I wouldn’t call myself a cannibal. I mean, strictly speaking, I probably am, but I wouldn’t call myself one. I don’t have the desire to eat anyone else and I have never looked at someone and had the urge to consume them. I mean yeah they’d probably taste pretty good but I couldn’t live with myself if I ate another human. Me on the other hand, well that’s different.
I’ll get right to it; I’ve been eating parts of myself. I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s my body so I can do with it what I please. However, I know I am hurting myself and will probably die, so I wanted to put this out there. Probably not as a warning, I mean I would recommend trying a piece of yourself, the succulent taste of the meat is to die for. I just know that I wasn’t like this before.
I guess it all started when I went to that church. I was traveling to a different town for a work trip. I work as a Salesperson for a meat packaging company, so I have to do a lot of traveling to get in contact with lots of different farmers. This is all to say that I go to some pretty random places. It was on my most recent trip to a smaller farm when I stopped at a church. I am a devout Christian, or I was. I had been raised in the faith and never knew anything different. So, when I was out of town on a Sunday, I decided to stop at the nearest church I could find.
It looked like a normal church you could find anywhere in the bible belt, a small one-room building with wooden paneling that could probably use a new paint job. It didn’t strike me as a cult headquarters, just a normal church except for maybe the name. The Church of His Holy Body. It was certainly strange but not too different from the usual.
The building was small, like I said it consisted of only one room containing only six pews in total. In hindsight, I didn’t see a single crucifix anywhere in the building. Where the minister would usually present themselves though, there was a large ornate metal box. It was made completely out of what I assumed to be iron, with deep grooves and designs carved on every side of the box. It reminded me of the pattern you see on beautifully marbled meat, with lines of fat and flesh weaving around each other to create a beautiful steak.
Before I could question it any further, the priest of the church walked in behind me. He was a big man and could have been a bodybuilder for all I knew. He promptly welcomed me and asked if I was man of faith and I told him yes and was looking to attend a mass. With that, he smiled and directed me to sit down.
It was strange, sitting in the church alone, with the priest at the front reading verses solely to me, but again I didn’t see any issue with it. It wasn’t until the Eucharist that things truly became strange, he asked me to come to the front of the church to receive the sacrament and I did. I presented my hands as I usually did to receive the bread, but the man shook his head.
He told me that he preferred the method of directly placing the body into the mouths of the congregation. I had seen this done before and did not want to argue with his practices, so I simply listened. It was then that he reached into the iron box, I couldn’t see what was inside, but it sounded a little wet when he went to grab a hold of it. Before I could ask questions, the priest took his hand and placed what he had onto my tongue, and I closed my mouth.
I immediately realized it wasn’t bread, it was a wet warm chunk of something. It felt almost like another tongue resting atop my own. It was Meat. I swear I even felt it moving slightly, writhing like a slug to get deeper into my throat. I panicked and looked towards the man, about to spit the thing out, but he covered my mouth before I could react and whispered into my ear.
“It is the Meat that gives life; the spirit is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are flesh and blood.”
And like that, I swallowed it. I don’t know why I did it but that’s what happened. I quickly ran out of the church and sped away as fast as possible. I tried to throw it up, but I never saw it emerge with the bile. And it was after that that I lost my appetite.
I couldn’t eat anything for a long time, every food I tried tasted rotten in my mouth. Even Fettucine Alfredo, which was previously my favorite food, tasted like the slurry of juice you find at the bottom of the garbage can. I went to doctors to try and find a reason, but they simply informed me that there seemed to be nothing wrong with me. So, that was my life for a while. Eating rotten food that looked perfectly normal.
The first time I tried my own flesh was accidental. I’ve always had a sort of nervous tick where I bite my nails. Nothing major but the fact that I hadn’t been eating well had been putting a lot on my mind, so I had been doing it more often lately. It was as I was absent-mindedly chewing my nail that I first tasted it.
I had gone to a super upscale restaurant as a treat once and tried a Wagyu steak. What I tasted when I bit into my finger made that slab of meat taste like roadkill. I did catch myself though, at this point, I wasn’t ready to just bite off a piece of my finger.
It took two more days before I broke the ring finger on my non-dominant hand like a lobster. I drank the blood that poured out of the wound like it was the best seafood dish I had ever eaten in my life. It quickly spiraled after that. At first, I would only drink my own blood. Using a syringe to take some out before shooting it into my mouth like a sport bottle.
But I was still starving. I needed Meat. Just a slice of my bicep was a good fill. The steak knife from my kitchen block sliced through surprisingly easily which took me by surprise, I guess that’s what a good quality cooking utensil can do. The small amount of fat on my chest was something I could easily part with, so that was an easy cut. Ironically enough, the meat on my belly was very good. Maybe because it would be ending up so close to home in my stomach.
My first organ was a hard job. I had never tried to go to med school, and evidently, I wouldn’t have succeeded. The kidney didn’t even taste that good and only tided me over for the afternoon. The other organs had varying degrees of success. The appendix was as bland as its usefulness. The spleen was pretty tasty, having a rich aftertaste that hung on my tongue. One of my lungs was delicious, probably one of the best organs I had eaten so far. It reminded me of the delicious burgers after school with my mom and brother.
I even tried parts of my lower intestine; would you believe that? I don’t care if it’s digested properly, I just love the taste and the feeling my flesh brings me. It’s the realization that I am delicious and loved, that my body tears so beautifully when I rip at it with my teeth and fingers. That I am good Meat.
This has been going on for a long time now and it’s been great, but I’m running out of food. I’ve carved out pieces of my brain and heart, but even now I am still hungry. I mean, I should be dead by now, but I’m not. I don’t even know if I can die. I mean can Meat die? It’ll still just be flesh in the end. What I’m terrified of though is what will happen when I run out of food. So, I wanted to write this. Took me forever with only a couple of fingers and one eye, but I wanted to put my story out into the world. I don’t blame the priest at that church, if anything I’m thankful that he was able to show me how loved I am; but I want to keep eating and I fear that I will not be able to soon.