Three hours from the college, fifteen months from home, two friends left behind and four people at home waiting, a long drive. A panorama of picket fences, suburban homes, small businesses and people on walks, Sunday drivers, plugging up lanes on my way home, finally going home. The smell of cut grass signaling and the sound of people laughing behind a fence behind a castle in a tiny manor house for a tiny manor lord and lady, princes and princesses with packs and pencils and polo jackets. The landscape becoming more and more familiar, successive waves of nostalgia, drowning me in the fresh air I had rebreathed millions of times. Passing by school buildings long outgrown, which sat like dollhouses I had become too big to fit in, discarded but fondly remembered toys. Passing by neighbors of neighbors, passing by neighbors, till the sound of a gravel driveway snapped the half of my mind dazing out of its half reverie and set me wholly home.
Home, a cheery house nestled deep in a neighborhood of other cheery houses, arms held close but now outstretching, windows empty but inviting, and I was home.
A cheer, a bustle, a rush out the door, two parents, two siblings, familiar faces too unfamiliar for my liking, though I pushed that aside and cursed myself for not visiting more often. Smiles wide, teeth bared in greeting, cheering remembrance renewed of my existence, feasting their eyes on me, I feasted on them, and before I knew it we were saying grace at the dinner table. Baked potatoes with skin peeled off, grilled ears of corn, an apology for lacking a meat dish (“we would have had one but it got burnt” said my father smiling, turning up faint wrinkles), mostly memories being eaten, making up the largest portion of the filling meal, eaten with the ears and spoken with the mouth when not eating, spewing convivialities and questions and answers, supping sound and substance and the semi-sweet souvenirs of an abandoned but appreciated life here. Siblings ate with gusto, larger than I remembered, girl and baby-no-longer-baby, still thought of them that way.
After supper, after continued talking, after being shown to my mostly-unused but still repurposed room, bed made, little luxuries for long-lost sons, my father pulled me away.
Eyes bright, hair white, moving with certainty if with less grace, smile, teeth, weathered lips on weathered face, an invitation to do something we hadn’t done in a while.
“It’s been a good two years, I know,” he said, half-sad but happy for me to be back, “but I’m sure you still know how to do it! We used to go out and do a little all the time, when you were younger.”
“What is it?” I asked, somewhat mystified, racking memory filled with various fun times and family outings.
“You really don’t remember? Well, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it after we go do some. Like riding a bike. I’m sure your memory is just a little hazy, probably get it back as soon as you see it.”
“Well, If you aren’t going to tell me, I guess I’ll go see,” I said, looking forward to this memory-lost childhood activity.
After a brief minute to get shoes on and for him to get equipment, hidden in a long coat, we went on a long walk. It was silent, except for the cicadas and the occasional bird in the pond beside us, walling us in between water and white picket fences. We did nothing to break the quiet, enjoying being together but not talking. It had been a while since we had that luxury together.
After about fifteen minutes, he paused, and turned towards one of the houses, breaching its fence through the little door with the little latch, lift and open, and we walked in. It was unfamiliar, though there were many houses from this area that I didn’t recognize; I didn’t see any cars, but the lights were on. I thought that it might be the house of some childhood friend that I had never visited, or a new friend of my father’s.
He knocked on the door, stepped back, waited at the door of the small house, till a middle aged man stepped out. He had about a second before my father whipped out a hatchet and buried it in his skull.
Crack like a watermelon, black in the twilight like chocolate syrup over pavement, candy crunch as nose hits ground and falls forwards, no sound but a thump can be heard further, pool of blood near pink flamingo standing vulture-like on the lawn, hatchet in hair in head in hollow wedged out by well-worn metal with well-worn swing. Father eyes him over, kicks off the corpse’s shoes, stuffs him in a bag with my help (my help?), we carry him unnoticed in the quiet neighborhood, we move the corpse, we engage in fun childhood activities still unremembered, I go to bed.
In the morning I remembered.
