The Cannibal
(Circa 2006-ish)
(Circa 2006-ish)
The cannibal didn’t put on his low beams for anyone. He cruises down the Highway at whatever speed limit, with his high beams on.
He drove until he got hungry. The hunger always came. Whenever it did, the cannibal would pull over and depress the trip odometer with practiced ease. The hunger usually hit around mile 256. The cannibal never kept records, but kept a sharp mental record.
The odometer clicks 270 and the hunger springs up like salmon colored blossoms in his middle. The cannibal slows down and pulls over just as the trip odometer clicks 271. Almost as if caused by the odometer click, the hunger begins to bloom and fill his torso. The hunger must be obeyed, the cannibal found. He reaches and pushes the reset button and before he settles back into his seat, presses it again in urgency. This has been happening more and more often. One time doesn’t seem to be enough. Maybe it is blooming urgency, he doesn’t know but he sure as hell didn’t like it.
After he pulls over, the cannibal has a variety of tricks to get the prey to come to the predator. He doesn’t harvest the first Good Samaritan that happens to stop, but chooses like a spinster choosing a watermelon. Instead of thumping he uses his charm to find the soft spots. But he smells for freshness just the same.
When the odometer ends on an odd number (like 271, like today) the cannibal pops his hood and turns on his hazards. The thing he has noticed that it never matters if he turns off his engine or not. People still stop.
The cannibal has an eclectic palate. He would just know who his prey was after his verbal thumps and olfactory investigation. Once he had preyed upon a crusty old biker named Lance “Luv’em’up” Jones. He attempted to give the cannibal a ride into town on the back of his Harley via some back roads that were a shortcut he and his crew rode sometimes. Around the second bend in the dirt road, the cannibal took a hefty bite out of Luv’em’up’s neck. He tasted like leather, salt, and smoked ham. “I bet you would be surprised how much you taste like pig” the cannibal said with mirth in his voice as he took his second bite out of Luv’em’up’s forearm. By now the biker was screaming out of panic, fury, and fear. The cannibal was surprisingly strong and the hulking biker Lance “Luv’em’up” Jones was no match. The cannibal held him down and ate at his leisure and not too much; only until the hunger was appeased.
He had eaten many like the biker and then riding off on their bike or Audi or Cadillac. Once he ate a single mother and her 6 year old daughter. He sometimes reflected at how sweet the mother tasted and how bitter the daughter was. “Wasn’t quite ripe yet” he would say to himself and chuckle his cannibal’s chuckle, deep in his throat and hollow. But a person’s nature never reflected on how they tasted. The young girl was bitter although she was innocent. There was once he was picked up by a deviant that meant to rape and kill him. He tasted of cotton candy.
But now the hunger was here, the Hunger was blooming, the Hunger was urgent to be sated. The cannibal stepped out of his car to complete the illusion. Almost immediately a Cadillac with dealer’s plates pulled up with a man in a dark suit at the wheel. The cannibal walked up to the passenger door and was almost over powered by the sour smell emitting from the opening window. “Keep up the illusion” he whispered to himself as he steeled himself. The man at the wheel had a thousand dollar smile with ten dollar teeth framed by a pencil moustache. The cannibal stuffed a sucker at the stereotypical used car salesman sitting at the wheel with his oily, slicked back hair and thirty dollar suit. But the smell was almost too much. Pomade, stale swear, cheap old spice wear, last night’s beer came out in the perspiration on his forehead, and the last smell, the smell that told the cannibal “no need to keep this melon, it’s rotten” was of diarrhea. The warm runny kind that kids got after eating too many berries or when you get the flu.
“Everything all right? Need a hand?” The salesman sounded far away. Every time he spoke and opened that wide mouth with the ten dollar teeth, the smell wafted out and stronger. Definitely like warm, flu diarrhea.
The cannibal dug deep, put a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his face and almost crooned, “No, thanks anyway. I already called for a tow on my cell phone.”
The salesman moved his hairy meat slab of a hand and said “Ok, good luck pal” before flashing his thousand dollar smile again. “If you need a new car, give me a call. I’ll set you up real well” the salesman says as he produces a business card as if from nowhere.
“Thanks, I just might” the cannibal says through his smile, thinking he might just have to burn the tips of his fingers to relieve him of the smell of this particular business card.
The caddy sped away as the cannibal nonchalantly lets the card slip from his fingers to the ditch. Thankfully the smell leaves him as well.
He walks back to “his” car, counting his steps absentmindedly, avoiding cracks and the painted lines. Once back to the car, the panic starts oozing out from around the hunger bloom. This panic feeling always comes after the first car leaves. Maybe it’s from the concern of a highway patrol coming, maybe not finding his prey, or the next car will stop even just a step short or long of this number in his head, the number of steps from the first car. Right now it is eight.
“Eight, eight, eight, eight,” ticks off in the cannibal’s head. It almost distracts him from the hunger. He almost misses the roar and scrape of a car half dragging its muffler.
The cannibal slowly turns with his sharky charm smile on his face. “Eight, eight, eight, eight” clicking, ticking, softly in his head. His fingers move with each step to the brown station wagon belching exhaust, counting, counting, counting each step. Nothing pervades his counting, the counting. “Eight, Eight, EIGHT!” The voice in his head screams as he reaches step eight, right I front of the passenger door.
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