More Human Than Human
I am the jigsaw
Man I turn the
World around
With a skeleton hand say -
I am electric head a cannibal core a
Television said
Yeah do not victimize
Read the mother
Fucker-psychoholic lies -
Into a psychic war I
Tear my soul
Apart and I
Eat it some more...from the Album, AstroCreep 2000-White Zombie
..."Neanderthals have been characterised as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw. They were taller and stockier than Homo sapiens, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads."
From an article titled "Redheads Share Neanderthal Link" found at http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/nredhair.htm.
With flaming torches to provide a flickering light, and swords at the ready, they advanced cautiously but methodically along the narrow twisting passages of the cave. In due course they reached the charnel house at the end of the mile-deep cave that was the home and operational base of the Sawney Beane cannibals.A dreadful sight greeted their eyes. Along the damp walls of the cave human limbs and cuts of bodies, male and female, were hung in rows like carcasses of meat in a butchers cold room...
From "The People Eaters," in The Worlds Strangest Crimes, by C.E. Maine
...if anyone should be pissed off by all this, it�s the Scots. Genetically, Scotland boasts the highest percentage of redheads in the world � roughly 13% of the population, as compared to 3 or 4% in the U.S. and barely 1% worldwide. That�s bad news for a bunch of lads and lasses who�ve spent time immemorial trying to convince the English they�re not just a band of boorish Celtic cavedwellers...From an article titled 'Wooing Wilma Flintstone' found at http://www.either-or.net/archives/000294.html.
1686. Near Galloway, Scotland
And then there was only the sound of the waves, hushing the night like a comforting mother.
Conall sat wrapped in father's big woolen cloak, teeth chattering.
True, it was cold in the high-ceilinged chamber, cold and wet, with the cooking fire nearly burned to embers. But more than anything Conall was afraid.
In his short life Conall had so rarely felt fear. With so many brothers and sisters, with Ma and Da, so much life bustling about all the time, so much to do daily to keep the home running in tip top shape, keep everyone fed, so much business to help father with, little Conall, the youngest of the lot, never had much to fear for.
Now there was, but for the waves crashing into the sands below, the silence. Silence was the most awful thing now.
The men in the fancy clothes had come in so fast. No one seemed to have a moment to think. Da had fairly leaped for his sword, Cameron had wielded the scythe like a champion...but there were just too many of those men.
Conall had seen it all from the perch where Ma stowed him when Bevan first came running with the news of the men's approach.
Ma...images of hair shaded copper and gold and pale, pale blue eyes flashed through his mind, and he winced as if struck.
Bevan had come tearing down the corridor, feet bare and wet, shouting that the men were nigh. Conall did not quite understand. No one save family ever came to their home, no one was supposed to know where they were. What was nigh? Why was Bevan, the oldest and strongest of his brothers so obviously frightened?
Conall had no time to even speak though as Ma and his oldest sister Corliss stowed him in the hideaway. Somehow he knew he was not supposed to.
The men had come with torches in hand, lighting the corridor. So fast. Da had grabbed his weapon as had all the older boys, even Laird, only two years Conall's senior.
Then the room was filled with shouting and screams, screams from men's mouths and women, flashing metal everywhere, torches whirling about casting terrible leaping shadows on the walls, the high ceiling. There was blood, blood from Conall's own.
It was over so quickly.
Da, standing, glaring into the face of the older man with the rich black cloak and awful sneer. Bevan, dead, his head fairly severed. Glynis, cowering, her long knife in the hands of a brutal looking man who held her steady with a meaty fist wrapped in her long, wavy red hair.
Everyone, shackled in chains or tied with thick rope, led away.
To leave Conall alone in the high secret perch.
Alone with the waves, and nothing else. They'd taken most of the food, and even the bodies of Bevan and Morgan, Conall's second-to-eldest brother.
A tendril of a breeze curled about his head, cold and damp. Suddenly nothing felt or smelled the same. This was not home but a bare hole in the earth.
Truth be told, he was aching hungry now too.
Conall rose, pulling Da's cloak tight about his shoulders and crossed the wide chamber. He could not seem to stop shivering and his gait was unsteady.
Reaching the far wall, the very edge of the wan, flickering light cast by the dying fire, he crouched down and began scrabbling at an indentation there.
Soon he found what he wanted. He'd secreted it away just a day ago-a sweet bit of dried meat Bevan had given him as a reward for helping skin one of the kills.
Avidly the little boy untied the supple leather packet and returning to the fire he lay it out to look at it.
The fancy men with the gleaming swords and torches had not been able to find him, nor had they been able to get to all the food stored in the chamber.
Conall picked the longest strip and began to pull bits off of it, chewing lustily.
As he ate, something Da had once said, seemingly in passing, came back to him.
Da-his hair that dark cinnamon, long and thick about his shoulders, standing at the entrance to their home, watching the sun go down over the cold slate gray sea. Da, his bright green eyes flashing at his youngest son in the waning light.
"One day someone might come, wee boy, and take maybe me and yer Ma away."
Conall began to speak, but Da raised a wide, long-fingered hand to silence him."When they do, those that are left must run. You run far if you're left behind, boy. Use your wits, all that I've taught ye about that road above the cliff, the people we find there. Use those shining eyes and that golden hair and get yourself to safety. There's many a bare mum who'd have a fine boy like you for her own."
At the time Conall had no idea what Da could mean, and though he could not help but remember the words they meant little to him.
Until now.
Conall continued to eat, and slowly, the shivering abated. He began to think about what he had to do.
He would sleep a bit if he could after the meat was gone, and then in the morning he'd put on the good clothes Ma kept in the dry room close to the front of their home.
He'd take the winding path up to the big road then, a handsome strawberry blonde little boy with odd blue-green eyes and perfect, translucent skin.
He would wait for the travelers. The right ones. They would be in a big coach, and there would be a Lady along. He'd beg, and cry, to have them take him along, at least to Galloway.
As he settled down beside the fire, bundled in the cloak, his belly warm with the rich salted meat, he remembered the last thing his Father said that evening.
"Never tell them then, boy, whatever ye do, never tell them you're a Beane."
"Never tell them. But unless you wish my wrath to come on you from the boneyard, or your Ma's wrath, never, no matter what, forget that you are a Beane."
With these words in his head, (and meat cut from a carpenter from Ulster in his belly,) Conall Beane, the only surviving child of the cannibal clan of Sawney Beane, fell asleep.
(...to be continued...)
