I was once an ordinary man. My life was mundane and uneventful, and honestly, I loved it being that way. Parties and socializing terrified me. I’ve always been afraid to be in a large group of people, and I am awkward to the point of it being painful. What I mean is that I become overstimulated, which births a panic attack, and eventually, I vomit whatever I’ve eaten at said event, which is rather embarrassing. Being alone suited me just fine.
Believe it or not, I’ve been able to maintain relationships with the opposite sex. I’ve had several serious girlfriends, but none lasted six months. Eventually, they tire of staying home with me and watching movies or TV shows. They will want to hang out with their friends and show me off to them like some prized show dog, and then their friends are weirded out at how I stand around, barely speaking. The woman will find some way to call it quits and move on to someone more suited to their social needs.
That is, until I met Emma.
Emma and I have been together for seven years now and married for five of them. We’ve created a relationship that neither of us thought achievable, but both sought after in our dreams. She is like me in that she hates socializing, loves watching horror movies and TV shows, and has no desire to be anywhere without me.
It’s wonderful.
One night, I was awakened from sleep by the sudden horror of suffocation. I bolted upright in bed, clutching at my throat.
Something was stuck in my throat.
And it was crawling.
I could feel its little feet slowly clawing individually down the fleshy tube. Each little movement felt like a tiny needle digging into me from the inside. I managed to wake Emma by slapping her in panic.
“What’s going on?” she said sleepily. It took a few moments for her brain to register that this was real and not some lucid nightmare.
She screamed, “Oh my God! Paul!” as she wrapped her arms around my midsection and began to perform a very rough version of the Heimlich Maneuver.
One.
Two.
Three.
Instead of popping out of my mouth, whatever the thing was fell into my stomach. I could feel the thing plop into the space and burrow itself into my stomach wall. I’m not sure how to describe what that felt like, but the pain was enough to make me double over in jaw-clenching agony.
But strangely, once the thing was done, I no longer felt pain.
“Paul, are you all right?” she asked me repeatedly in her motherly way. I love how much she cares about me and always makes sure that I am okay.
We both concluded that it must’ve been the Chinese takeout we had for dinner, that maybe I had vomited some of it up into my throat, where it became lodged and caused that bit of traumatic hell. Emma handled it with the tenderness of a sweet, loving angel, making me feel completely safe and secure. About an hour later, I drifted back to sleep peacefully.
The next day, I felt fine and decided to go to work. While at work, I can fake my way through any social situation with an occasional “Wow!” or “That’s crazy!” and maybe even add a smile or nod for good measure. Most of the day, though, I am in my little cubicle by my lonesome. I answer my tickets promptly and call when needed, but otherwise, the ship stays afloat without me needing to leave my pod.
As lunch approached, I found the hunger pains more intense than usual. That morning, I stopped at a convenience store to refuel the car and bought a breakfast sandwich and one of those premade bottled iced coffees that are way overpriced. I usually don’t, but after the episode the night before that caused a lack of sleep, I needed something to kick me into gear. The clerk, an awkward-looking brunette girl I probably would’ve fancied in my younger years, was nice enough to warm up the sandwich. That hadn’t been enough to satiate my stomach.
An hour before lunch, I was beginning to get sick hungry; that feeling where you might pass out if you don’t eat something soon. I dug through my desk, but I found no snacks. For lunch, I was going to walk across the street to the sub restaurant to pick up the order I had placed on my phone. I also scoured through my desk for any loose change because our vending machines had yet to be upgraded to take cards, and they accepted cash only like this was 1999.
That was when I found something.
It was a pencil that I kept stashed away for when I had to write something on a Post-It Note. My growling stomach told my brain, “Eat it.”
And so, I did without any hesitation.
I chomped into the wood like it was a damn chocolate bar and holy crap, did it feel like I was eating one. My brain broke into that same endorphin rush that only the best candy bars can induce. Splinters of wood stabbed into my gums and the roof of my mouth, but it didn’t hurt. No, I would say the sensation was nearly orgasmic. I chewed and chewed until the wood was down to the little metal nib where the eraser was, which I discovered is called the ferrule. I hastily removed the little pink chunk of rubber and popped it into my mouth like a gumball.
I’m just thankful nobody walked by my cubicle while this was happening.
It didn’t stop there.
When I made it home, Emma had gone to the grocery store. I searched around the refrigerator, the cabinets, and the dry goods cupboard but found nothing appetizing. My mouth was dry, my stomach an earthquake of growling and tightness.
That was when I locked eyes on the kitchen sponge.
