As a foreword, I don’t have the same capacity of emotion as I did when this happened. I’ll explain why later in this upload, but I assume part of it is a sort of depersonalization to escape the reality of what happened.
One second, I was in the middle of my kitchen, preparing onigiri for my lunches this week. The next, I was in the middle of a cornfield.
For context, I live in the middle of absolutely fricking nowhere, Tennessee, and most of the land around me is forest. There are a few small cattle farms nearby, but there aren’t any cornfields for at least six miles.
My legs were aching, like I had walked there myself, but the sky was the same as it had been outside my picture windows. A dusky purple, all-consuming.
I was in my pajamas—a tank top and some old sweats—and they did nothing to protect me from the chill of October. I heard a soft rhythmic pattering, like people were trying to silently run towards me, from every direction.
I spun around, scanning my surroundings, but I didn’t see anyone. The corn stalks were shifting with the wind, which must have been the source of the sound. Maybe the pattering was overripe corn falling to the ground?
Another gust of bitter wind found its way to me, and it stung against my skin.
I pulled my arms in on myself, trying to conserve some warmth, only to feel a sharp burst of pain wherever my skin touched. I looked down, and my skin was covered in scabs, as though the air had eaten away at it slowly.
Like when you exfoliate too hard, and blood raises to the surface of your skin. Except it had actually broken through.
My nails were another story. They were broken, torn and cracked, and they had dirt and blood underneath them.
The wind gifted me with a pause, and I heard the pitter-patter again, this time with a soft tinkle that felt like laughter.
The sounds were all-encompassing.
When the wind started up again, they disapeared. When it stilled, they continued, louder than before.
The next time the wind rushed past me, I ran, trying to find my way out of the crude excuse for a corn maze. There were different pathways, all of which ended in dead ends with unlit Jack-o’-lanterns.
The candles were melted all the way through, and some of them were still smoking.
All at once, the air stilled and I heard the pitter patter right behind me, all of the sounds condensed to one spot.
I turned, but nothing was there. I was still alone.
I turned back around and jumped up, trying to find out where the cornfield ended. When I got back on the ground, I landed heavily on my ankle.
I don’t think it was sprained or even twisted—and the doctors agree with me on this front—but my exhaustion prevented me from getting up through the pain.
One of the Jack-o’-lanterns in the corner of my sight lit up on its own, a light that looked more like darkness emitting from the drained wick.
The tinkling laughter from earlier condensed into a cackle that resonated so strongly that I could feel it in my bones.
The smoke poured out of the pumpkin, floating over to me in the still air. A gust of wind came and pulled it away from me, but when it left, more pooled out in its place.
The smoke coalesced into a vaguely human form above me before dispersing, a heavy weight settling on my chest and thighs.
A burst of pain struck me and my head seemed to wrench back on its own until I couldn’t see anything but black.
When the spots went away, I was in my bed. If not for the random pains scattered throughout my body, I would have assumed it was all a dream.
I’d been having dreams like that lately.
I slid my legs out of bed, pulling my blankets off of me. I’d been tucked in like I hadn’t been for years.
When I tried to stand up, my ankle gave out, and I just barely caught myself against my bed.
I pulled myself to a standing position and managed to hop to the kitchen. The onigiri I had only just begun prepping was completely finished, wrapped up in sheets of nori and laid out like I’d gotten them from a fancy restaurant.
My cooking skills aren’t bad, per se, but I’m no artist. I work with what I have—foods bought in bulk that work for a long time, like rice and dried fruit, nuts, and meat—but my dishes aren’t pretty.
Not like this.
As I hopped closer, I realized that the nori, which was usually sealed with a mixture of water and rice vinegar, was unnusually dark.
I picked up my knife and cut it open.
Inside, there was some kind of fresh meat. The same exact color as the dried beef I had in my pantry if it had been rehydrated. Nothing edible—it looked raw, and like whatever it was sourced from hadn’t been exsanguinated.
The nori was sealed with blood.
