I can’t begin to tell you how many times I sat here; typing everything out only to press backspace until I was staring at a blank screen once again. I wasn’t even sure if I should place this onto here. The internet has a funny way of connecting people like that after all, letting them find things, yet I wasn’t sure where else to go. How many paper trails I can make of this before they’re all gone…
Where do I begin?
How do I begin?
Well I suppose we should start with the title–the topic, the reason-for why you are here. I think my husband is a cannibal. Perhaps serial killer would be the better term, more accurate. Perhaps I shouldn’t even use the word ‘think’ when it’s more of a ‘know’. And you’re probably scrolling through this wondering why I haven’t left yet.
How I didn’t know.
Welcome to the club on that one.
I always thought that I was good at reading people after being bitten one too many times. I had even spent the last fifteen years of my life with him. I could tell you what every micro-expression on his face meant as if I was an archaeologist examining his bones. I could read his eyes, his posture, the very gait in his walk. I knew the little things and the big things. The reasons for it all. If the world was ending, I could find him in the aftermath by just his very atoms. I could find him at the beginning too. Just as he could read me. Knew me. We might as well have spent the beginning of our star-dusted time together.
Yet I could not begin to tell you how I didn’t know this. How I didn’t see what Sam was.
We were high school acquaintances turned friends when we left for different colleges; re-connected through the same goal.
That goal being the Nekromanteion Ranch, located in north-western Wyoming. Over fifteen-thousand acres, filled with mountains and valleys and open plains, with history old and new carved out into the land. The original owners had used it for cattle and horses, and had kept their family there since 1885. I wasn’t sure why they were selling, but both Sam and I were tired of living in Boston. We wanted the country life–a revert back, a fresh start-and through our shared finances we were able to do it. Sam had inherited a rather large amount from his family over the years from what he had told me. And I, well, made money with my degree. Aggressively saving every penny until I was sure that I would die having saved everything and spent nothing. The ranch had merely been an opportunity for the both of us to have our own place. Far, far away from western civilization.
A place where it wouldn’t matter what degrees we held or what positions we carried.
I had grown up on a farm after all, if memory serves correct, as had Sam. Boston had been an imperfection within our current state. And the Ranch was perfect.
The ranch hands who stayed on with us called it Dawn Creek Ranch due to the sun rising over the creek-bed that separated the open front yard of the home to the woods and mountains. The home that sat on it was even surprisingly modern and didn’t take too many renovations though I left that for Sam to deal with. The closest neighbors nearby didn’t even seem to mind that we were new owners coming in. Everything fell into an odd place as if fate was pulling the strings.
The beginning harvest yielded nearly without consequence. The livestock flourished with little death.
We spent an entire year here in peace before the first incident.
I call it an incident, solely for the factor that the investigation was closed rather swiftly. The detective had come onto the property and didn’t return again after the first round of questioning. I say the first because it was never really followed up on. The weeks I had spent waiting to see his car pull up again had never come, and it was all due to the issue at hand.
The incident.
It had been the first time that a ranch hand had gone missing.
Tucker Abbott had been one of the ones that we had hired on. A drifter, my husband had called him, though seasonal employee would have been the better phrasing. He was a young twenty-something who told us that he spent his summers down in Arizona and Nevada. Instagram proved that he wasn’t trying to con us, and his work certainly showed the skill. Though he was known for staying out late at times. Drifting off for a walk in the woods or going into town for the nearest bar.
When he didn’t show up that morning at the barn gates we assumed he had gone into town and stayed out too late.
When one of the hands mentioned him going off into the woods on one of our paths we assumed he merely got turned around. We searched for him for hours until the sun finally set. Then when his belongings disappeared the next morning everyone assumed that he had decided to leave. Off on his way to another ranch. The season was ending after all. Though, as the one handling the finances for the ranch hands, I didn’t understand at the time why a nomad would forget their last envelope of cash.
Though I was quickly reassured that it meant nothing. Even when a detective showed up.
Perhaps I should have pushed it then when later that same day my husband had offered me dinners of meat that I had not prepared.
Finances aside, Sam couldn’t kill an animal for food if he tried. I had been the butcher on the ranch. Any meat not done by hand came from the supermarket in the nearest town. Only I could tell by looking at the raw meat sitting on the counter that it wasn’t made in some factory and bought.
No one had left the Ranch either.
“Did a hand do that for you?” I can recall asking, and Sam had merely grinned at me. Shaking his head as if I had told him that the sun was out when it was raining.
“I did this one.” He stated, turning back around to prepare the dinner.
I didn’t eat that night. Or any night he cooked after that until the meat was gone. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe I subconsciously knew something was wrong. Because butchering aside, Sam was the better cook and I never turned down a meal from him. There was just this pit that formed in me the moment I saw it. A hollow weight pushing down within my throat, against my heart.
Nothing changed outside of that though. Not even when that same detective came to investigate once again.
Not even when the other hands started to disappear one by one.
