further?” She asked.

 

    “Well, yeah I guess. I mean, I don’t think it’s a big deal. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I don’t want to just feast on a corpse or a live person. I’m just curious,” I said.

 

    “Why?” She asked comfortingly concerned. Her voice was very soft, very mellow. It was calm and reassuring, like the Doctor when he puts the stethoscope on your back and he’s like “Okay, deep breath in,” very softly, then you breathe in, and he follows with “and out.” I think they teach that in medical school. Who knows, that could be what makes medical school in America better than foreign medical schools, although, I never had a foreign doctor.

 

    “I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “Maybe part of it is like, when people tell you never to let a wild animal taste human blood. You know, because it supposedly tastes better than any blood out there and they go into a wild frenzy. I don’t see it really; I think it just tastes like Iron.”

 

    “Maybe you’d be disappointed with the taste of human flesh,” she said. “Maybe it just tastes like Iron too,” she scribbled on her pad more.

 

    “Well, that’s why I’m trying to assemble a team,” I’d told her about the team…it was all in the pamphlet. “I’m trying to get the best example.”

 

    Needless to say the psychiatrist didn’t unlock anything within me. She tried to figure out where this was coming from, a repressed memory or something. I wasn’t too concerned with that, I just wanted to figure out how I could taste a human. She reminded me as a doctor that a corpse would have to be very fresh in order to have “good meat”. She said, with regret, that the best meat would come from a young to middle-aged healthy person. Basically that I would have to kill someone and eat them or at least harvest their meat immediately after they’d died, in order to get the taste I was “looking for”. She told me this, according to her; because she’d assessed that I wasn’t capable of murdering a human being, based on my personality. She was certainly correct about that; I had no interest in hurting anyone.

 

    The next day I decided to walk into the local Wal-Mart, one of the few stores I wasn’t banned from. I wasn’t passing out any pamphlets today (though I had them…I always had them). I decided instead to walk straight to the meat and produce section, where I spotted a fat butcher lounging behind the counter. He was an older man, looked like he knew his stuff, after all his apron had pink stains on it; I figured that meant he was an expert.

 

    “Excuse me sir,” I said. He came to the counter and asked how he could help me. “This is a really odd question, but I’m doing a paper for college, so bear with me please.”

 

    “Okay,” he said. “I’d love to help you out any way I can young man.”

 

    “Well, okay I’m just going to say it because the question weirds me out,” I lied. “If you had to eat a human being, like, had to, someone had a gun to your head or something. As a butcher, what part of their body would you eat? Like, what is the Porterhouse Steak of a human being? I know it’s a weird question, but it’s for school.”

 

    “Well…hmmm,” he said chuckling and scratching his chin. “A porterhouse steak is cut from the short loin and tenderloin of a heifer, the short loins and the tenderloins are attached to the spine of the heifer, and extend to more or less hang from the hip of the animal. It’s tender because the animal rarely uses the muscle tissue in that area, so I guess I would want to eat it from the area of a human too,” he laughed. “I hope no one heard me say that out loud, but I guess if I had to and the person with the gun let me choose, I’d go with that.”

 

    “So, like, this area?” I said rubbing my back side just above my hip.

 

    “Sure, I guess,” he laughed again. “Any other interesting questions for me?”

 

     I thanked him and went on my way, leaving Wal-Mart and crossing the parking lot to an Applebee’s. I entered, it was a Tuesday night, not very busy, and asked if I could speak with the Chef. It was my lucky day, they said normally the Chef wouldn’t be in or would be far too busy to chat, but business was dead, so he came out and I ordered a basket of fried okra to munch on while I chatted with him. I gave him the same routine as the butcher. Instead of laughing and being friendly he snidely winced at me. I insisted this was merely for a project and I would in no way judge him a cannibal.

 

    “How would I cook that portion of a human being if I had to eat it?” He asked me. “What kind of project is this?”

 

    “It’s for umm,” I thought for a moment, almost saying biology until something more plausible came to mind. “Creative writing,” I concluded. “We have to write a story about cannibalism. I want it to be really authentic, because I’m an English major,” this was a lie, I hated English. I reassured him by informing him that a Doctor and a butcher had already taken part in my research.

 

    “Well,” he slurred. I began to eat my fresh okra, offering him some. He declined. “I guess I would grill it, dry heat, maybe charcoal…the same way I would grill a steak.”

 

    “Would you marinate it?” I asked. His eyes widened.

 

    “Do I have time to marinate it?” he asked very seriously. “I thought I had a gun to my head?”

 

    “Well, lets say you have the choice to marinate it, like, maybe the gun man gives you some time to marinate it, but that’s all you can do, you can’t call the cops or anything.”

 

    “Umm, I don’t know, I’d have to know what it tastes like without marinate. I can’t really answer the marinating question,” he told me, pausing for a moment. “I suppose if I had to marinate it I’d treat it like a beef or a pork steak.”

 

    I thanked the Chef, tipped the waitress two dollars, and went back to my apartment, finishing up on my homework. I deduced that I would need a 16-35 year old person, freshly dead; that I would have to cut (or hopefully that Wal-Mart butcher would do it for the right price/required legal paperwork) the area from the bottom of their spine over a bit to their hip, and that I would grill it with dry heat to produce the best result. It didn’t appear that this was going to happen, so I slept well that night, at least knowing what to do if the opportunity somehow arose. 