I stumbled back, tripping over my own foot and falling to the ground with my back pressed against the oven, the handles digging into my shoulder blades.
From this angle, I could see the body on my living room floor, flayed and filleted.
It looked astonishingly like me, as far as I could tell through all of the blood and missing flesh. The face was untouched, but it had been covered in blood.
I felt ill, nauseated with bitter acid crawling up my throat.
Their head turned onto its side, and a familiar cloud of darkness spilled from their ears, mouth, nose, and where their eyes had been. As it swept its way across the room to me, wind battered at my windows so strongly I was sure they would shatter.
The small decorative Jack-o’-lantern I had set out on my counter flickered out, and the lights soon followed.
I’m not completely sure what happened next.
I floated in and out of life. There were gaps of time where I was unattached to the world, untethered, and there were times where I simply did not exist.
Different colors greeted me each time I was present—blood red, orange, white, blue, red, white, yellow, white.
I stopped fading in and out of existence at the last stretch of white light.
I was in a dimly lit hospital room, the only sounds the buzz of electricity and the drip of an IV. I scanned the room for anything that could tell me where I was, and my eyes settled on a computer screen.
I tried to scoot closed to read it, but my legs refused to follow my command. I could feel them, so it wasn’t like there was any anesthetic preventing my control of them. Instead, I just couldn’t find what to tell my brain to get them to move, like when I try to raise one eyebrow.
It was probably something in the IV. Hopefully. Or, at least, that was what I’d hoped.
My arms were still listening to me, so I tried to pull myself towards the screen, only to be stopped by the rattling of chains. My wrists were handcuffed to the edges of the hospital bed, and my ankles were too.
There was a long list of different medical terms—a few that I recognized, like contusions and hemorrhage, and a few I didn’t, like subtalor dislocation and Kuru.
Kuru was something that I brushed aside—it sounded somewhat like cutaneous, if it had been translated into another language and back. It seemed like the smallest of my problems.
It was the largest.
Nurses came into the room flanked by police officers. When they saw that I was awake, they froze, then continued on as if I wasn’t l.
I tried to ask them where I was, what had happened, but my throat was too dry and my voice failed me. A rough croak-like hiss escaped me, and one of the nurses dropped what she was holding—a clipboard.
At the top of the sheets, it said Tennessee Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane.
Finally, I managed to get my vocal cords to function enough to ask what had happened.
The cops moved their hands to their waists, where they had a different assortment of police-issued weapons. No guns, but there were batons and tasers.
I didn’t receive an answer for several days, until I was cleared to leave the infirmary. I was shoved into a cold shower and given less than five minutes to put myself together, clothes stuck on me from the new handcuffs they had stuck on me.
Then I was bundled up in a police car without being told where I was going, dragged into a building, and shoved into a seat in a courtroom next to a person in a suit who looked like they would rather be anywhere but there.
The crimes I was being arrested for? Torture, murder, and cannibalism, as well as arson. A crime against humanity they called it, ignoring my pleas of innocence.
Their proof?
My medical files.
Blood under my nails from the dead person—who they were unable to identify past that singular DNA match. Their blood in vomit I had expelled during a fit of unconsciousness. Kuru.
A medical professional from somewhere in Indonesia was flown in to discuss it.
A disease cursed upon those from only one source: eating human flesh.
I tried to argue that if anything had gotten into my stomach, it wasn’t because of me, but of the figure that had been chasing after me.
Kuru takes years to exhibit symptoms. I’d been experiencing said symptoms for at least a month.
The jury condemned me, and I was officially labeled criminally insane now that I had awoken.
The other prisoners stay away from me. I guess that word spreads easily.
I was given materials for my good behaviour—soft paper that breaks down when wet, edible crayons, and the like. Things that could entertain me without causing harm. I’m writing this on that, hoping that I can get my story out there.
I’m due to die in a couple months. The doctors predict 3, but I’m hoping it’s more.
I just want somebody to believe me.
I’m not insane. I’m not a cannibal. I haven’t committed any crimes.
I’m begging you, if you’ve read this far, to listen to me.