Welcome Home

'I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’ - Jeremiah 19:9

--

Bleak and withered eyes looked back at him in the hazy reflection of the car window. His ashy blonde hair was unkept and long sitting on his pale face. The face before him was like a mirage blending into the sea of brown deciduous trees, his lips weak and chapped. He wondered what had they looked like on that day? Stained red, warm, as maroon sap like drips flowed over his chin, covered in fresh vile blood. He blinked, 'don't focus on it, don't think about it' swept his mind as he found himself drowning in the forest outside again.

His father was driving, a stoic large man, completely silent, unsure what to say in the situation. It had been five years since they last spoke, not a word had transpired between them after the sentencing. Back then he was only a child but now in this car, finally returning home sat a man guilty and ashamed of his crimes. Horrified of the thick air of tension, horrified of returning to his family, and horrified of the town that now labeled him cannibal.

--

"Jacob!" His mother exclaimed as she burst from the houses door straight to the car even before he could exit. He hadn't heard his name called so lovingly in so long, right, Jacob was his name. That fleeting sense of self he felt he had lost for so long had returned. He was no longer that naive sixteen year old that followed every whim and order of someone else, he couldn't anymore, that person was dead.

The first words spoken since free, "M-mom." Jacob muttered as she embraced him in a hug as his thin boney body slid from the car door directly into her arms.

"Oh welcome home honey!"

Did she mean it? Her hug was warm and her arms covered in flannel were as tight as Jacob could always remember. She was the person that visited him the most at the prison whenever she was able, never his father and never his siblings whom he could see standing in the front door of the house.

His younger brother had changed so much in these years, and was his expression one of disgust? It was hard to tell, he was sixteen himself now and hopefully unlike Jacob someone that didn't blindly follow others. And his little baby sister, she had grown taller and looked less of a child. She was fourteen now, and maybe it was that innocence he thought as the reason for her smile.

"Mary, the boy can't breathe with you like that," he scoffed as he exited the car, "I'll carry your things in so y'all just take it easy."

His father was someone that was quiet and reserved, the type of man that only spoke when spoken to and found most peace in being alone. Perhaps he didn't hate his son and simply Jacob had taken his hesitance to speak in the wrong way.

Mary, his mother eased her embrace, "Dinners ready when you are sweetheart."

"Thanks." Jacob looked to her and then back to his siblings as they moved out of his fathers way. His brother returning back into their comfy home while his sister simply stayed in place. It was a smile he saw for sure but it didn't feel right.

--

After his first real meal home, of course a steak with potatoes as his mother always did in special occasions and insisted was everyone's favorite, Jacob took to his old room. It hadn't changed at all in those years, his parents hadn't even cracked the door open once after the police had looked through everything and still to this day now things laid on the floor in disarray. The only possessions Jacob had acquired in all these years were various religious texts, each as helpless to him as the last in finding some type of answer to why things had happened as they did.

It felt awkward to stand in this room. Posters still on the wall from bands we couldn't remember much about, a single calendar with scantily clad women in it his father jokingly got him for Christmas one year, and besides the mess the police made were his own piles of dirty clothing such as a true high schoolers room. The calendar though, still reading September 2017, with a menacing red circle on that particular day. Quickly the calendar found it self torn from the wall to be destroyed.

--

It was past midnight when Jacob found himself finally having cleaned the room enough to feel satisfied. Having taken all the posters down and tossing almost everything he could find that were his personal artifacts. He no longer wanted to be the boy that lived in this room, that boy that ruined his life would have all his worldly possessions destroyed as if he had died.

Thought it felt as if he in a way was dead during dinner. A silence filled the air in such an intoxicating way that his mother tried her best to diffuse as she talked of the past weeks various activists the family had done getting ready for Jacobs arrival. Thus as soon as the meal was done Jacob spent most of the rest of the day in his room and was surprised as he emerged from the house carrying a few trash bags to find his sister sitting on the pouch in these dark hours of the night.

