I know it sounds like a strange question. A silly attempt at being macabre. But that was the question that changed everything and opened the door to my new life.
I had been married to Tony for six months when we finally got to take our honeymoon. We both enjoyed the outdoors, but he had talked for years about taking a bigger, more “extreme” trip. The kind of deal where you get dropped off and you don’t see anyone again for two weeks.
I was nervous about it from the start, but he assured me everything would be fine. We had a very clear plan—Get dropped off ten miles from Whitetooth river, hike the first day and set up camp near the banks. Raft down the second and third day, making camp as we went. After that, we were hiking across the wilderness toward the mountains until we hit national park grounds on day ten and our rendeavous at a ranger station on day twelve.
I pointed out that the longest either of us had been camping before was less than a week, and while we had visited the area before, we had never camped or rafted there. Tony counted by pointing out all the studying up he had done on the area and survival techniques, and when I looked unconvinced, he told me that his parents were getting us a satellite phone for the trip as well. If we got tired of it or ran into a problem, we could always pull the plug on the adventure early.
Pushing my concerns aside, I smiled and nodded.
The second day of rafting, we capsized. We had both been rafting before, and the water had been slow and mild the day before. A night full of rain and a portion of the river filled with rocks made the second day hard going from the start. We had been at it for less than an hour when a sudden drop onto a stony shelf less than a foot under the water sent us flying. We were wearing vests and knew to point our feet in the direction the river was taking us, but it was all we could do to stay close to each other as we tried to make our way to a safe spot for both of us to get out of the water.
It felt like hours before we found a gentler spot we could use to escape. I managed to grab one of smaller bags as it went by, but it only had snacks and water for the day in it. Everything else was lost—the map, the compass, the gps, and the phone. Funnily enough, I still had my cell phone on me and it worked, but when I checked, there was no signal. That wasn’t really unexpected, but it was then, as I stood dripping wet and cold, waving my arm around as though trying to catch a cell tower’s attention, that a stark realization began to replace the surreal shock of the last few minutes.
We were very, very fucked.
We had argued initially about what direction to go in. I suggested that we follow the river back up, see if we could recognize where we initially started rafting, and then try to follow our old trail back to where we were first dropped off, as we at least knew there were roads in that direction. Tony argued that we needed to keep heading like we had planned, as we were bound to hit the national forest and would have a better chance of finding people or a ranger station in that area. Also, he added, if it reached the point that there was going to be a search party, it was better to be closer to where people expected us to be. I wound up agreeing to his plan, both because I couldn’t say for sure which was the better option, and in part because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
Looking back on it, I feel like a fool.
In some ways, the next three days were the worst. We were both scared and sore and tired, and every day the limitations of our bodies and our survival knowledge were becoming more evident. Have you ever watched one of those survival shows and thought, “Hey, that’s not so bad. Who can’t last a few days out in the woods?” Believe me, the reality is very different, particularly when you don’t have the safety net of a t.v. show to pull you out if you get too sick or weak to go on. By the fourth day, we were dehydrated and starving as we spent every day walking in the direction we hoped would get us to safety. The nights were worse—between the bugs and cold, we barely slept at all the first two nights. After that, we would collapse into exhausted sleep when we stopped for the day, but each morning it was harder to start going again. We had both developed hacking coughs, and I found my thoughts spiraling out in strange, incoherent directions as we kept up our zombie march east.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t argue when Tony suddenly decided on the fifth day that we had to have food. That he was going to find and kill us something to eat. We’d had no fire since the river despite our attempts the first two nights to start one with our hodgepodge of survival knowledge. But I said I would try again while it was daylight and he was out looking for something for us to eat.
It took four hours, but I actually got a fire started. I was so happy I sat there and cried a bit, the relief of seeing some sign of success and progress overwhelming me for a little while. I carefully tended the flames throughout the afternoon, listening carefully for signs of Tony’s return. But when darkness began to fall over the woods, my growing concern blossomed into worry and fear.
I stoked the fire to make it more visible and started calling out to him. I considered going to look for him, but I had no idea where he would have gone over such a long period of time and I was afraid of leaving the fire unattended and knew of no way to make a long-lasting torch out of my surroundings. So I sat by the fire, dozing fitfully between calling for him and adding sticks to the fire.
At daylight I spent some time building the fire up as best I could and then I began looking for him. I had a cold certainty in my belly that I’d never see him again, but within twenty minutes I saw him walking toward me through the woods. I broke into a lurching run toward him, and when I hugged him, he weakly hugged me back. He was limping badly, and his left arm was bloody, but he wouldn’t talk much about it at first. After he was sitting down, I looked at his arm and saw it had a long jagged cut along he bicep. Ripping off part of my shirt, I tried to clean it and bandage it as best I could. As I was finishing, Tony finally began to tell me what happened.
He said he had walked for hours looking for something we could eat. A bird’s nest with eggs, a rabbit or fish, anything. He saw the occasional animal in the distance and heard signs of many more, but never anything he could reach with the large stick he was carrying as a makeshift club. Tony said he was close to turning back when he saw something in the distance through the trees.
It looked like a man.
The figure was small and hunched over, but it was walking at a quick pace toward a swampier area thick with cypress trees. He thought about calling out, but something held him back. The man didn’t seem to have noticed him yet, and he wanted to get a closer look before he announced his presence. So he followed him.
The path they took wound along the edge of a small swamp, and as it got closer to dark, Tony began to regret his decision and consider turning back again. But then the man reached a rocky outcropping that fappeared to lead into a cave. As he grew closer, Tony could see the flicker of firelight inside as well.
It was then that he called out to the man. The figure had just disappeared into the cave entrance a moment before, but there was no sign of him coming back out after Tony yelled. He yelled again and again, wanting to avoid having to follow the man inside the cave to try and make contact. But again, there was nothing.
