A Taste For Humans

                                     “A   TASTE   FOR   HUMANS”

       Fifty thousand barbarians marched in armored array, row upon row of them tramping in deadly unison. Sullen hatred was etched across each of their weary faces.

       At the head of the column lumbered their leader, a fearsome giant of a barbarian,  “Hornhead the horrible” by name. A venomous saliva drooled from the corner of his cruel lips and matted in his great tangle of a black beard. The thoughts in his uncomplicated brain were of murder and pillage. His horde was nearing the fabled land of Angelica. Stories had reached him of vast stores of gold, silver and precious jewels there. The farms were supposed to be ripe with grains and the cattle fat and ready for the slaughter. It would be a fabulous prize for his murderous hordes.

       "It should be an easy task", mused Hornhead. Slaughter a few thousand Angelicans, barbecue and torture a few thousand more, and the others will surrender in terror. It was becoming a familiar pattern for his legions. In the ruined lands behind them, lay the wasted and rotting carcasses of a dozen such countries  whose insides had been ripped out by Hornhead and his men. Why should Angelica be any different?

       But, Angelica was different. It had no army or warriors. Violence was repugnant to all of its citizens. Yet somehow, no one had ever managed to conquer Angelica in its long history. In fact, those armies who had set out to subjugate Angelica had simply never been heard from again. No one knew why.

       Hornhead had heard these rumors and his primitive brain was momentarily troubled by them. But, the cold hard feel of his enormous sword and the noisy clamor of the clanking armor, of his huge horde, reassured him. As if in response to the rumors, he thumped his cavernous breast and bellowed a blood curdling challenge to the sky.

 “I, Hornhead, will smash them to a pulp,” he bellowed.

         To convince himself, and punctuate his threat, he grabbed two of his nearest men and squashed their heads in his hands like over ripe tomatoes. Then he threw their broken bodies to the ground where they would be mangled to fleshy shreds by the stamping feet of their 50,000 comrades.

       The serpentine column of barbarians wound its way through the Misty Mountains until it came upon the lofty  borders of Angelica. From their perch, high on the bluff, the roughened vandals looked upon the verdant beauty of the long central valley that is the heart and pride of Angelica. The brilliant sun reflected upon fields of golden wheat, orchards pregnant with fruit and cattle fat and glossy with health.

       For a moment, the barbarians were struck in awe at the well-ordered serenity that lay before them. But, the awe lasted only for a moment. Then, the savages, to a man, were bathed in the ice cold bath of murder, hatred and greed. Like an ebony river of death, they poured down the mountainside bent on annihilating all before them.

       The first few Angelicans looked slightly startled as they were hacked to ribbons, without perceptibly slowing the hungry avalanche of death. The next few hundred even looked slightly amused as their skulls were cleft open with battle axes. In fact, the first ten thousand Angelicans who were butchered, barbecued and tortured seemed perfectly happy to accommodate the savage barbarians in their peculiar task.

       Now even these barbarians, who were notoriously vicious, soon grew tired of the slaughter. By the time evening had fallen, the golden fields ran red with the blood of exactly 50,000 of the peaceful Angelicans. Their carcasses were strewn everywhere in great heaps of sundered flesh.

       Hornhead was weary but well pleased with his work. His men feasted and drank until they were bloated and full. Then they lay down to sleep, happy with thoughts of tomorrow's continued slaughter.

       The next day, the radiant dawn of the morning burst over the hillside, its liquid gold reflecting off the millions of diamonds of morning dew that covered everything and everybody. The dew was the Valley's mesmerizing narcotic and it cast a spell upon all whom it covered.

       The huge hulk of a creature, who only yesterday had been Hornhead the horrible, the murderous chief of this particular band of barbarians, arose and looked around in amused puzzlement, as did each of his fifty thousand comrades. Not one of them could remember who they were or why they were all together like this. It didn't really seem to matter though. They all felt happy, contented and glad to be here at home, in Angelica.

       As if directed by one mind, the former barbarians, who were now Angelicans, rose and began to bury the slain Angelicans in the valley's earth. Unbeknownst to the barbarians, the people they were burying had once been   Trilocks, a savage race of warriors from the far North. They too had once come in conquest of the valley, slaughtered its inhabitants and then buried them, just as the barbarians were now doing.

       Then, the mass interment completed, the new Angelicans dispersed to the many well-tended farms through out the valley. They very naturally took up the places of those that they had slain, tending the animals and tilling the fields in a serene and well-pleased euphoria.

       And, unknowingly, they waited for the next band of invaders who would feed them into the hungry maw of the valley's earth. For the Angelican Valley, nurtured upon the bodies of humans for generations, had acquired a taste for humans and was not about to give it up.

                                                     -30-

                                                  (936words)

                                         Joseph  Xavier  Martin