Wretched sickness, sickness leading to near retching, nausea at my actions. I feel a kind of spiritual unwellness, shocked bystander sins becoming slowly revealed to a no-longer dispassionate observer, mind suddenly buzzing bee-in-bonnet, a crawling feeling in my soul. A need to wash my hands of this, but blood like this is thicker than water. I feel a kind of horror at knowing this house may be built of chipped blocks and rotten apples from nearby trees, but reduced and coupled with half-frayed family ties and paternal neckbands, and a kind of denial, washing over me with my quiet reedy gasps and self-crocodile-tears, till I tried to refute truth and pretend that it was a nightmare, a fever dream, a shocking collage of disparate elements.
A few minutes later, I walked into the kitchen, and was hit by the heavenly aroma of bacon. This wasn’t just thin pork, no, this was home, this was happy family mornings, this was one of the best parts of a happy childhood. I basked in the scent of being back home before realization hit.
The savory smell seemed to turn to the stench of rotting meat, or of burning flesh, and I tried not to shudder. This wasn’t just thin pork, no, this was…
Sickeningly familiar. Perhaps all bacon smells this way, or maybe it wasn’t… him. I wasn’t sure how to ask.
My mother, familiar (often-teased) clumsiness shown by apron splattered with a new drop of grease, fat rendered from sources I would have liked to forget, asked why I looked so pale.
I said that I was feeling sick. I was not lying.
Carefully, weighing options I tried not to consider lest it let out my loathing, I asked where it was from, saying that I wouldn’t have any as I was feeling a little nauseous, perhaps from some minor sickness that I had picked up.
Concerned and cooing over my sickness, but happy to help, she moved me back into my room before answering my question.
I tightened as she laughed, nervous.
“It’s from your hunting trip last night, sweetie. Don’t you remember the tradition?”
My stomach turned, but I tried not to let it show, tried to not let my horror out, kept quiet before nearly crying with all this, this savagery. Was this a cruel joke? Had my family been replaced? Or, worst of all, had I somehow simply forgotten engaging in cannibalism, lost in a haze of childhood memories?
By suppertime, I felt ready to confront them; teeth set, stomach growling with the hunger pangs of hours without food (that I had refused to take), I walked out into the living room.
My resolve melted like butter in the warmth that surrounded me. Four concerned, but smiling faces, sitting around the nearby dinner table, inviting me in.
I struggled to speak, struggled to lay any allegation against my family. Uncertainty ruled for a second, before my father spoke up.
“Good of you to join us! Nice to know that you’re feeling better.”
I nodded, against my will, and sat down before barbecue and an array of sides. I took a moment to take the whole horrid spectacle in.
The meat looked normal, nonhuman (but could I even tell, a son of this family?), but I could tell from my father’s pleased looks that it had been the prey, the neighbor, the human being that we had gone hunting for, and that he had butchered. It glistened, though, savory in sweet sauce, shining in the light from the lamp above, glazed and tender and soft, succulent flesh, flesh in that delicious barbecue sauce. It smelled delicious, and worse than that, familiar.
I smiled wanly, trying to hide my disgust, and my stomach, to my disgust, rumbled noisily.
“Oh, you poor dear, you haven’t eaten all day!” exclaimed my mother, and she started to reach for the barbecue (I barely hid a shudder) before my father stopped her. He looked me in the eyes, and smiled.
“There’s something very important we need to do first. Now, son, are you ready to speak?”
I nodded weakly.
“Well then, go ahead and say grace!”
I could not help but feel like it was blasphemous the whole time I spoke.
After the prayer over the human meal, the lights were dimmed, and for a second in that half-light the four seemed to transform into some horrid cannibal grouping out of a painting, children animal-like and nearly slobbering over the meal set out in front of them; mother wrinkled and fat over the unholy preparation, eyes still lidded from prayer; father bent over it like a vulture; their mouths seemingly covered not by shadows, but by blood; unrecognizable, strangely different replicas of my family, a den of man-eaters lit, not by ancient torch, but by modern lightbulb. I nearly shuddered before the vision passed away from my eyes.
I could feel them staring at me.
Perhaps I still had time to back out.
But what would I do? Who could I tell? And how could I live with this, all this that had happened?
A small piece was ceremoniously sliced off from a larger rib, and proffered before me, profane offering, which I took gingerly, like anyone would when holding a piece of a corpse a few inches away from their hand.
It smelled of barbecue, well-cooked meat and childhood weekends.
Four faces, expectant.
It took me a moment to realize it after I had done it.
It tasted just like I remembered.
It’s nice to be back home.