Man- Eater Passage of the Day

"'Go ahead,' Heydahl repeated. 'We've had our fill.'

Katterson turned back to the meat. He pulled a plate from the shelf and plopped the piece of meat on it, and unsheathed his knife. He was about to start carving when he turned to look at the two others.

Barbara was leaning forward in her chair. Her eyes were staring wide, and fear was shining deep in them. Heydahl, on the other hand, sat back comfortably in Katterson's chair, with a complacent look on his face that Katterson had not seen on anyone's features since leaving the Army.

A thought hit him suddenly and turned him icy-cold. 'Barbara,' he said, controlling his voice, 'What kind of meat is this? Roast beef or lamb?'

'I don't know, Paul,' she said uncertainly. 'Olaf didn't say what -'

'Maybe roast dog, perhaps? Filet of alleycat? Why didn't you ask Olaf what was on the menu. Why don't you ask him now?'

Barbara looked at Heydahl, then back at Katterson.

'Eat it, Paul. It's good, believe me - and I know how hungry you are.'

'I don't eat unlabeled goods, Barbara. Ask Mr. Heydahl what kind of meat it is, first.'

She turned to Heydahl. 'Olaf -'

'I don't think you should be so fussy these days, Mr. Katterson,' Heydahl said. 'After all, there are no more food doles, and you don't know when meat will be available again.'

'I like to be fussy, Heydahl. What kind of meat is this?'

'Why are you so curious? You know what they say about looking gift-horses in the mouth, heh heh.'

'I can't even be sure this is horse, Heydahl. What kind of meat is it?' Katterson's voice, usually carefully modulated, became a snarl. 'A choice slice of fat little boy? Maybe a steak from some poor devil who was in the wrong neighborhood one evening?'

Heydahl turned white.

Katterson took the meat from the plate and hefted it for a moment in his hand. 'You can't even spit the words out, either of you. They choke in your mouths. Here - cannibals!'

He hurled the meat hard at Barbara; it glanced off the side of her cheek and fell to the floor. His face was flaming with rage. He flung open the door, turned, and slammed it again, rushing blindly away. The last thing he saw before slamming the door was Barbara on her knees, scurrying to pick up the piece of meat."
Robert Silverberg - "Road to Nightfall"
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"Later that afternoon Connolly sat back in a canvas chair on the deck of the launch. About half the Indians had returned and were wandering about the huts in a desultory manner, kicking at the fires. Ryker, his authority re-asserted, had returned to his bungalow.

'I thought you said they weren't cannibal,' Connolly reminded Pereira.

The captain snapped his fingers, as if thinking about something more important. 'No, they're not. Stop worrying, Lieutenant, you're not going to end up in a pot.' When Connolly demurred, he swung crisply on his heel. He had sharpened up his uniform, and wore his pistol belt and Sam Browne at their regulation position, his peaked cap jutting low over his eyes. Evidently Connolly's close escape had confirmed some private suspicion. 'Look, they're not cannibal in the dietary sense of the term, as used by the Food & Agriculture Organisation in its classification of aboriginal peoples.They won't stalk and hunt human game in preference for any other. But' - here the captain stared fixedly at Connolly - 'in certain circumstances, after a fertility ceremonial, for example, they will eat human flesh. Like all members of primitive communities which are small numerically, the Nambikwara never bury their dead. Instead, they eat them, as a means of conserving the loss and to perpetuate the corporeal identity of the departed. Now do you understand?'

Connolly grimaced. 'I'm glad to know now that I was about to be perpetuated.'"
J. G. Ballard - "A Question of Re-Entry"
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"They moved out into the channel and plunged through the bowers of spray into the heavier swells of the open current.

As they reached a sheltering bend and the figure of Ryker faded for the last time among the creepers and sunlight, Connolly turned to Pereira. 'Captain - what actually happened to Colonel Spender? You said the Indians wouldn't eat a white man.'

'They eat their gods,' Pereira said."
J. G. Ballard - "A Question of Re-Entry"
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It's not a passage but it's probably related to the thread topic:

"They're Made Out of Meat"

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"Laing crouched over the fire, testing the hind-quarters of the Alsatian with a skewer. He shivered in the cold air flowing up the face of the high-rise, with an effort repressing his memory of the bone-pit. At times he suspected that some of the residents had reverted to cannibalism - the flesh had been stripped with a surgeon's skill from many of the corpses. The lower-level residents, under constant pressure and discrimination, had probably given in to necessity."
J. G. Ballard - High-Rise
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The Healing Power of Death

Were Europeans once cannibals? Research shows that up until the end of the 18th century, medicine routinely included stomach-churning ingredients like human flesh and blood.