It was still moist from Emma cleaning the dishes earlier that day. I picked it up and inhaled the scent of the menagerie of old food, crust, and probably bacteria it had wiped away during its lifetime. The odors drove my taste buds mad. I had to take a bite.
My teeth sank into the juicy polyurethane, and my mouth flooded with dirty water. The sensors in my brain reacted as if I had just taken a large gulp of an ice-cold soda on a hot day. I ripped a chunk off the sponge the same way one would do with a thick steak. I chewed the piece, wringing every drop of moisture from it before I swallowed it. I did this repeatedly until the last piece entered my increasingly content stomach.
With that, my appetite would go back to normal.
This went on for over two weeks. I would eat whatever my stomach suddenly decided it wanted to. From crayons to various paper products to a urinal cake, I glanced at it in the office restroom.
Until the cravings began to change.
One morning, on my way to work, I was driving around a sharp curve when I noticed a dead squirrel lying on the road. My front right tire nearly hit it, but I was careful not to. I had plans for the deceased critter. Its death must’ve been painless because once I pulled over and got out to examine it, I discovered its head was nothing but a mushy puddle on the road. I walked over to the carcass, and the cravings kicked in again.
I squatted down to examine the poor creature and to say a short prayer, but then the smell of its blood and brains wafted up my nose, activating something in me. I saw a car coming in the other direction, so I scooped up the remains, wrapped them tightly in a plastic bag, and tucked them into my lunch box. By the time I had done this, the car had passed me moments before. I squatted down again at the spot where it died.
I had to admit it, but I licked it. I licked the asphalt slowly but eagerly, like a child with a delicious lollypop. Bits of fur and bodily matter caked the inside of my mouth, but it was the blood I was craving. Another car came around the bend, forcing me to stop and jump back into my car. I wiped my mouth with napkins from a fast food joint and chugged coffee to get the smell off my breath. When that didn’t work, I ate a handful of breath mints I had learned to keep handy for when those urges hit.
At lunch that day, I hid in the bathroom with my newly found prize. It felt like Christmas Day as I unwrapped the precious little gift. My normal mind took a backseat as I devoured the little corpse with the voracity of a starving wolf. Once I had eaten every piece of meat from the creature, I flushed the remains down the toilet and then washed off the aftermath in the sink.
About thirty minutes later, someone walked by my cube while chatting with someone.
“It smelled like a friggin’ corpse in there. Whoever did that needs to see a doctor ASAP.”
I had to cover my mouth to stifle the laugh that came out of me. I couldn’t stop myself. This horrible new habit that I had to hide from everyone was making me insane. It was a tremendous effort to keep this from Emma. I couldn’t let her find out, even if that meant lying to her. Having her even want to be around me was a miracle in and of itself, and if she found out about my dirty secret, I was afraid she’d leave me for sure.
Looking back, I don’t think I laughed because I thought it was funny – I was laughing because I was terrified. It only continued to get worse from there.
Roadkill satisfied those cravings for a time. The only ones that seemed to quench it for the longest time were the fresh ones that still had some blood left. I found myself intentionally swerving or speeding up to hit a rabbit, a snake, or even a bird if I had the chance. Birds are much more difficult to hit intentionally. I killed more in my driving history unintentionally than I ever did on purpose. The cravings were turning me into a feral beast, hellbent on doing anything possible to achieve satisfaction. I wondered if this is how junkies feel, the insatiable urge to curb the desire no matter the cost.
During this stage, there were a few times that Emma nearly caught me. I had been eating a dead possum off and on for an entire Saturday, hiding it inside the toilet tank in a plastic tub. I realized I hadn’t thought of a way to dispose of it without her knowing. I tried to sneak outside, but she was stationary on the couch by the front door, reading a new book. I couldn’t dump it out the window because then there’d be questions about who left the animal carcass, and it could point back to me. In a panic, I decided to try to flush the bones. Luckily, the head had been obliterated by traffic, so all that I had to flush were the smaller bones. At least, I thought that was going to be easy enough.
The toilet began to back up and flood the bathroom.
I began to yell obscenities and desperately tried to plunge the remains back down, but nothing was working. Emma heard the commotion and came in.
“What’s going on?”
“The damn toilet backed up.”
“Oh God, Paul. It smells like a corpse in here. What did you eat?”
“It wasn’t me. I think something got into the pipes and died.”
She did her best to help, but we were unsuccessful. When she proposed calling the landlord, I relented. They called a plumber, who was at our apartment within a few hours.
“I’ll be damned. Not the first time I’ve seen this, but it’s not very common. Looks like ya got a dead rat, a raccoon, or sumtin’ that got into the sewer pipes and drowned. Looks like it a big bastard, too.” The plumber told us, laughing at his observation.
