I’ve been a chef for over 15 years now. I have my own restaurant for the past 7 and it has become somewhat popular. We serve about four thousand people each day. My days have been repetitive for as long as I can remember now, getting up at 6am, twenty-minute drive to my seaside restaurant, “The lighthouse”, where I spend the next 16 hours preparing meals and monitoring my staff. Although the place is mine and mine alone, cooking has been my passion ever since I was little and I always enjoy my work and never complain about how hard it can be to cook for so many hours straight. Also, in my not so modest opinion, I prepare the meat better than anyone else and I like to think that my gourmand meals are what attracts most customers. All of my staff are quite friendly and hard-working people who never question anything I order them to do. They are happy with their salaries, the way I treat them and we are all like one big happy family. We never question each other’s work, given that everyone has a unique job to do, and we all just rely that nobody is going to try and slack off or fuck something up. “The lighthouse” has been awarded for the most visited restaurant in our town four years in a row now so you could say we are doing excellent! Two of my best friends both work in the sanitary inspection department and they don’t even do any checkups when they visit, we mostly just eat a lunch and grab a beer together and that’s it. Don’t get me wrong, the restaurant’s kitchen is spotless just as every other room, and them going easy on me just gives my workers more time to cook instead of leaving the kitchen to let my friends check everything bit by bit. And so everything was going fine for years until a huge change took place, making my restaurant more famous than ever before because of reasons you can’t even begin to imagine.
It was a normal Wednesday, I was in my car singing along to some poppy music which I would normally be embarrassed to admit listening to when I came across a blocked road. Police cars, ambulances and firefighters were everywhere and being so tired early in the morning it took me several seconds to notice that an entire building was on fire. That being the only road leading down to the dock I had no other choice than to wait, so I decided to step out of the car and get a closer look. It was a total disaster, the fire was raging and it couldn’t be put out so they were all just trying to save and help as many people as they could, some would rush out of the building with minor injuries while some would be severely burned. Soon after a man, at least I think it was a man, ran out through the door while being lit up like a candle. And that was the first time I felt that beautiful smell up my nostrils, the smell of roasted human flesh was unlike anything I smelled before. While the man was dying right in front of my eyes, his skin slowly melting off his bones, the only emotion I felt was hunger. An unexplainable desire to taste his meat was running through my thoughts and my mouth was watering like never before. After the entire mess was cleared out I continued my trip to the lighthouse with my newly acquired desire still bouncing over my head. I NEEDED to get a taste of human flesh more than I’ve ever needed anything else in my whole life. But the problem was obvious. How am I going to get my hands on human meat? A pretty logical idea occurred to me and I could barely wait for my work day to end so I can go visit the town’s cemetery on my way home.
That very night, upon closing my restaurant that’s exactly what I did. Sneaking in was awfully easy since the night guard was completely asleep while finding a gravestone with a fresh body was far more challenging. But after thirty minutes of searching my efforts finally paid off as I stumbled across the grave of one “Tod Wayne” who was dead for only two days. It took me over three hours to dig my way through to the casket and cut off one of the corpse’s legs. Happy with what I acquired, I covered the casket again and made my way out of cemetery unnoticed. It didn’t take me much more to reach my house and it was now finally time to start creating a perfect recipe. I chopped the leg into several smaller bits and started my experimenting. Some of the pieces were cooked in a pot, some fried in a pan or in the stove, some seasoned with various combinations and I’ve even tried frying them directly over the fire and nothing. Not one of the things I’ve tried produced the same gorgeous smell I felt in the morning, not by a far. That’s when I realized what needed to be done, what was the missing ingredient to my perfect recipe. Fresher meat had to be the answer. And getting my hands on it required commitment. I wasn’t going to go and start killing innocent people, not until I made absolutely sure that fresh meet was what it takes, so the thing I’ve done was inevitable. I raised my meat chopper and swiftly struck my finger with it. It was extremely painful, but the result, oh the result was way more than worth it. That night I went to bed more satisfied than ever planning my future doings step by step.
I couldn’t let anyone notice any difference in my behavior so I had to be at work on time and stick to my daily routine. I explained my missing finger as a cooking accident and of course nobody brought it into question. My hunting needed to be done strictly during the night. All the victims had to be absolutely random without a pattern, I couldn’t lure them to my restaurant or home without getting suspicious so I had to break into their houses. I used sedatives to put them under so it would be easier to transport them back to my home and then I would keep them asleep, chopping their parts one by one and taking them to the restaurant’s kitchen each morning before opening so I can prepare them without being disturbed or caught. Since there isn’t much meat I could use from one person I introduced a new meal at my restaurant which used no more than 100 grams of meat combined with some potatoes and vegetables and people starting going crazy for it. This was my top secret recipe:
-4 red potatoes chopped into slices
-a teaspoon of salt
-2 chopped onions
-3 tablespoons of olive oil
-2 teaspoons of garlic and pepper blend
-100g human meat
-a touch of minced fresh rosemary
Step 1: Place the potatoes with some water and salt in the microwave and heat it up on “high” until potatoes are tender (6-8 minutes), then drain them.
Step 2: While heating the potatoes, mix the human flesh with onions, 2 spoons of oil and pepper-garlic blend. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir until the meet is browned (you can’t screw this up, you’ll feel the overwhelming smell and your mouth will water like crazy). Remove the mixture from the skillet.
Step 3: In a new, clean skillet heat the remaining oil over medium-high heat. Add potatoes and cook them for 5 minutes while turning occasionally. And finally stir in the meat mixture for another 3 minutes and sprinkle with rosemary.
And that’s how you prepare the perfect meal for one. Bon appétit!
There is a little known fact that eating human meat can be addicting and that’s just the thing I was going to use for my final step of the plan. I didn’t want to try and get away with everything I did, I know they would’ve caught me eventually anyways, my plan was much more interesting than just feeding people with human meet. I managed to not get caught for over four years, during which my restaurant got 5 stars, famous critics came and tried my human portions and I’ve fed god knows how many people with flesh from their fellow humans. But none of that mattered anymore, my only goal was for everyone to find out what they were eating, to find out where their favorite food they praised so much came from. So I came forward making a public announcement in which I described every detail of what I did. I even shared the perfect recipe step by step. They locked me up, gave me a lifetime at prison just as expected, but it didn’t matter, because I’ve already achieved everything as planned. Sure, a vast majority was disgusted and cursed the day they ever ate at my place, but there were those who adored it, I thought of them as my children. And now out there is a havoc, people killing their own, setting fire to each other’s homes, all of that so they could just get another taste of the sweet human flesh.