Cannibal

Because half the time Cannibal doesn’t know what he’s thinking, he says, “You did it.”

Marcia Sanders is fishing a fresh cotton pony out from her purse and goes, “I swear to you I didn’t know.” She never even takes off her top, and already she’s zipping up her jeans.

And Cannibal goes, “I made you come.”

She opens her mouth but doesn’t say anything because then the doorbell rings, and it’s her real boyfriend. Because Cannibal makes Marcia Sanders geyser so hard she has to take a Tylenol and strap on a pussy plug, Cannibal knows he’s a stud. Because Marcia Sanders must brag to Linda Reynolds because Linda Reynolds sidles up next to him outside the chemistry modules and asks if he can be her secret boyfriend too. Because Cannibal gobbles meat muffin so good Patty Watson wants a piece of his action because he makes every fur burger spout heaping helpings of special sauce. Because the quickest way to a woman’s heart is through a man’s stomach.

Because how far would a high schooler go to get back the rest of her life? And because Cannibal is giving everybody another shot at being virgins. He’s everybody’s dirty little secret, except he’s not so secret. Because he’s not so little, not anymore. Because Cannibal’s getting fat on the mistakes high schoolers make, it’s Marcia Sanders who says they have to shut him up. Linda Reynolds campaigns to meet Cannibal out behind the Vocational Building with a swift tire iron to the head some Friday night because Cannibal’s strutting around, too smart for his own good but too dumb to know he’s total evil. Because now when Cannibal belches, it’s your poor choice he’s tasting. And when Cannibal farts that’s the smell of your parents’ dead grandbaby.

Because if you believe Pat Robertson, The 700 Club says that Jesus, one time, bade a legion of unclean spirits leave an afflicted man, and those demons went into a herd of swine. Because then those swine had to throw themselves off a cliff into the Sea of Galilee, that’s how come Cannibal has to die. It’s the only decent path to take. Because even the priests who eat sins through the kitchen window at Catholic church, when they’re filled full even they need to be destroyed. That’s why a scapegoat goes to slaughter. Because if you believe in evolution the world is just everybody prancing down a yellow-brick road in Technicolor singing, “Because, because, because, because, because…” When the real truth is in the Old Testament, where the seven tribes wander around, lost, always saying, “Begat, begat, begat, begat, begat…”

Because the upside is that maybe Cannibal will go to heaven since except for his mouth he’s still a virgin.

Because at this school no matter who the team captains pick now it’s always not Cannibal, who personifies that thing that eventually comes for us all so we say, “Give us seat belts and give us pap smears and we’ll take poverty and we’ll take old age, just don’t let Cannibal come stand next to us. Don’t let Cannibal’s shadow fall over our house.”

Choosing sides, the captain of the Red Team says, “We’ll give you our best pitcher…”

And we’ll take the kid who picks his nose and eats it. And we’ll take the kid who smells like piss. We’ll take the leper and the left-handed Satanist and the HIV-infected hemophiliac and the hermaphrodite and the pedophile. We’ll take drug addiction and we’ll take JPEGs of the world instead of the world, MP3s instead of music, and we’ll trade real life for sitting at a keyboard. We’ll spot you happiness and we’ll spot you humanity, and we’ll sacrifice mercy just so long as you keep Cannibal at bay.

Because Marcia Sanders doesn’t begat anything, her real boyfriend graduates and gets to go to Michigan State for an accounting degree, because of all this Patty Watson makes a date to meet Cannibal on Friday night behind the Vocational Building and Linda Reynolds says she’ll get a crowbar. And they all agree to wear latex gloves. Because maybe they can all go back to playing games once Cannibal’s gone.