I think I ate people

Part 3 or 3

“Well, let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Steve, but my friends out here call me Okwankowo Osigees. You might have met them?”

He went on to explain how his life fell apart after losing his only son to drugs. How he had dedicated his life to track down the entire supply chain that ensured a steady stream of narcotics to New Hampshire where he was from. How he had surrendered all the evidence to the prosecution and how the latter had blown the case, letting the perps go off with a slap on the wrist. It turned out I was looking at a vigilante whose life had been indirectly turned upside down by the lucrative drug trade that was plying the I-95 corridor on a daily basis.

The residual confidence I had retained quickly dissipated as I realized that for him to expose himself like this, chances were, I wasn’t going anywhere. As he stood there periodically shifting from one corner of the cell to the other, it was clear to me that he had completely gone insane. This mechanical engineer who used to be a Math professor at Dartmouth, had dedicated his life to slay the monster from inside its belly. He had traded his conventional suburban life — a construction consulting firm, wife, house, BMW and all, to come gas out as much vermin as he could from the crevices the DEA couldn’t. He felt confident enough due to the lawlessness of the failed Venezuelan government and the precipitation of the cold war that would hogtie any US attempt to pursue him in 245 years of bureaucratic red tape.

It was here that he struck a most unusual relationship with a primitive tribe in the dense Amazon after they had blow-darted him unconscious and were prepping him for boiling. As one tribesman stuffed a mango into his mouth, another swung an ax at his knee to incapacitate him and prevent him from thrashing around in the pot and splashing hot water at hungry onlookers. Luckily for Steve, a freak motorcycle accident on a summer ride to Maine, had cost him his maternal knee, co-opting him to trade up to a titanium one. Consequently, the ax bounced off with its cutting edge severely damaged much to the awe of everyone in attendance. Hunger gave way to curiosity as the gleaming joint shone in defiance entirely unperturbed. A swift decision was made to elevate the potential dinner to god status. Steve chose not to sit around all day on an ornate chair waiting to be worshiped and fed. He instead, unlike the gods that preceded him, chose to take over hunting operations by launching elaborate schemes and setting traps in the forest whose ingenuity could only be mustered by an engineer. The prey consisted entirely of drug peddlers…naturally. He politely shared how he had undertaken a recognizance mission on Caesar’s hideout for 3 years. It’s this way that he found out about the lookouts, the corrupt soldiers and the not-so-secret tunnel. Dressing the cannibals to look like soldiers was just a diversion to flush everyone out of the fortress.

My fight or flight system by this time was so jacked out of whack, that I accidentally oscillated to a not-giving-a-fuck mode.
“So. How does it taste?”
“What..human flesh?”
“Yes. Is it true it tastes like chicken?”
“I don’t know Ken..you tell me…,” He riddled with an evil smile that made his lips quiver.
I thought back at my involuntary stay and it all started making sense — the faint, evidently frantic screams and the rice that always came with stew whose flavor I couldn’t quite place. I wanted to retch.

Out of the goodness of his heart, and partly from a pragmatic point of view, Steve had made the judicious decision to spare me and Hugo out of everyone else as we were just novices with just enough feet in the door to spread the word and make potential traffickers think twice. We were transported under yet another dose of tranquilizer to the edge of the forest and sent off with an analog campus and supplies.

“Well guys..I guess this is it. I’m sorry about your friends..well..not really.” He added, mockingly rubbing his paunch in a most unsettling manner.

Weeks later, relaxing in my tiny abode watching Seinfeld, I decided to give the supplies bag Steve had handed me back in that godforsaken place a look over. In it, surreptitiously placed between sandwich bags of crackers, I found a recipe which I’m going to share with you dear esteemed reader:

Ingredients :

Mango/ green gala apple, gallon of moonshine, 1 drug dealer (to be substituted with a goat for legal sakes), 4 garlic cloves, Mrs. Dash lemon pepper seasoning blend (it doesn’t necessarily need to be Mrs Dash, but don’t complain if your stew sucks), I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (you can use real butter but don’t complain if you catch a coronary)

Directions:

1. Get a good open fire going
2. Set your cauldron gently on 3 sturdy stones and fill halfway with river water
3. Stir in the spices and butter
4. Incapacitate your quarry of choice by ramming at their knees with an ax or iron muttock
5. Tie up other free limbs
6. Ignore any formal or rambunctious screaming and stuff mouth with fruit of choice
7. Toss whole into boiling water
8. Slow cook overnight making sure to assign a pair of eyes to avoid inexplicable escaping

Best served by itself

Chug a gallon of moonshine to speed up self forgiveness

Your Favorite Martian,
Okwankowo Osigees.

Epilogue:

Raphael Ortega, head of Miami PD Forensics, Marine Division, looked solemnly at his Captain. Apparently, their boys weren’t the super cops the media was singing about incessantly these days — about a pair of underling cops ensnaring some big fish Venezuelan drug mules straight from underneath the freaking Atlantic Ocean off the South Beach Coast. The sub itself was extremely high tech..encapsulated in a revolutionary radar deflecting paint. Its entire navigational system had been sabotaged. As soon as it was in the vicinity of a Miami PD patrol boat, all inboard systems had been bypassed by a remote actor from an unknown location in the Amazon…preventing the pilot from diving, moving or anything closely related to mobilization. Miami PD has apprehended sitting ducks. All the same, it was a notch in their belts and Raphael could gloat to the Coast Guard about who the real FL McCoys were..for the next few years.

I think I ate people.

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