Cannibal Country

Cannibal country is an entire world away, but I can reach it through a small door at the back of my closet. I became aware of its existence when loud knocks awakened me on a quiet night three years ago. Frightened as anyone else would be, I looked in every conceivable direction to figure out where the fire was, and when all signs pointed to the closet, I gave in to my morbid curiosity.

I got up and approached the noise with caution, rubbing the crust from the corners of my eyes. Small comforts always keep me grounded in high stress situations, but in that case, there wasn’t much that could soothe my nerves. They rattled as the knocking became more intense. My imagination ran wild with visions of a prisoner locked in solitary confinement. He was banging on the walls of his cell and screaming for human interaction.

When I got to those double doors, they seemed to loom over me. Dread clawed at my skull and dotted my forehead with beads of cold sweat. I hadn’t felt that kind of fear in years, and if I invested just one second in hesitation, I would’ve ran out of the room and booked a hotel for the night, so I ripped the Band-Aid off and threw the doors open, bracing myself for both the known and the unknown.

And there it was, a door that wasn’t there before; Worn into a mess of splinters, half my height, and somehow unyielding to the relentless force against it. It looked ancient to me and had a bunch of symbols carved into it, but before I could attempt to compare them to anything I’ve seen before, the knocking suddenly stopped. A chill swept across my bedroom and climbed up the notches on my back.

I swallowed – hard – before I crouched down and reached for the doorknob, which was weakened and on the verge of falling off. With my eyes wide and unblinking, I twisted it… paused… then allowed the door to creak open just an inch.

The instant assault on my senses would’ve made me projectile vomit if I had anything on my stomach. The smell, an overwhelmingly putrid stink, shot up my nostrils, an intense heat began boiling me until I felt dizzy, and the bugs nearby buzzed in unison, coming together to form one deep hum.

When my eyes adjusted to a bold red light, I was able to make out an entire field of dead grass. It appeared limitless and empty, brightened by a red sun with no clouds surrounding it. I could hardly breathe from both the smell and the sight of the land. It struck me. If I saw it in a series of paintings covering the many areas in which the end of days had occurred, I would’ve thought of it as beautiful.

I opened the door a little further and shivered as a head – and only a head – was slowly revealed to me. Its features were mangled. The skull was half visible, covered with patches of skin and painted with strings of tissue. When I leaned closer and squinted a little, I could see the brain was completely removed. The flies were beginning to nest inside of the open space.

“Were you the one who knocked?” I thought. “Could I have saved you?”

I succumbed to everything – the smell, the carnage, the heat, the sudden guilt – and fell back into a heap of hyperventilation and flushed out skin, seconds away from throwing up my stomach acid. With my face buried in my hands, I attempted to calm myself, evening out my breaths and willing my vision to be less spotty.

I tried to imagine white noise that could drown everything out. That didn’t work, so I screamed internally until the voice of my conscience was hoarse. That didn’t work either, so repentance felt like the only option left. I looked back up with the intention of facing the head and begging its spirit for forgiveness, but when I made eye contact with a naked man, I couldn’t think of anything else but him.

The door was wide open, and he was just outside of it on all fours, staring at me with little emotion on his face. His body was heavily scarred, malnourished, and the color of ash. I couldn’t make out the color of his irises because his pupils were so enlarged. They even overtook the whites of his eyes, and though this was especially disturbing, his mouth was what stood out to me the most. His lips were bloodied, and his canines were so long, they protruded past his bottom lip.

He was more beast than man, but I was still hyperaware that I was looking at a man.

I began to choke words out. “Who are… do… do you need help?”

He screamed. The sound was shrill enough to make me recoil and cover my ears. I feared blood would pour out of them before hearing would be a thing of the past. After a while, he stopped and continued to stare, his face now holding malice. I blindly felt around my right side and brandished the first thing I could find at him, a wire hanger. He looked at it rather curiously, cocking his head to the side as he drew closer. His decaying tongue slithered out of his mouth and touched the hook of the hanger. He let it sit there for a second before he flinched away and gagged. If the circumstances were different, I would've found it adorable.

With a huff, he turned around and went back into his world. He sniffed the decapitated head and picked at it, appearing to examine it, before he took it into his mouth and prowled away, letting it swing side to side. When there was enough space between us, I moved swiftly to shut the door and leave the closet.

That door is still present, and its covered with two walls of cement blocks. I haven't heard anything from it since that day, but I remain right by the closet on high alert, leaving only to get the essentials and use the bathroom. At the end of my bed, I keep a few boxes of matches, some kitchen knives, a first aid kit, and a pistol. These items give me the feeling of being 50-points ahead of whatever threat I might face. Though it may seem a bit obsessive of me, I can't help but feel like I've been given a mission. There’s a reason why this door appeared to me, and I won’t shrug off what is clearly God’s will, so like a guard or a keeper of peace, I wait for another knock.