We’ve never met, but I’ve needed help for a long time. I’ve tried to let it go. To believe it was just a trick. That I was imagining the whole thing…but I finally have to admit it. I’m not well.
I haven’t had any problems until now, doctor. I forgot my past life. I escaped from the forgotten farm in Michoacán. I forgot my family and, most importantly, I’d left behind all the things I had been taught. But now, because of that damn app, I hear the song everywhere.
However, before I go to the source of the problem. Did you know that Pavlov’s experiment to test conditioning and extinction to stimuli was incredibly cruel? So cruel that surely if it had been done today, PETA or some other organization would have instantly stopped the procedures. The dogs they used were not free. They were tethered to a structure that kept them in one position, locked in a room with no stimulation other than the bell alerting them that they would soon eat. Basically, they were prisoners kept alive at the expense of a bell. But it doesn’t stop there.
It wasn’t enough for them to know that they were salivating. They had to quantify how much. They needed data, proof that it worked. So they exposed their glands, hooked them up to collectors and, because of this, a large number of dogs ended up dying slow, agonizing deaths as some bacteria killed what little life they had. And that was for the lucky ones! The few that survived were still part of the experiment. Now that they knew what conditioning was, it was necessary to eliminate the response. Now instead of giving them food every time the bell rang, they gave them something sour, nasty or just stopped feeding them. It wasn’t until the dogs’ lives were over that the experiment ended.
That was my life. I was a goddamn prisoner on a goddamn farm in the middle of nowhere and Pavlov was my goddamn father. I hope you are prepared, doctor, and that the Hippocratic oath is real, because I am about to tell you the crime of my whole family. My family was from Michoacán. From an unnamed ranch by the state highway, the freeway. And through which hundreds if not thousands of trucks and very few cars a month crossed.
The ranch or farm, as we called it, was a pretext of a house with few animals, no fertile soil and a hell of a heat. There were 8 of us on the ranch, all family and all equally selfish and aggressive. We fought for food, for space or for whatever was needed. I remember when I was a kid, my family would do anything to survive. Several times we tried to plant. My father did everything from fixing tires to renting toilets and washing cars. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I learned what the women in the family did and how they always brought food from the road.
In retrospect, it was our fault. My father, instead of caring, just took advantage of the profits generated by my sisters, aunts and mother. It is true that I regret it, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was all I knew. I thought these practices were normal. That this was the role of women, as my father did nothing to protect them or even to generate any different kind of profit. In fact, it doesn’t surprise me that even that monster was the one who ate and drank the most in the house. The one who took them early in the morning and only went to get them in the wee hours of the morning.
Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that the food would not last and neither would the strength of the women in my family. It wasn’t until one of my sisters, the youngest, came back before my father went to get her. She was bruised and bloodied, with a black eye and on the other, instead of the white of her sclera, it was painted with blood. Her dress was torn and no longer even managed to cover her completely.
My father, drunk, staggered to the door, embraced her and held her, asking what had happened. However, my sister did not speak, only trembled and dropped into my father’s arms. I ran to help my father. My sister looked like a noodle, she was pale and her countenance ceased to be that of a child and more like that of an old woman tired of life and counting the few breaths she had left to live.
My father came out of the farmhouse running toward the open road and I followed behind him. The first thing we saw was a red truck parked with the passenger door open and on the passenger seat was my mother, leaning over the driver’s seat with her back to us. My father stopped when he saw what my mother was doing, and yelled at her. She turned around and told him that everything was fine, that she had already calmed down the driver and that he would not hurt my sisters or aunts anymore. My father didn’t listen to my mother and went over to the truck anyway. Next to the right front tire was my aunt with a bruised face, hugging my cousin who was lying unconscious.
I am sure that at that moment the devil took over my father’s body or maybe, for the first time in his life, he gave importance to my sisters’ lives. Or maybe it was just the alcohol acting on its own. My father walked around the truck, opened the driver’s door and, between banging, scratching and pushing, was able to get him out of the truck. He picked up a rock that was on the road. While I was watching, he lifted the rock above his head and with all his strength drove it again and again and again at the driver’s head. My father screamed, my mother kept crying and the rock made that dry sound. You could hear it hit the pool of blood, bones and brains that the driver’s head had become.
My father grabbed my mother and aunt by the hair and dragged them away as he ordered me to take my cousin to the farm. I carried my cousin back to the house. My father came out and from the window I watched as he dragged the driver towards the house. The next thing I will tell you doctor is captured in my mind better than my first kiss or any other memory. My father took the body to the back where we took the chickens to slaughter, where we skinned the pigs to make chicharron and did not return for at least an hour. He opened the door and on his face he had the biggest smile I have ever seen in my life and a flame shone in his eyes as he told us, “There will be enough meat to eat today.”