Seeing how quickly it was growing dark now, he forced himself to approach and enter the cave. Firelight moved along the walls, throwing everything into shift shadow as he went deeper in, still calling out. He said that the cave smelled terribly, a strange, rotten smell that burned his nose. It was that smell that made him decide to back out and try to find his way back to me.
He only saw a second of movement from the shadows before the man was on him, grabbing his neck with one hand while using the other to bring a knife down on his chest. Tony caught his knife hand at the last second, and it took both his hands to push the knife to the side enough that it only cut his arm. They continued to fight, with the man silently snapping his teeth less than an inch from Tony’s face as they struggled for the knife. Eventually Tony managed to wrench the knife free long enough to stick it deep in the man’s side. He pulled it out and struck again. After the second time he stabbed the man, the fight seemed to go out of him. He slumped to the side, his teeth snapping one last time as his breath rattled and then stilled.
Tony said that after he was sure the man was dead, he searched the cave but found little aside from a small hatchet and a bed made out of grass and moss. He searched carefully for any hidden cache of food, but there was none, despite the fact that this man had clearly made this place his home for some time.
Then he thought back to how the man had tried to bite him.
He took a burning branch from the fire over closer to the man. The panic of fighting for his life behind him, Tony realized the man looked wrong somehow. He wouldn’t describe how, exactly, just that he was wearing clothes of a sort and that “he just didn’t look right.” He said that he debated just trying to sleep until morning and then bring back the hatchet and knife to me, but he was so hungry that he couldn’t sleep.
And all that meat was just laying there.
After he had cooked and eaten until he thought he would be sick, he fell into a deep sleep. It was close to dawn when he woke up and realized that there were now two other figures sitting in the cave, quietly watching him. Tony said that instinct kicked in at that point. He bolted, expecting to be caught or attacked at any moment as he ran from the cave and back in the direction he thought led out of the swamp.
But no attack ever came, and when he tripped and twisted his ankle, a look back told him that no one seemed to be following him at all. Getting back up, he realized that aside from a sore ankle and his bleeding arm, he actually felt much better after eating and sleeping. Checking again that he wasn’t being followed, he started making his way back to me.
I was terrified by what he was telling me, but I tried to focus on the fact that he had made it back in one piece and that we still had the problem of being lost in the woods, except now we had the extra worry that these strange people might come after us as well. After he rested for a few more minutes, we decided to start walking again. Right away I could tell that he had way more energy than I did, and while we made some progress that day, I knew I was slowing him down.
He managed to make a fire for us that night. We sat together by it, and I stared into the flames in a kind of stupor born out of exhaustion and growing illness. Even with the heat of it so close by, I felt like my chest never really got warm, and my lungs hurt now when I coughed. That’s when Tony asked me the question.
“If you were to eat me, what part would you start with?”
I looked at him, trying to keep my expression neutral. Any other time I would have thought it was a joke, but I knew what he had done in the cave. I wasn’t sure if he was suffering from some kind of guilt, or if he was just fatalistically thinking ahead in case he died and I needed to survive.
Giving him what I hoped was a comforting smile. “I wouldn’t. And people can go for like three weeks without eating. We’re getting enough water as we go, too. We’ll be okay.”
He just stared at me for a moment and then turned back to watching the fire. “We’ll see.”
I knew he was acting weird, but I never thought he would actually hurt me, and when I finally drifted off to sleep that night, my sleep was more troubled by my fears of holding him back with my growing illness than it was him attacking me. So when I woke up with him on top of me, panting hot breath against my neck, my first thought was that he was sicker now too, not that he was getting ready to bite me.
“Just a taste. I just need a little taste.”
“What? Get the fuck off me, Tony. Tonyyyyy!” I began to scream as he bit down into my shoulder, ripping a chunk of flesh off and swallowing it whole. I squirmed out from under him, my right arm going numb from the pain and damage he had caused. For his part, my husband looked up at me almost bashfully, his eyes apologetic as he absently wiped the blood from his mouth.
“I’m sorry, honey. I just need a little. And you can have some of me too. I don’t mind. Right after I have a bit more.”
He came for me again then, and I’m sorry, but I won’t relate the details of how I killed the person I loved most in the world. The short version is that we fought and I won, but not without cost. I broke my wrist in the process and used the last of my body’s reserves fighting for my life. As dawn broke, I lay next to my dead love, my lungs filling with fluid as fever began to overtake me.
I think I slipped in and out of consciousness for several hours then. I had strange dreams, and the line between those dreams and the times when I was awake blurred to the point they were indistinguishable. I remember burning with fever, I remember being cold. I remember talking to Tony, even though he was laying next to me dead. And I remember dark figures standing over me, offering me a meal of his flesh.
You came here, tracking me down despite me avoiding your calls and emails, because you wanted a story, right? No, you wanted this story. The story of the woman who ate her own husband to survive. Who grew stronger after she did so and was able to keep going until she found her way back to civilization.
How did you see this going? You would do a sympathetic interview and then write it up whatever way you thought would see more clicks on your website? Make me a hero whose husband made a brave sacrifice or a monster who did an unforgivable thing? That’s why I avoided all the publicity from the start. I know the tricks of your kind.
But I have tricks of my own. This cabin isn’t rented in my name, and no one knows I’m here. No one knows either of us is here, in fact. And before you start begging again, just remember, you brought this on yourself. You just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to ask your prying questions.
And that’s okay. I understand. I have needs too. I have a terrible hunger sometimes now. Ever since…well, you now. And I’m smart and careful, but sometimes I have to give in to it. You know how it is when you just really have to have something, right?
So now I have a question for you.
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