This is probably where you’re going ‘seriously?’ and ‘there is no way all of this could be happening and she never once questioned him’.
Well you’re partially right. I did question him, or more specifically, him over the hands. Only he brought it all down to them leaving due to seasonal work or because the others were leaving and they didn’t want to work. And I couldn’t necessarily argue back. The livestock thrived. The harvest yielded. Winter came brutal with a mother’s hate and spring came with a warm hand against the land. It got to the point where I was wondering why we even needed the hands at all to begin with. I had gotten used to the extra work. Felt myself come to life with Spring around me once again. I never even thought of Tucker Abbott until this past week when I walked in for dinner and found that same kind of meat sitting on the counter.
“I didn’t butcher that,” I remarked, pausing in my path to the kitchen.
Sam merely tsked at me, holding up a box of taco shell packets that we had gotten from the store a while back.
“I hope you’re hungry this time. I know how you like your tacos.” I know that you’ve been avoiding the meat, goes unsaid. I could see it in his eyes though. I watched it in the trace of his veins as he held the skillet and began to break the grounded meat apart. I didn’t want to say anything though. A part of me even considered the fact that I was possibly going crazy. Surely Sam knew how to butcher the animals, I hadn’t done any in a while, and I certainly wasn’t keeping track of any missing heads. He easily could have done this in my sleep and I was letting my head get the best of me. Even if Sam had never so much as killed a bug in all of the years that I had known him.
“Sure thing,” I had taken my seat then, “these past few months have just been off for me.”
Sam hummed at that, continuing to cook, and we shared silence until he was done.
The night then fell into routine. He made our plates, sat mine before me, before taking his seat. We didn’t say grace or anything, merely waiting for the other to dig in, in what could only be described as one waiting for the other to bite into a kill. I had finally gone first and kicked myself for over-thinking the first time.
The meat was delicious; not cow or chicken, or the usual deer. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was though as I let it sit in my mouth before swallowing.
“It’s not turkey is it?”
“Does it taste like turkey?” Sam mused back, stabbing his fork into the small side salad that he had made for us.
“Well…no…I just can’t narrow it down.”
“We can make it into a game.” It wasn’t a question either, causing me to frown. Our games were normally board games or chess, or ones filled with the forest floor and grounds of the open plains beneath my feet. Mind games were not ones that we usually played on one another. If you could even call this a mind game, but at the time I had considered it.
“A guessing game?” I asked, taking another bite.
It was so easy to watch the juices from the meat run down my fingers. Staining my hands.
“What other game would it be, Amelia? Come on. Like eye-spy that we used to play on road trips or where’s waldo.”
Waldo? I had almost smarted back then that he didn’t even know what the game even meant until I began to look around.
Kitchen decor had been his thing. I never once paid attention to our shelves, but I recognised the items.
A cowboy hat here. A lasso there. A silver pants chain. The worn leather of a wallet devoid of contents. A compass. A pocket knife. Things that looked abandoned as if placed there when coming in. The only thing that stood out from it was a silver watch that was far too business-like for either of us, and far too expensive for anyone that had worked for us.
“Is that your watch?”
“Close, but not quite.”
“It’s certainly not mine. Besides, when did we start leaving things like those in the kitchen?”
Sam merely took another bite, chewing slowly as he watched me, before he stopped. His jaw tightened.
“Have I ever told you how intelligent you are?”
“Not recently, no.”
“You’ve seen the watch before. Think on it,” Was all that he said.
The rest of dinner was quiet. Uneventful outside of the talk of the weather and nearby cow prices. I hadn’t even thought of our game that ended before it could begin until I found myself going down into the kitchen at 2am.
I couldn’t tell you why I did it.
I couldn’t tell you what brought me down there.
But I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth.
No matter how many times I gazed into my own eyes, brushing my mouth out until blood fell.
The leftover meat sat in a dish in the fridge. Covered in clear plastic wrap to keep it fresh. I had grabbed it without even standing there to think what it was that I wanted. Then I had gone outside. Sat in the grass until the cold earth sunk into my skin. Watching the juices of the meat stain my fingers and drip down my arms. Taco shells long forgotten in the cabinet.
One bite after the next. I was sure that Sam was going to find me shoveling the meat haplessly into my mouth. Gorging myself. Only he hadn’t come. Never even noticed I was gone. The next day he didn’t even question the missing meat. He merely prepared more. As if he had been saving up for the very occasion that I had finally decided to eat his new meals with new meat.
And it wasn’t until two days ago when I realized that I did remember where the watch had come from.
The detective had worn a watch just like it. The only model that I had ever seen.
It didn’t take long for my mind to connect after that. One night after another, as I ate the remains and sunk within the earth.
I think my husband is a cannibal, a serial killer, maybe even something else entirely. Something far older than one whose name is Sam.
But that means that I am too…and well I’ve always been the butcher.
So I ask you, reddit, now that I’ve laid it all out, what should I do about this?