According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with "myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe" and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.

Finally, it was to be hung up "in a very dry and shady place." In the end, the recipe notes, it would be "similar to smoke-cured meat" and would be without "any stench."

Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century. But the meat to which he was referring was not cured ham or beef tenderloin. The instructions specifically called for the "cadaver of a reddish man ... of around 24 years old," who had been "dead of a violent death but not an illness" and then laid out "exposed to the moon rays for one day and one night" with, he noted, "a clear sky."

In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark. Medical historian Richard Sugg of Britain's Durham University, who is currently writing a book on the subject says that cadaver parts and blood were standard fare, available in every pharmacy. He even describes supply bottlenecks from the glory days of "medicinal cannibalism." Sugg is convinced that avid cannibalism was not only found within the New World, but also in Europe.

In fact, there are countless sources that describe the morbid practices of early European healers. The Romans drank the blood of gladiators as a remedy against epilepsy. But it was not until the Renaissance that the use of cadaver parts in medicine became more commonplace. At first, powders made from shredded Egyptian mummies were sold as an "elixir of life," says Sugg. In the early 17th century, healers turned their attention to the mortal remains of people who had been executed or even the corpses of beggars and lepers.

Paracelsus, the German-Swiss physician, was one of the most vehement proponents of body-stripping, which eventually gained popularity at even the highest levels of society. British King Charles II paid 6,000 pounds for a recipe to distill human skull. The regent applied the resulting distillate, which entered the history of medicine as "the king's drops," almost daily.

Scholars and noblemen, as well as ordinary people, swore by the healing powers of death. US anthropologist Beth Conklin, for example, quoting a 19th-century source, writes that in Denmark epileptics were reported to stand around the scaffold in crowds, cup in hand, ready to drink the red blood as it flows from the still quavering body. Skulls were used as medicine, as was the moss that tended to sprout from them. It was believed to staunch bleeding.

Human fat was supposed to alleviate rheumatism and arthritis, while a paste made from corpses was believed to help against contusions. Sugg even attributes religious significance to human flesh. For some Protestants, he writes, it served as a sort of substitute for the Eucharist, or the tasting of the body of Christ in Holy Communion. Some monks even cooked "a marmalade of sorts" from the blood of the dead.

"It was about the intrinsic vitality of the human organism," says the historian. The assumption was that all organisms have a predetermined life span. If a body died in an unnatural way, the remainder of that person's life could be harvested, as it were -- hence the preference for the executed.

The practice was not always a success. In 1492, when Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed, his doctors bled three boys and had the pope drink their blood. The boys died, and so did the pope.

Was all of this cannibalism? Sugg has no doubt that it was. Like the cannibals of the New World, the Europeans were fundamentally interested in the consumption of vital energy. For anthropologist Conklin, the European form of cannibalism is especially remarkable. Outside Europe, she notes, the person who was eating almost always had a relationship with the person who was eaten. Europe's cannibalism, on the other hand, was "distinctly asocial," Conklin writes, adding that human body parts were treated as merchandise: bought and sold for a profit.

By the end of the 18th century, however, the appeal had worn off. "With the Enlightenment, physicians sought to shed their superstitious past," says Sugg. In 1782, for example, William Black, a physician, wrote that he welcomed the demise of "loathsome and insignificant" medicines, like "dead men's skulls pulverized." These, and "a farrago of such feculence," had fortunately disappeared from the pharmacies, Black remarked.

An era had come to an end, and with it the interest in recipes like those of Briton John Keogh. The preacher, who died in 1754, recommended pulverized human heart for "dizziness." Keogh even provided a dose and instructions for use: "A dram in the morning -- on an empty stomach."
 
Thanks, Tobias. I was both fascinated and repulsed by this tasty bit of history. (I read it at what is referred to as the "dinner hour" here. Now I'll probably just stick to drinking beer tonight.) What is the source of the information?
 
From The Trouble with Being Born (1973), by E. M. Cioran (trans. Richard Howard)

Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal—less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.
 
Rufus is worse than a ghoul in his sin,
He walks in the graveyard merely to win
From each opened grave one infamous meal,
His meat from each carcass, he bends low to steal,
And is beaten to death by the horrors within.
Frank Belknap Long - "Rufus (Catullus)"
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... 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%20Goya-457596.jpg


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


cannibals_savouring_human_rem_hi.jpg


Francisco José de Goya "Cannibals savouring Human Remains"


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Francisco José de Goya ''Saturn Devouring One of His Sons''
 
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.
 
"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"
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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.”
 
"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
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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)
 
Ready or not, we all end up as filling for one of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies.
--- Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race.
 
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