The thing about working at the morgue is it's a new experience for you, full of interesting and oddly exhilarating sights and sounds and smells.
The thing about not talking to, or sleeping with, Virginia anymore is that now you have all sorts of free time to indulge in your new interests. You get yourself into a new routine, which goes a little like this: wake up, eat, shower, drive to work (speeding, rolling through stop signs because you simply can’t get there soon enough), check out some corpses, go home.
Life is all about routine, especially when you don't share your life with other people. And the routine doesn't stop just because you're home. Maybe you'll clean up your apartment a little. Maybe watch some television or read a book. But usually you'll sit at your computer and spend some time in Jeffrey Dahmer chat rooms or typing C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L-I-S-M into search engines, you know, just to see if anything interesting pops up, anything you can learn.
You learn, for instance, that you are, by definition, a cannibal. Or a recovering cannibal, at any rate. You learn that the technical term for cannibalism is Anthropophagy, and that your particular practice is recognized under Anglo-American law as a necessity defense under something called the Choice of Evils Doctrine. It is formally known as Survival Cannibalism, for obvious reasons.
You learn about other forms of cannibalism, as well. The Aztecs practiced ritual religious sacrifices and ate war captives, strangers, and enemies. This is known as Exocannibalism because, you know, it’s outside the tribe.
You learn that the Celts and Aboriginal Australians would eat their dead friends and relatives as a way to release the soul from the body (and you're proud of yourself for remembering that from college). This is called Endocannibalism because it’s inside the tribe. They do say that it’s good for families to sit down to a nice meal together…
You read case studies of serial killers, crazy fuckers who would decorate their houses with body parts. Skulls on bedposts, shrines of bone and preserved genitals. They'd keep heads in the freezer, heads in their beds. They'd prefer little boys, or little girls, or ethnic boys, or they'd prefer the taste of virgins.
You learn that these people are fucking crazy. Even when they explain themselves, they're really only telling you that they're completely gone, off their rockers, the lights in their attics all smashed bulbs on the floor, which is covered in beautiful, hand-crafted, human-skin rugs.
You learn these people are crazy.
You learn you may be crazy, too.
You learn that you're developing an unhealthy obsession. Survival is one thing. You can't feel bad about doing whatever it is you had to do to survive, even if you do.
Survival is one thing. Pleasure is another. Compulsion, curiosity, desire – all others.
You learn that you're crossing into dangerous territory here, letting yourself learn about all this, letting yourself become more and more interested with every word you read.
You're crossing into dangerous territory, letting your mind wander like this. And oh, it wanders. It wanders over every inch of skin, every muscle. It wanders through every vein and in and out of every organ. The liver, heart, brain. Even the spleen. The pancreas. None of the body escapes these sick new fantasies.
You learn you're definitely crazy.
But you're still sane enough to know you're crazy, and that's something. You're sane enough that you're not murdering people and bringing them home. Or bringing them home and then murdering them. You're not cutting them up, making milkshakes out of their flesh. You're not replacing the carton of Rocky Rhode ice cream with a head full of grey matter.
You learn you're crazy, but not totally.
You wonder if anyone is keeping an eye on your internet usage. Is cannibalism red-flagged? Jeffrey Dahmer? Albert Fish?
You wonder if anyone is going to come for you, but you only wonder for a moment because you're only a little bit crazy, and you know that you're allowed to learn about anything you want to, just as long as you don't start practicing.
So you make rules for yourself.
No killing.
No dismembering.
You can't believe you're making these rules, but they seem like pretty good rules to live by anyway, so you continue.
No stealing any bodies from work.
No eating.
No talking about this with anyone. Ever.