It was a crisp bitter Michigan night and the air was stale and rough and lingered in thick clouds of hot breath. Jacob was uncertain what to do like a kid sneaking around, but he knew in his mind it was better not to question the actions of a preteen and a girl at that. Maggie looked so small in her large winter coat, her pajama pants touching the concrete and feet in weathered tennis shoes, long bushy brown hair engulfing her as she sat in a rocking chair. She was no longer that 9 year old Jacob had known, she was a stranger now, yet so was he.

Who knew how long she had been out there but from the look of her face it had been awhile. She smiled again, cheeks red and sore looking from the piercing wind. Jacob felt his stomach crawl for he didn't feel he deserved any kind expression from her sweet face but he also felt it rude not to smile back and give a subtle nod.

"I missed you big brother." Her voice was timid and gentle but more mature than what it once was. It felt wrong to Jacob to hear these words but it also made him happy.

Perhaps she was too young and too naive to know what he had done before being locked up for so many years. Perhaps their parents had shielded her from the harsh realities of the group, that night, the dead and that forbidden meal that somehow felt so sudden and haunted Jacob to his core. He desperately hoped she had no idea of the past and hence was her kindness towards him.

"I missed you too." Was all he could find himself muttering, words floating in the air between them.

Quickly she spoke again, "What are you throwing away?"

At dinner she had said only few words and Jacob hadn't truly gotten to hear her voice or get a feel for the person she now was. She seemed curious like a child should be.

"Just stuff. ." He said, unsure how to phrase it that he was throwing away his past.

"It's a lot of stuff." She said and looked back away from her brother. Back into the long rows of trees that lined the property of their home.

This type of simple conversation was so foreign, Jacob sound himself stuck into silence again. Just standing there holding the trash bags like a statue.

Maggie must of sensed his uncomfortableness and stood up, a smile still across her face.

"You should go to bed."

'You too' Jacob thought but was far too shy to say it, again, this was like talking to a stranger.

"Yeah," he motioned to ruffle the bags "after this."

"Well, have a good night." Maggie walked toward Jacob to pass him into the house and he flinched and stepped away. He felt toxic and didn't want to taint her even with the faintest touch.

"G-good night." He found himself almost rushing as he pushes deeper into the nippy air to reach the trash cans and escape his sister.

Jacob stayed outside long enough to watch the light of her room turn on and shut off. Wanting to make sure not to see her again.

--

Everything was dark, eerie and stale. The group all sat on the concrete floor in a circle hunched over the body before them, or rather the mass. The strong smell of iron filled their lungs, blood like none of them had ever smelt before and the foul odor of bile hugged them all. The pile, reds and yellows of fat, muscle, ripped flesh sat before them as if presented as a holy offering.

Jacobs body felt heavy, eyes focused on the face of what was once a man that sat on top their own dismembered body. Perched high over the torso with a serene look no one else had in the room. They all knew this day would come and had even once looked forward to it yet now, with this hunk of flesh and messy blood before them it all felt too real.

"And with this we shall begin this sacred meal," the leader started, sat amongst the group behind the man's face, right within Jacobs view. His long silver hair looked so beautiful in the light of the single cellar bulb that hung above them, he almost seemed to be glowing.

The leader held out his stained red arms to the mess in from of them, the labor of his hard work, and grabbed a disheveled limp arm, "With this we shall finally meet transcendence."

Jacobs face must of been pale and scared as he stared directly into the leaders eyes then focused on the arm. The blood had stopped gushing and what was left behind was the tangled skin that was ripped apart from the hand saw. The bone protruded in a messy chunk dressed with the wavy mounds of red stringy flesh as it went down to the lifeless appendage. It was common sense that this was a human arm, the arm of the man that laid in pieces on the floor but it was also so much more.

The leader raised the arm as if holding a delicate child and showed it to the group in the air before bringing it down straight to his mouth and biting into the open wound. Blood pilling along his mouth as he ripped away like a ravenous carnivorous beast.

Then his eyes focused at Jacob, a warm smile then filled his face as he revealed his now red teeth. He held out the chunk in his out stretched arms for the boy to take and thus he did.

It was heavier yet also lighter than Jacob had expected and his heart became to race. This was finally real. The passage he and all around had been waiting for and for him to be handed food from the great leader? His body was warm.

Without hesitation he dug his teeth directly into the tender flesh and swallowed.