Man- Eater Passage of the Day

[Cyril Tourneur]

... and what now? I'll have you know I'm not afraid of witches, spirits, phantoms, boastful giants, rogues, knaves, etc., nor do I fear any kind of beings except human ones ... they not only scratch and fight, they bite and spit, sting and pierce; on these other fatter ones feed, and they are worse ... there is no remedy except knowing how to put yourself beyond the reach of their cruelty.

Goya letter to Martin Zapater, February 19, 1785




Francisco José de Goya "Cannibals Preparing their Victims, or The Bodies of Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lallemant being skin"




Francisco José de Goya "Cannibals savouring Human Remains"




Francisco José de Goya ''Saturn Devouring One of His Sons''

[Daisy]

From Of Cannibals by Michel de Montaigne (1580), trans. John Florio (1603)

I think there is more barbarism in eating men alive, than to feed upon them being dead; to mangle by tortures and torments a body full of lively sense, to roast him in pieces, to make dogs and swine to gnaw and tear him in mammocks (as we have not only read, but seen very lately, yea and in our own memory, not amongst ancient enemies, but our neighbors and fellow-citizens; and, which is worse, under pretense of piety and religion) than to roast and eat him after he is dead. Chrysippus and Zeno, arch-pillars of the Stoic sect, have supposed that it was no hurt at all, in time of need, and to what end soever, to make use of our carrion bodies and to feed upon them, as did our forefathers, who being besieged by Caesar in the city of Alexia, resolved to sustain the famined of the siege with the bodies of old men, women, and other persons unserviceable and unfit to fight.

[G. S. Carnivals]

"According to the accepted folk-lore of the region, this curious place of which he spoke was an abandoned priory, deep in the heart of the woods, in which dwelt a strange company of the Undead, devoted to the service of Asmodeus. Often, upon the coming of darkness, the old ruins took on a preternatural semblance of their vanished glory, and the old walls were reconstructed by demon artistry to beguile the passing traveler. It was indeed fortunate that my brother had not sought me in the woods upon a night like this, for he might have blundered upon this accursed place and been bewitched into entrance; whereupon, according to the ancient chronicles, he would be seized, and his body devoured in triumph by the ghoulish acolytes that they might preserve their unnatural lives with mortal sustenance.

All this was recounted in a whisper of unspeakable dread, as if it were somehow meant to convey a message to my bewildered senses. It did. As I gazed into the leering faces all about me I realized the import of those jesting words, the ghastly mockery that lay behind the abbot's bland and cryptic smile."

Robert Bloch - "The Feast in the Abbey"

[Daisy]

From “The Cannibal Kings of Horror” (pub. 2008), by Mark Samuels

The two bodyguards carrying Bertrand’s corpse advanced upon the table where Scanlon, De Richlieu and Neblod were seated and then dumped their charnel burden face down on the surface.

The back of Bertrand’s skull had been broken open and there was a hole the size of a man’s fist in the middle of the mass of matted hair. The hole exposed the grey and convoluted surface of his brain.

“No need to stand on ceremony,” Neblod said to Scanlon, nonchalantly passing him a fork, “tuck in while they’re still warm. Consume only his brains though. The rest of him is for us all. We had the blood sent down in advance. Good way to pique an appetite.”

[G. S. Carnivals]

"However, when the housekeeper brought me a tray of food I found myself unable to touch the roast meat she had prepared. Although I had eaten nothing for forty-eight hours, I was hungry only for the flesh of my own species. And I would take that flesh, not with my bruised mouth, but with my entire body, with my insatiate skin."

J. G. Ballard - The Unlimited Dream Company

[Cyril Tourneur]

He soon realized that it was a whaleboat—double-ended and about twenty-five feet long—but a whaleboat unlike any he had ever seen. The boat’s sides had been built up by about half a foot. Two makeshift masts had been rigged, transforming the rowing vessel into a rudimentary schooner. The sails—stiff with salt and bleached by the sun—had clearly pulled the boat along for many, many miles. Coffin could see no one at the steering oar. He turned to the man at the Dauphin’s wheel and ordered, “Hard up the helm.”

Under Coffin’s watchful eye, the helmsman brought the ship as close as possible to the derelict craft. Even though their momentum quickly swept them past it, the brief seconds during which the ship loomed over the open boat presented a sight that would stay with the crew the rest of their lives.

First they saw bones—human bones—littering the thwarts and floorboards, as if the whaleboat were the seagoing lair of a ferocious, man-eating beast. Then they saw the two men. They were curled up in opposite ends of the boat, their skin covered with sores, their eyes bulging from the hollows of their skulls, their beards caked with salt and blood. They were sucking the marrow from the bones of their dead shipmates.

Instead of greeting their rescuers with smiles of relief, the survivors—too delirious with thirst and hunger to speak—were disturbed, even frightened. They jealously clutched the splintered and gnawed-over bones with a desperate, almost feral intensity, refusing to give them up, like two starving dogs found trapped in a pit.

Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)

[Piranesi]

Ready or not, we all end up as filling for one of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies.
--- Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race.