May's Workshop Stories

The Horrors of the Past

The sound of her terrified screams makes me want to cover my head with my blanket and never surface from its safety, but I manage to resist the urge.

Instead, I sit rigidly, watching intently to figure out the reason behind her screams even though they make my blood run cold.

"It's just a movie, it's just a movie," I chant as the camera shifts to what the victim is seeing, to the reason behind her hair-raising scream.

The sight of rotting flesh and glimmering teeth that approaches her makes me want to cry out in fear, but that wouldn't go over well with the neighbors. They already think I am a weirdo. I don't have to confirm their theory as well.

I still don't understand what the thing after her is. Is it a zombie or some type of mummy?

The exposition isn't so great, but the jump scares are phenomenal, so it doesn't really matter what it is.

As the thing corners the poor girl, dripping bile all over the pristine bathroom, and as its teeth start nearing her neck in slow motion, I realize what it is. It has to be a zombie craving for the flesh of its victims.

I cover my face with my hands, peeking through my fingers as the zombie's teeth are about to bite into the girl's flesh.

Suddenly, the image disappears for a second, and then the television switches to another station altogether.

Maybe it's better that way. I don't need yet another sleepless night, and yet I want to know what happens next. Therefore, I take the remote to change back to the horror movie I was watching, when the events on the screen manage to grab my attention. Probably because they look far more realistic than anything I've seen on the TV so far.

"What is she doing?" I wonder out loud as I see a woman digging the ground with a crazed frenzy I don't really understand.

The clothing she is wearing looks very old-fashioned. Yet, the video recording seems far more realistic than any of the movies I've seen so far. It's as if I can see everything happening right now.

I can see a few moving leaves on the nearby tree that escaped the winter's cruelty, and I hear the deep water of the ocean nearby. The scene is made spooky by the upcoming twilight and the odd struggle in the woman's determined eyes.

Something on the ground next to her catches my attention, and I am surprised to realize it is a large knife gleaming in the setting sun. Why she is digging the frozen ground with a knife by her side is beyond me, but I can't help but stare at her, transfixed, my movie long forgotten.

"Finally!" the woman exclaims with feverish glee.

To my horror, I see her pulling a dead body out of the ground, a very fresh one at that. It hasn't even started to decompose yet. My brain can't even fathom what she would do with it. There seems to be a veil over my mind that stops me from figuring out what is happening.

Even when she picks up the large knife, I can't imagine what it is for.

Only when she starts slicing the body's leg with deep, practiced cuts do I realize what is going on. However, it's too late for me to close my eyes as the woman is already chomping down on the piece of flesh as if it was the most precious food.

"Elizabeth, what are you doing?" a man says, coming towards her with something in his hand that I can't clearly see.

Relief washes over me as I assume he will stop the horrible blaspheme, that the woman will be punished for the most repulsive transgression. However, that doesn't happen.

"You know as well as I do that the brain is the first one to go bad. We need to start from the head and then leave the parts that stay fresh longer for later," the man says, approaching the body with a small ax-type of thing that I haven't seen before.

He swings towards the head but hesitates at the last minute. He gives me hope that I am not watching monsters defiling a deceased person but a couple of lost people.

"Come on, John, we don't have the whole day! I am starving, and I am pretty sure you are too since the last thing you ate was that tough old man we found dead a few days ago," Elizabeth says.

"I knew her," John says hesitantly. "She was such a nice person."

"Well, now she will make a nice meal," the woman says heartlessly. "Just do it! I am not strong enough to break the skull."

The man does as he was told, though I can see some reluctance in his movements. It's as if he is doing what has to be done but doesn't enjoy it in the slightest.

With a loud crack, the skull breaks apart, revealing the gray matter, and I can't help but gasp in shock. However, I soon clasp my mouth in fear that somehow these horrible people would hear me. That I might face a similar fate as the body that lies broken before them.

"I don't want to do this," the man says.

However, the woman starts chomping the soft mass without thinking about it.

"But you want to survive, don't you?" she asks between the bites.

"Yes, but not like this," John says.

"We've eaten all the animals we could find, even the rats. There is nothing more to eat but the dead. You didn't seem to mind as much when we ate that old man. We are humans. We do everything in our power to survive," Elizabeth says, wiping her face and continuing with her butchering task to get all the easily spoilt parts.

"We should have left Jamestown when we had the chance," John says.

"We couldn't have known that this would happen, but now that it has, we need to find a way to survive," Elizabeth says, offering him a strip of the dead person's meat.

John hesitates. However, his survival instinct wins over his disgust. Soon enough, they are cutting up more pieces and devouring them in what I can now recognize as a starved frenzy.

The woman seemed cruel to me, but she was actually desperate. They all seem to be. Still, that doesn't make me feel any better about the gruesome scene that continues to develop before my very eyes, making me gag and shudder. Yet, I can't look away.

Some part of me knows that it is all real. I somehow know that the horrible scene is the reality of the human race, transmitted through all these centuries to the here and now.

Besides, the name Jamestown does ring a bell. I know there was a settlement under that name. Furthermore, having in mind that they were in an unfamiliar land with limited means of survival, it sounds plausible enough that they would have faced starvation.

Still, as the two people continue to chew and slurp, going as far as gnawing the bones, my disgust is impossible to shake.

Perhaps they had to do it to survive, but that doesn't make it right or less repulsive.

Before my gag reflex can result in unwanted product, the channel changes back to the horror movie I have been watching of its own accord. So, what I am left with is a scene of a poorly made zombie dramatically tearing into the woman's flesh while she screams unconvincingly.

Instead of continuing the movie that, mere moments ago, I enjoyed watching, I switch off the TV mulling over the true horror that had happened a long time ago. The same horror that most of us aren't aware of.

It is terrifying to realize what people were ready to do to survive, what they are still prepared to do. It helps me see everything from such a different perspective and appreciate all the little things I have always taken for granted.

"No more horror movies for me. Ever," I whisper shakily.

After having had a peek into the horrific past event, I can't just sit and watch someone being butchered. After all, I know now that those things are real. People were really cut up to pieces, and other human beings dared feed on them.

From now on, I will spend more time enjoying my life and less trying to escape through movies. I believe I owe that much to all the people who died and didn't have the chance to have the better life we are enjoying these days.