He took me to the back of the farm, handed me the knife with which we gutted the pigs. Between pushes he took me to the back of the barn, where I saw the skinned body of the driver, which lacked a head. “Come on boy, you know we can’t waste anything,” my father said as he pushed me towards the driver’s closed abdomen. I started to cut open the driver’s belly, knowing that if I resisted my father was going to hit me as he had done before. He turned around and turned on the radio. It was an old radio that barely worked and only reached moderate amplitude frequencies. However, and this is where the trouble starts, my father would not only rob the driver of his life but also eventually drive the truck off a cliff. The only thing we kept was the cassette tape of The Animals which contained the song “House of the Rising Sun”. A song my father played that day over and over and over again until we had removed all the flesh from the body and kept all the organs we could eat.
At first only my father ate. No one else dared to try the pozole that didn’t have pork in it. It wasn’t until my little sister, the most beaten, decided to break the silence and slurp the broth and eat the meat. Little by little we began to venture out to eat and at 15 years old my stomach had never been so full.
That night no one talked about it. That night we all had full bellies, my cousin had already woken up and no one had trouble sleeping. We had pozole for breakfast again and with that body we could eat for weeks. I’ll be honest, when we finally finished the driver, my father didn’t have to convince my sisters or anyone else. They were happy that they didn’t have to go on the road, that they had given up the issue of standing on the side of the road waiting for someone in need to come along. The next time they went out on the road my father, instead of staying inside to drink, decided he would drink near where they were, hiding in the grass and trees. Waiting patiently with the rock he had initially used and a machete tightly clipped to his belt.
As I said, thousands of trucks passed by, so it was only a matter of time before another one stopped wanting a service he would not receive, at least not completely. I waited at the farm, preparing the slaughterhouse, cleaning and sharpening the knives. I knew that as soon as my father would arrive, he would want to start as soon as possible.
The experience was completely different this time. First the women arrived at the farm, singing and humming, then my father dragging an even bigger and fatter man than the last one; just like the other one, this one lacked a head, only this time the cut was done more precisely and I guess with the machete. He took him to the back. My father turned on the radio and played the same damn song, then we undressed the body and began to skin it.
We cut muscles, took out organs and burned what we couldn’t use. Again the music didn’t stop until we were done. I knew I was doing wrong, I knew what we were doing was sinful and unforgivable, but, doctor, have you ever been hungry? Have you ever been unable to sleep because of the pain in your belly? I was so skinny I could feel the worms in my stomach moving around looking for something to feed on, but for them and me there was nothing.
Again we ate for weeks and this practice became recurrent. To be honest, I don’t know how many people I skinned. It could have been 15 or 30, but at least I know that for two years we didn’t lack food on the table. It was only a matter of time before word got out about the trucks disappearing and the dangerous curve where they had found so many trucks. There was less and less traffic and it was that which made my father take different measures. As I mentioned, my father also fixed tires. So, we stopped using the women as decoys and started putting glass or sharp objects that would cause flat tires so that they would stop and seek my father’s help, but even that was not enough. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when my older sister, in her attempt to make a better life for herself, met one of the customers whose tires we punctured. My father was furious. He knew he was losing one of his daughters and probably the prettiest woman in the house.
Scared, I thought that with the guy’s recurring visits he would eventually suffer the same fate as the drivers. Unfortunately I was wrong. As he had already done almost religiously, the guy came over, talked to my sister and left. I watched from afar and inside I dreamed of leaving too. I hated the ranch and I hated my father. I went back to the house and could hear my father approaching with a heavy bundle. I looked out the window and could not recognize the body, however, I could see my mother hitting him and trying to stop him. I could see tears, anger and fear in my mother’s face, and the moment my father crossed the threshold of the door, I discovered why my mother was so terrified.
My father, without telling me the reason, without saying anything to me, without any other gesture, threw the knife at me. He turned on the radio and hung my older sister on the hook on which we had cut up so many people.
I could not believe my eyes. Margarita… My sister was barely breathing when my father cut her throat and turned to look at me to say “Are you waiting for an invitation or what, fucking kid? Get to work!”
Of all that I have confessed, what hurts me the most is knowing that I did not object and instead I went to work. We undressed her and did the ritual that we had been doing for years. At that moment I did not cry. I cried that night when I took my first bite and knew it was the softest, most delicious meat I had ever tasted.
That night, when everyone was already asleep, I knew I couldn’t go on with this life. It was only a matter of time before I was next. So I grabbed what I could, the money my father had saved to spend on alcohol, and ran away. I walked until a car stopped and took me to the nearest town.
The problem is not only everything I have confessed to you. I learned to leave the past where we all leave it, in the past. I learned to forget the taste of human flesh and, most importantly, I forgot the hot days and the smell of blood emanating from the slaughterhouse. However, what really bothers me is that just like Pavlov’s dogs, every time I hear even a part of that damn song, which to my damn luck is trending because of TikTok, I get the urge to eat human flesh. An urge that at first I could ignore, but now I can’t control.