The Cannibal's Guide to Health and Wellbeing by Martin Smith

Author:Martin Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories, Wit and Humour
Publisher: Martin Smith
Published: 2024-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

RNR

I am trapped on my back with my knees pinned against my ears, and all that lies between my shrivelled manhood and the jagged jaws of a Customs dog is a thin layer of polycarbonate. The travel agents never mentioned this in their glossy brochures. All I wanted was a holiday, lying on a banana lounge under a warm Caribbean sun and sipping an Aguapanela con Limón while the azure, warm waters surrounding Isla Grande lapped at my feet. Rest and relaxation. Recuperation. Maybe even a little romance. Reward for fifty weeks slaving away in a claustrophobic cubicle, doing Capitalism’s dirty work.

Two months earlier, after I had researched dozens of websites and brochures, I purchased my accommodation, flights and traveller’s cheques—all paid for by my shiny, new Visa card with an exorbitant credit limit way beyond being serviceable by my pay grade. I submitted buttock and biceps for all the shots, then bought a pair of swim trunks and a matching swim vest to hide my pale, scrawny frame and a beachcomber’s straw hat to protect my thinning locks. I even splashed out on a Samsonite on special.

I trained on the red-eye from Wickford Junction to JFK airport and arrived at 4 a.m., thus avoiding the check-in crowds. Bleary-eyed and buggered, I made my way to the Departures lounge, where, armed with a flat white, I wandered about the bookshop to kill time until my 5.30 a.m. boarding call.

I lingered before the bestsellers section, keen to learn what the common bibliophile was currently reading. As seems the way these days, self-help books dominated the top shelf. At number 2, displaying a blood-red severed heart set between silver-service cutlery and with a dust jacket of a deathly black, sat The Cannibal’s Guide to Health and Wellbeing™, a thin volume penned by some smug, shamelessly self-promoting smart-arse of a scribbler from Down Under. My interest piqued, I reached up to grab a copy to thumb through to garner a few anthropophagous tips from our antipodean author, when my eye caught the number 1 bestseller: a bulky, suffrage-white tome titled Preying Mantis: The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Your Man and Chewing His Head Off and authored by one Wake Woke-Woken. Ah, yes, I thought, the sisterhood, in all its glorious hyphenated phosphorescence, saving humanity (at least half of it anyway) one royalty cheque at a time.

Tempted as I was to flick to the end of the Woke-Woken chef d'oeuvre to see whether the happy-ever-after fairy-tale ending panned out with the heroine choking on a sinewy bolus, alas, my boarding call came, and grabbing another coffee, this time with a double shot, I made my way to the boarding gate for my flight to Miami.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I buckled up in my window seat overlooking the greying tarmac. The two seats next to me in Economy remained empty as the otherwise full plane settled and the cabin crew handed hot, moist face towels to the passengers. Fantastic, I thought as I

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