God's Creatures

It is easy, within such an influential period of man, to neglect what we once were, what we still are. To bury the primality of our existence beneath vain superiority, beneath a complex of humanity. Beneath invention, industry, structure. Beneath development, stereotypes, law. Beneath what we have created and what we have destroyed. Under our morality, our religion, our beliefs. In the depths of the ocean from which we have built our home. The animal we claim to be so far above, waits. We are after all, what we once were. God’s creatures. The animals.

We were hungry, so very hungry.

Blue-spotted men climbed across rope and wood as they moved through the deck. The blue didn’t fade anymore, the bruises never healed. Blood ran from open mouths; gums had turned to mush. The ice had ravaged each man; the sea had cursed us.

Waves lunged for masts, the sea hungry for anything human. Glaciers watched from a distance, groaning in the blackness that cloaked them. Water was everywhere, and yet we stayed thirsty. The ship groaned with what I could only imagine was grief.

We wished for land, prayed for still. Objectives for discovery had since been long forgotten, success supressed beneath survival. The water was becoming ice; the wind had grown to a constant roar. We rose when told, slept when commanded, for here there was no sun to wake us. No light dared to shine in the Artic, darkness consumed all it touched, it rotted the food, rusted the wood, gutted the crew. No, there was no sun here, no warmth and certainly no God. The light that remained was artificial, ghostly, it reflected off the ice in cold violets and blues.

Nights were loud. Ice scratched at the ship like rats; men retched over the sides of their bunks; their stomachs burning from a hunger no metallic food could satiate. Whispers of prayers circled the deck, the lodges. They muttered shared stories of eyes in the night, figures that moved along the ridges, not animal nor man. Something else entirely.

The rats were gone, eaten or dead, we weren’t sure. Two men had passed, both sailors, both young. Disease, cold, hunger, it was anyone’s guess. We tossed them off to the bestial waves. We hadn’t enough water to spare tears.

Faces were drained to a pale, waxen pallor, skin was tight on bones as though it had shrunk. The ship withered under men’s spectral figures, wooden planks collapsing alongside the bodies of men, certainly not alive, but certainly not dead. Through the lanterns yellowed light their eyes were illuminated, reddened, glassy, crusted over.

On the 30th day, we stopped. Bound by icy shackles, the artic had finally reached its hand around the hull. We were beached in a graveyard. Buried by ever-growing ice.

“We’ll make for the river.”

Motivation focused solely on a feverish fantasy for food; the ship was abandoned to its grave with little complaint. Men limped forward, dragging their legs behind them as though wounded. We were growing hungry, so very hungry.

The cold no longer became an absence of heat, rather it became its own presence, its own figure. It burnt us, tortured us, crept into our lungs, our stomachs, our hearts. Eyes glistened over with fever and desperation.

Hands became claws, nails grew into gnarled talons, wrinkled by the salt and ice. Sores spread across men’s arms, pink and weeping. Skin was stretched thinly against bone; ribs protruding through shirts. Yet perhaps most disturbing was the glimpses of teeth provided through thin moonlight. Too white and too large against the shells of shrunken faces.

We were skeleton men, with animal eyes, crawling through a white hell.

The hunger was insatiable. It had begun to hurt. It felt as though I had been cut open, my organs removed, as though there was something missing inside of me. It hollowed me out, I was an empty carcass, a walking corpse. I was starving.

It was the 32nd night when the first man collapsed to the snow. I saw a sailor creep toward his corpse with a knife in hand. I turned a blind eye. The crew turned a blind eye. Though we heard him, we heard him retch and cry, we heard him tear and tear. That was the first act.

We walked through an endless night. Men fell, silently, suddenly. Some turned from blue to grey, from purple to black. Corpses weren’t buried, nor did they remain untouched. Remains sat on the ice in heaped piles, red seeping through each seasoned crevice. Flesh was rarely left behind; bones were often taken. Marrow would be whittled out over dwindling flames with blunt knifes.

I hadn’t eaten yet. I couldn’t eat. Not man, anything but man. Surely it was against human disposition, against all ethics, all logic. Surely it was wrong, of course it had to be wrong. But I was hungry, so very hungry.

We did not speak, we could not speak, the cold had stolen our voices. Words froze in place before they could exit gnarled and red-tinged lips. And still men fell, succumbing to the Artic, freed from the cold that ate away at them, from the hunger that burned within them. Still, the ice stretched on, silent and indifferent.

On the 34th night I watched as the quartermaster was taken, the cards that had fallen from his breast pocket became swallowed by red before the stars could arrive in taunting mockery. We slept by his corpse, somehow the body rotted in spite of the cold. The stench of flesh clung to the air, metallic and yet sickly sweet. It should have made me ill. But I was so hungry, too hungry.

Sanity was what I clung to, ethics, morality. It was all I had. The crew had lost it, dignity enveloped by survival, humanity swallowed by hunger. But I still had it, I was still pure, still man. Still, I had refrained. Surely, if he were watching, God might spare me for my actions. And surely, he would give me strength, give me warmth. And surely, he would keep me alive. Surely. But I was so hungry, so very hungry.

On the 35th night, I watched as a young boy limped forward, his hands bleeding from blisters. And I watched as two men grabbed him, and pulled knifes from their soaked coats. I did not look back. They were hungry, we were all hungry.

I did not know who was left. Figures blurred between snow and skin. Men were there, and then they weren’t. Night concealed their untimely deaths. I often swore I could smell food, real food, hot food. I could see it. I could taste it. Yet I would wake from my reverie with greater hunger than before.

We passed through storm, snow devils carried shards of ice that pierced flesh like tiny swords. Perhaps I was bleeding? I could hear muttering beside me, though I was not sure if it came from man or ghost. It was close, closer, closer. A figure was in the distance, close, a man. I saw a face, though I gave no attention to it, I looked to his arms, to his legs, to his skin. Greying, blue-spotted. Alive.

I was a sane man, a good man. Or perhaps I was not. I could not remember. But I needed to live. I needed food. I was hungry, so very hungry.

Screams were dissipated by howling winds that roared at me whilst I worked. It was a rational choice, the only choice. And yet I wished I could have felt remorse, or perhaps disgust. But I couldn’t, I tried but I couldn’t, I was too hungry, so very hungry.

I did not retch, nor did I cry. I looked down upon what remained. And I left him upon the ice, watching as red dripped down the cracks where his body lay. At last, I felt the peace of satisfaction, the beauty of contentment.

And then I felt the horror, the pain. I felt the skin, the flesh, the bone. I saw the face. The eyes. The grey, the blue. I saw the person. I felt the lash of wind, the beating of ice. The beating of his dead heart.

I kneeled beside where he lay and removed my rusted knife once more.

I looked toward the hellish Artic expanse.

Plunging the knife toward myself I watched the winds run across the ice.

We are what we once were. We will become what we once were.

God’s creatures.

The animals.