The Urban Cannibal

The Urban Cannibal (2016)

William Humphrey scurried away from the refuse pile with a decayed bone between his teeth. He was a hungry man, but it was not traditional dining that he was seeking. He needed to eat a young boy's hand to fulfill the current month's consumption requirements, which were written out with marker on the flap of an old cardboard box. The chicken bone in his mouth was merely a deterrent, a slight distraction away from his impending psychosis.

The local elementary school was an option for fresh meat, but how would William Humphrey acquire such a delicacy? Disguising himself as a janitor and drugging a kid into submission at the end of the school day was an option. However this would inevitably cause a scene, and even if it did not, the parents would surely discover that their child was missing. William had no immediate solution. Days dragged on and the chicken bones he constantly devoured to stay mildly sane never got any better. Reality was but a thin veil. William wondered why the poultry consumption did not quell his cravings. Must the target to be devoured be sentient and intelligent? Why was farm animal meat not enough?

William did not have a job. He survived on disability checks after the state declared him mentally unfit to work. This occurred when his employer reported him to a health facility because he could not stay on any kind of schedule. William would come into work during completely random hours, and his employer decided enough was enough when he showed up at four in the morning and began to pound on the front door of the office building.  An experienced cannibal, he had never once been caught practicing the art. It was common reality, the routine of daily life, that he lacked the skills for. The days seemed to fall out of order during his most ravenous cravings for flesh. Before William knew it, an entire month had passed and his July prerogative was then void. The cravings persisted stronger than ever. Each night inside his tiny cluttered apartment he fell asleep sweating and trembling.

In August William began to question himself, his identity, and whether or not he was even truly alive. He was on a court order to take medication for psychosis, but he did not adhere to it. It made him dumb and slow, he reasoned. He also concluded that the only way to live life was through natural means. Foreign substances and drugs in the body  made life unnatural, and so he abstained from taking such things even though he was self-aware of his own downward spiral.

On a warm September night William stumbled into the back of a hospice parking lot. He had given up on finding young flesh and decided to find an old corpse to chew on. Delusion and dissociation plagued his mind, for William himself was completely unaware of how he ended up at the hospice in the first place. During a small moment of lucidity he deemed to himself that it was fate and then continued on his delusional prowl.

And then a chance! Two workers were carrying a large bundle wrapped in plastic through the back door. William waited near the loading dock and then pounced on the one in front with uncontrolled rage. The second man seemed shaken and moved in to attempt to restrain him. William, however, would have none of it, and knocked the man unconscious with a swing of his right fist. The first man, deeply struck by the moment's panic, ran towards the front door while screaming for security. This gave William a moment to examine the large bundle, which he assumed was a dead body.

Inside were dozens of aluminum cans and plastic bottles. He glanced up in fear and saw Alvin's Recycling Company written on the side of the truck.

"Help me!" William screamed.

"You had a bad dream, William," said the psychiatric nurse suddenly by his side. The plastic-wrapped bundle, the unconscious man, the hospice dock, and the truck were nowhere to be found. Blindingly white fluorescence surrounded William. Moments later he discovered that his arms were immobilized and bound in a straight-jacket.

The nurse gave William Humphrey a psychotropic injection and he went into another deep, calm sleep in his assigned bed.