Blood trickled from the rot bandages strangling my jaw into working order, crimson coalescing in a message scrawled into the snow. “No hope,” it read, though on further inspection it proved to be a note perfect chart of Allied troop movements during the Battle of the Scheldt. On furthest inspection, a badger erupted from its underground cavern and mangled the very tip of my penis, a fatal mistake as a discharge of urine distracted the creature enough to allow the execution of a Salvadoran Neck Gamble, a technique meant to crush the vertebrae of either a small beast or an especially tenacious midget. Regrettable, as it was always my preferred of the family Mustelidae, but desperate times call for wrecking forest animals’ shit.
I’d intended to follow the direction of migrating birds until the flock of geese which I’d believed directed me south collided with a flock of geese migrating the opposite way. A protracted clash of squawks and feathers resulted in the obliteration of both groups, casting my plan to ground like the majestic beasts on which it had been based. I tried to stay optimistic by looking at it as scoring a bushel of raw goose livers for which the Frenchmen in Quebec would pay a dumb king’s dowry. That was provided I could ferret them out the forest, encroaching on all sides with its trees. They taunted me, providing the oxygen I and most other organisms needed to survive yet damning me to wander. I hung the geese from a nearby pine and made a mental note of my exact coordinates, to which I would return with the burlap sacks necessary.
Sutures burst on my neck. I remembered little, except that I was a human and hated my parents. The former was a matter of species and the latter was informed by an inner thigh tattoo reading “Lydia + Howard, Shit People, Shit Parents.” Scalpel work left a lattice of oozing stitches, as hastily applied as they were amateurish. Vital brain functions may have been tampered with, scarring the precious lobes powering the autonomous functions of breathing and speaking and ejaculating into the gutter behind an Albertson’s.
A dirt road proved my salvation, more than any of the various deities to which I subscribed. I muttered short praise to the Sumerian sky god Anu and stuck into the regulation 90 degree hitchhiking position the thumb which seemed less replete with gangrene.
Hours passed, fluids drained themselves of my various orifices, yet still I waited. A return to the forest would admit the defeat of my belief in the safety of civilization and roads, both dirt and paved. It was only when my dehydrated brain began hallucinating that I could peer into the intrinsic math of the universe which showed my thumb to be angled only 87 degrees. A slight adjustment, and around the corner came a semi, silent despite the acrid smoke belching from its every exhaust port. The passenger side door swung to the reveal of an albino, garbed in the usual trucker fare. His cap bore the phrase “Licensed Pussy Inspector #69.”
“Long way from polite society, eh comrade?” he giggled through a mouth of incisors.
I asked him two queries: what gave him the idea that I subscribed to the communist ideology and how many canines the human mouth was intended to hold. He pointed at my feet, where anal blood had pooled into an exact likeness of Mikhail Gorbachev, and explained that he had been born with a genetic condition which required him to eat several hundred pounds of raw meat a day. In order to aid chewing, he had replaced his teeth with dentures hewn from the teeth of a pack of endangered wolves he’d stalked and killed with the blessing of the Canadian Department of Wildlife Bribery.
“I never felt prouder of myself as a human being and predator than when I shot those wolves with a sniper rifle. My one regret was not individually snapping their pups’ necks, but I content myself with the knowledge that they must have starved to death. It was in these very woods, such as we are within now.”
Clear warning signs did not turn me away despite recognizing them, and I stepped into the cab supposing that I would wrest control of the truck from its owner should it become necessary. A plastic hula girl sat on the dashboard, paint dull in its crotch area. A stack of CDs betrayed his enjoyment of the solo works of mid-card boy band members, yet no albums by the boy bands themselves. A plastic mug filled to the brim with ground beef sat in a cupholder. I asked what year it was, he replied it was sometime between 1988 and 20XX. He gave his name as Wardell Lefebvre, I gave nothing.
“Are you familiar with any of the classic Canadian cryptozoological beasts of myth?”
I’d chanced a run-in with the Manitoba Walterbird, a large eagle with a distinct mustache and a taste for ham sandwiches which had left us in opposition. The Ogopogo had attempted to romance me during a late night swim, but kissing it square on the mouth proved a turn off for the serpent. I had met a Sasquatch on several occasions, but every time I handed it my business card the beast would crumple and eat it.
