Corpse Eater

Dear Beloved,

I have bad habits.
I will not lie.
I was a mere child suffering from starvation, alone with my older sister. Abandoned by our parents because of the bad economy that had come with the war, we scavenged the desolate landscape for any sort of food. We ate the abominations of mankind, the very lowest of civilization. Every day our fingers bled for digging the dirt for roots. The other orphans and abandoned children were no better; often times we resorted to violence for only a crumb of bread. We were no longer considered humans among the adults who sniffed their faces the other way. No doubt if I hadn't had my sister, I would've died, or gone insane. We nibbled the bones of rat carcass found in a garbage alley, slept near corpses of children our own age. We lived on despite the troubles. But one day a gang found us in an alleyway. my sister was beaten to death, covering me with her body to protect me.

I slept near my sisters corpse for days, too distraught to do anything to search for food. It would've been a useless attempt, even if I did get up. In a few days I was ill, and felt myself on the bridge of death. I could no longer stand nor crawl. I stared at my sisters cloudy eyes, the scent of rot in my nostrils. Flies buzzed over her, and maggots crawled in her open mouth. I thought of her death, and I finally realized she didn't want me to die. She had given her life for me. And I would do anything to honor her wishes. In her death she had given me one final gift. I reached over and wrung her pinky finger in my mouth, first sucking, and then chewing with the salty taste of my own tears. I lived.

After the war was over, the king happened to pass by and see me. He took an uncommon liking in me and put me in a high position. I lived a life of comfort. My days were spent in vain lavishness and the repetition of eating high quality food. But I never got the taste of my sister out of my mouth. It haunted me day and night, even giving me nightmares with the urgings to eat it again.

One day I couldn't stand it any longer. I paid a gravedigger to upend a coffin recently buried. The dead lying there was a child; barely five or six. I trembled as I took its arm and ate. And as I ate my fill of the curious taste, I was filled with an unbearable emptiness. A hole had grown inside me with every bite I swallowed. The war had reduced my life to something less than human, but this time I had severed every connection to being human myself. With my own hands.

I have paid the gravedigger 27 times since then. My obsession with human flesh is growing. I can't stop it any longer. But each time I eat, my emptiness grows, and I am filled with laughter. It bubbles up inside somewhere deep inside the crevices of my skin, and overflows with memory.

Shall we toast?
To my sister.
Whom I love.