No kidding, I thought.
The carpet had to be replaced, but the wood underneath appeared okay, according to the landlord. They were nice enough not to charge us anything for the ‘accident.’ Emma never questioned what the plumber concluded, and we went on with our lives. I, on the other hand, was turning into something that could’ve only existed in my nightmares before the choking incident. The cravings turned from occasionally running things over to me actively looking for small animals to kill.
One evening, after I had to work overtime to fix a major system-wide problem, I stumbled across the annoying orange cat that we nicknamed Fatty. Fatty was a very well-fed cat that had a habit of climbing onto the cars in the parking lot and leaving his little pawprints as evidence. His little pawprints also can with his little claws, which scratch your paint. That evening, Fatty jumped onto my hood as soon as I parked. Already annoyed at the day, I jumped out to shoo him away, but instead, he plopped his fat behind down and just stared at me. He was definitely taunting me.
Ha-Ha. You idiot. I run this place, and you happen to live in it. Go away so I can ruin the paint on your car with my tiny claws.
I yanked Fatty by the scruff and was met with swinging claws and growling. I remembered that I had forgotten to leave my boxcutter at work. After retrieving the box cutter from my pants pocket, I dispatched the troublesome Fatty.
That wasn’t all.
Once I smelled the blood, the cravings intensified. I lapped the pouring blood from Fatty’s neck, much like a cat would drink water. Oh, it was glorious. I felt satisfied that Fatty would no longer mess up our vehicles, but I was also relieved by my feeding. I retrieved a plastic bag, which I always kept handy lately, rolled up Fatty nice and tight, and then hid him in my lunchbox.
I ate him for a late-night snack and lunch the following day.
The odd snacking still occurs. Sometimes, I’ll drink liquid paper, eat the stuffing from chairs, and even drink glass cleaner. How all of this stuff hasn’t killed me, I’ll never know. Whatever triggers my hunger, I can’t say no; I physically can’t stop myself. It had become a full-blown addiction.
I was tracking down a stray dog when a homeless man grabbed me by the sleeve.
“Hey, mister. Ya got five bucks to spare?”
His breath had the rank smell of cheap vodka and tooth decay. He didn’t appear to have bathed in months, maybe even years. The poor fellow didn’t expect me to pounce on him and tear at his jugular with my teeth. He was the first.
Things have not been so simple since that started. Sure, I still get the urge to consume manufactured products and the occasional roadkill, but when the craving for meat hits, I try to stay away from other people. I do everything I can not to do it. The only thing else I could think to do was fully restrain myself, which is where I’m going with this.
The last and final straw hit me last night. Emma and I were watching one of our favorite paranormal shows when we decided it was time for bed. We made love and just laid there in the bliss of it. I rolled over and noticed that she had a scab on her leg from shaving. I picked at it, and she winced.
“Careful. I decided to shave my Sasquatch legs finally. Did you notice?”
“N-no. Just did.”
“Are you okay?”
She noticed that I was trembling. My muscles began to tighten, and sweat began to flow from every pore. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. She knocked on the door to check on me again, and I told her I was fine. I came out thirty minutes later, and she was asleep. Thank God. Thank whatever God is up there that I could get out of there.
I went into the kitchen and ate an entire pack of raw hamburger meat to at least drive down the intensity. After sneaking out the front door and down to my car, I began to cry.
“No! No! Please, God! Not her! Anyone but her! I can’t! I just can’t!”
I started thinking about ways to end my life. I concluded it was the only way to stop this unbearable condition once and for all. I don’t own a gun, but I have several large knives that I have collected since I was a teenager, but that sounded like it would be too traumatic. What if Emma found me like that? I couldn’t just leave her. I waited for her my entire life, and I’d leave her in such a cowardly act? I knew from my experiences that pills or other chemicals would probably not affect me in the same way as an ordinary person. What else could I do?
I thought of one other way.
I’m turning myself in.
Over the last two years, I’ve killed and partially consumed fourteen people across three neighboring states. Emma will not be one of them. I can’t hide this anymore, and she will not become another victim of this never-ending madness. I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep this up for this long. I suppose it was the desire not to lose her that kept me going.
Emma, if you’re reading or listening to this, I hope you know how much I love you. There’s something inside of me that I can’t stop, that I can’t control, and I don’t believe I can ever truly be rid of it. If I catch a certain smell of you, I don’t know if I can escape before it takes hold.
I can’t risk it.
I hope you find happiness again, and I hope you find someone better.
This wasn’t your fault.
This was that thing that crawled into my mouth that fateful night.
I hope you find someone who doesn’t turn into a cannibalistic monster.