“The Wendigo, do you know of the Wendigo?”
A pale, emaciated creature with a taste for human flesh. Legend said that those who engaged in cannibalism would transform into the Wendigo, destined to forever roam the wilderness in a state of constant starvation. Why that monster?
“Ah, no reason.”
It was then that I noticed the bowie knife stabbed through my left hand. I remarked that it was a poor substitute for a knife block and duly fainted, awakening later chained nude in the back of the truck. A mound of corpses sat opposite a pristine meat grinder. Lefebvre wore an apron and little else, blood-stained meat clever waving through the air.
“You are an interesting bag of meat, sir.”
I thanked him for the compliment, as it was one of the few my mother had granted. I inspected my left hand, where no trace of wound remained.
“You are exceptionally hard to murder.”
I repeated that I thanked him for the compliment, as it was one of the few my mother had granted.
“Slitting, slicing, cleaving, ripping, all for naught. Though they are not without their prizes.”
At my feet, a pile of organs, fingers, skin, bones, all of with which I felt a deep connection, each of them my severed children.
“You are a fleshy miracle, an endless meal sack.”
I replied that I was no man’s sack. He sunk the cleaver into my hand, dismembering my more useful fingers. Purple foam erupted from the wound, which sealed itself and began reforming its digits.
“We will have a bargain. You will give your meat.”
I felt that I made out very badly in the transaction. He raised the cleaver again, but the howl of a police siren stopped its descent. Lefebvre sighed, waddling towards the front compartment.
“I’ll return with new beef momentarily. If you’re lucky, I might let you ravish it before it dies.”
Our respective conceptions of luck were irreconcilable. In this momentary respite, my release would come at the price of pain. Better that than surviving as a madman’s personal Jack in the Box. Tendons and cartilage snapped as I strained against my bindings. With a wrench, a hand flopped to the ground. Then another, then a foot, then another foot, and finally, with much consternation, the chain wrapped around my penis was rent asunder. Extremities slowly regenerating, my fetal fingers gripped the cleaver.
The rear of the truck opened wide as Lefebvre tossed the disfigured corpse of a policeman inside. I set upon him with a roar the onomatopoeia of which was roughly OULUGLURWARLG. A wide swing left the cleaver wedged between his ribs. His jaws closed around my shoulder and a swing of his head pulled its pound of flesh. He wrested the blade free and severed my forearm, I retorted by plunging a bony stump into his eye cavity, his rejoinder was a groincleave. With strength only albinism could have granted, he dashed my body against a boulder shaped like Michael J. Fox’s forehead. Lefebvre set about hacking and hacking, purple foam spurting from my wounds like so much of Prince’s semen.
“Living meat! Flesh made in the image of God, that I might consume Him! Through the years that man has evolved, the beast of hunger has been there to savor each change. A new arm to be roasted, a new haunch to be braised. In the digestive tract of infinity, we all would achieve equal standing, we all would be one colorless mass of free bile. With these teeth and these blades and these hands-”
I thrust a regrown fist through my attacker’s jaws and yanked forth the knob of a uvula residing in his fetid maw. Through a split tongue, I sputtered that I’d suffered enough of his evangelism, and issued a prayer the deity to whom I currently subscribed, the Egyptian god Wepwawet.
“A pox on your fool god, a blister on the ass of the meatcreature whose boil is this universe!”
He raised the cleaver once more, only for grey jaws to close around his wrist. Another pair secured his ankle, and another, and another. I explained that I had chosen my prayer quite deliberately, as in addition to being the god of war, financial malfeasance, and sourdough toast, Wepwawet was represented by a creature with whom Lefebvre had unfinished business: the wolf.
From the forest came a great white beast, festooned with the scars of an alpha male. It sniffed at Lefebvre’s jaws, and a glint of recognition appeared in its eyes. At the command of a single low growl, the pack let loose upon the killer. Their leader, paws crossed, watched. I gave him a nod, which he returned.
Naked and bloody, I walked the road. A sign read “300 Kilometers to Calgary.” I bit off a finger for sustenance, and imagined that the taste would be much improved by an alfredo cream sauce paired with a glass of Bordeaux.