 

    The thought, or what some would consider an obsession, hadn’t crossed my mind much the following days. I don’t know if I lost interest, or if all I really wanted was to know how to best eat a human, not to actually eat one. It would go in and out, sometimes I would ponder it, sometimes I wouldn’t; I would still go to the stores I was allowed at (though less frequently) and state my case, to deaf ears.

 

    A couple of weeks later I was eating at a McDonalds with my girlfriend Cheryl, who was aware of my curiosity, but didn’t take it too seriously, when suddenly the thought of eating a human no longer interested me. I was eating a Big Mac, she had a salad, and we were talking about politics when suddenly I blurted out:

 

    “Cheryl, have you ever had sex with a gynecologist?”

 

    “What?” she mumbled spitting out her salad. “What the hell does that have to do with global warming?”

 

    “I’m just curious, a thought entered my mind and I was wondering if you could answer a question for me,” I replied.

 

    She seemed pretty angry, I didn’t know why, it was just a question. “Sam, usually guys don’t want to hear about their girlfriend’s previous sexual partners! I know I don’t want to know about yours!”

 

    “I’d tell you if you asked,” I said nibbling on some fries. 

 

    “Sam, I’m not going to ask because I don’t want to know, that’s what normal people do!” She wasn’t too upset, she knew me well enough.

 

    “Well, just this once, I won’t ask anymore…have you?” I asked.

 

    “No!” she grunted. “Please tell me why you wanted to know that!”

 

    “I’m just wondering if a gynecologist would be better in bed than an average guy,” I replied.

 

    She snorted, cupping her hands over her mouth, and began laughing hysterically, “Sam, I love you darling!” she said getting up from her seat and hugging me. She sat back down and looked at me, her eyes gleaming. “So, if I would have said ‘yes’, you would have asked if they’re better in bed than you or any other guy?”

 

    “Naturally,” I said smiling.

 

    “I don’t know, do you want me to sleep with one to find out?” she asked smiling back.

 

    “Well, no,” I said. “Preferably not, but maybe we could get one of your single friends to hook up with one, there are plenty of students in their residency around here, I’m sure we could find a horny gyno.”

 

    She laughed and leaned over the table, whispering to me. “Sam, if you throw everything you have about eating corpses in the trash, and never bring it up again, I’ll see what I can do.”

 

   “Deal,” I replied out loud. “But this is our secret.” From that moment on the taste of human meat never crossed my mind again. Except now…d****t!

 

    (by the way, I’m still waiting on the gynecologist answer)

Author's Note

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

Reviews

[Brjden (Bridge-Den) Cre..]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hilarious! I didn't think I would get all the way through it in one reading but I did! Very well put together and thought out! It's a little sick, but Cohen Brothers' sick, so it's good. Will this be a full novel? If so, I'd purchase this! I don't see enough humor in most of the readings on here. It's nice to see a change of pace!

[Vague]

This was a pretty funny story, I thought. Very well structured, and answered the question it raises about the narrator's sanity in a humorously anti-climactic manner.

[Dan Bradley]

Reading it again, the ending is even better. The sections are still good. Yeah. I still like it.

[BodilessSoul]

Oh wow, that was the most hularious thing I've ever read by far. I loved it! Very, very creative and thanks for entering my contest!

[W.k.kortas]

The piece flows pretty nicely, and the use of dialogue is good, but there's not much here to really grab a reader's interest. The main character is flat and two-dimensional, and we really learn little or nothing about why he's interested in eating human flesh. Likewise, nothing actually happens in the story--or, at least, nothing that rises above the asking of a few odd questions. It's constructed well enough, but there just isn't much else there.

[Dan Bradley]

oh this is just fantastic. Bro i so rarely visit this site anymore, and this is probably the only story i'll read tonight, but this is well worth it man. your narrative voice has gotten even stronger, yet retained it's calm, personable demeanor. the subject matter is interesting enough to pull people away from today's overwhelming media barrage, and the ending is just twisted enough to be genuinely surprising (but not too much to be contrived). I like everything about this story (right down to the hilarious release form and the fried okra); get ahold of me at my myspace site if you want help on where you should publish it. thanks for this one. *d

[Andrew (not Andy, A.J. ..]

Hmmmmmm I don't know...strange subject. I'm not going to ask you what inspired you because A) Lots of times I just write without inspiration and B) I don't really want to know. It's interesting, alright.
Um, what IS a gynecologist?

[Awake.&.Unafraid]

This is hilarious, the twist in the ending completely threw me off and I love it! Fantastic work, really really funny..in a sick, twisted way. Then again, comedy often comes in strange packages!

[Gregory Hill]

Absolutly LOVE it! I thought I wouldn't get through more than the first 2 or 3 paragraphs but I couldn't stop until I reached the end. Really funny, loved the begining. keep up the good work.

[Christopher Thomas Wood..]

"The man dropped the arm holding my paper to his side swiftly, taking off his glasses and slightly leaning into my body bubble. "Your team?" "

HAHAHA my favorite part

[Fidheallir]

This is very strange, but for some reason I buy it. It would be interesting to see some more short stories about the character. I'm intrigued by him.