My family doesn’t eat meat after 6pm. I’d always thought this was normal, that other families followed this seemingly basic principle. It wasn’t until I moved out that I learned how weird of a thing this was; that other families didn’t adhere to what I had always thought to be a fundamental dietary guideline. Only my family believed in The Consequence.

For nearly two decades I refrained from eating meat after the clock struck six, regardless of how much of a craving I happened to have for it. Even if there was plenty left, and I hadn’t finished my plate, I was expected to either scrape the remains into the trash – so much food wasted – or put it in a Tupperware container for the next day.

I always tried to get home soon enough to eat dinner before then, but with school and extracurricular activities, that wasn’t always possible. I remember when I’d just finished hosting a session for an afterschool club, and was on my way home –starving, hadn’t eaten all day – when I got a text from my father saying that he had bundled all the meat up, and to not expect any left out. He’d sent the text at 5:47pm. I arrived home feeling disappointed, but quickly got over it as it was simply something that had to be done. It was, for us, normal.

The fear of The Consequence guided our lives. 

Because of how integral it was to my family, I had never once brought up the topic with friends. Much like how you probably wouldn’t bring up the fact that you put your dishes in the sink or dishwasher, it was never conversationally relevant to bring up our no-meat-after-six rule. To me, it was mundane, unremarkable. 

It might sound like this was an odd though ultimately harmless restriction; a familial eccentricity, which many families have in one way or another. And, in one way, you’re right. I wasn’t abused, I slipped up once and while it was treated gravely – given a stern though not frighteningly heated warning – there was no traumatic punishment, physical or otherwise. There was some leniency in the exaction of The Consequence with regards to children.  

But The Consequence itself was so utterly bizarre, so needlessly grim, that its very existence made the whole thing unforgivable. I would’ve rather been raised vegan, lived a life bereft of meat for some allegedly noble cause, than the one I had. Because that knowledge, that ever-lurking fear, messed me up in other ways. I don’t have PTSD, and neither do I have some psychological block preventing me from eating meat after 6pm – thank God – but I do have knowledge of The Consequence, and I’d do anything to forget it.

When I shared that knowledge with my girlfriend, and how I still adhered to it – something she hadn’t consciously noticed - she left me. And not only did she leave me, she called me a lunatic. Me, who had never once said anything certifiably crazy. Me, who’d treated her with care, respect, and kindness; with an unblemished record of staunch sanity. 

All because of The Fucking Consequence. 

She left yesterday, and in doing so took all of her things from my apartment, which included most of the cookware; since she’d brought hers over in the absence of my own. I’d relied on the microwave and an air fryer prior to her moving in. Back to such lowly states, I bought a Hot Pocket after an unusually exhausting day at work; that olden dinner upon which many have relied throughout the ages. Cheeseburger flavor. Additionally, I bought a bag of those low-fat, air-fried chicken tenders, to supplement the totally nutritious meal. I was physically tired, and emotionally wrecked.

I guess in the grief of my heartbreak I had thought it worthwhile to share the events with my cousin during the drive home, with whom I’d always felt a close, brotherly connection. Well, he apparently felt it necessary to tell my parents after the call ended, who took it upon themselves to come visit me. 

While sitting at my small dinner table, eating my hot pocket and tendies, there came a few knocks at the door to my apartment. I got up, answered, and – bewildered – let my parents in. My mom hugged me, my dad gave me a knowing and solemn pat on the shoulder and told me in many words that I'd be fine, that I’d find someone better. Absentmindedly, I brought them into the kitchen and offered them some tenders, since I’d cooked the whole bag. 

I hadn’t paid attention to the time – ironically, hadn’t thought of the one that had ended my relationship. My mom’s face was the first to change. It went from sympathetically despondent to confused, and then to horrified. My dad’s reaction was a a little belated, as if he couldn’t quite fathom the events. His expression of fatherly contrition slowly melted into a snarl; a visage of mounting contempt. Finally, glancing over at the microwave’s clock, I realized what I’d done. 

Speechless, my mother merely stood at the threshold of the kitchen. My father, equally voiceless, gently pushed past her and headed toward the front door. I heard the lock click, and then he returned – his face grimly set.et, resolute. 

Stunned, I sat there at the table, the cheap meat churning in my gut. My plate – the half-eaten hot pocket and chicken tender crumbs – suddenly seemed like a profane thing; I wanted to sweep it off the table.

After guiding my mother to a seat, my father went and leaned against the kitchen counter, his hands clasped together. He looked like a pastor in prayer, his posture almost reverent. A terrible, baleful silence fell upon the kitchen, like the sudden hush of an audience before a public execution.

“Oh, my son. My baby.”

My mother’s shaky voice almost broke me. I met her eyes, and she averted them. Like she couldn’t bear to look at me, her own son. 

I tried to apologize, but my mouth was suddenly dry. The room suddenly felt hot, stifling. I couldn’t seem to breathe, let alone form the words. Slowly, things started to feel wrong.

Anxiety reared itself like a massive wave. My vision swam, objects becoming blurred, indistinct, amorphous. My own parents became like phantoms, shifting and immaterial. I gripped the table for balance, for stability, as if I were the one losing corporeality. 

“It’s happening. To my son. Oh my God.”

I’d never heard my father sound so defeated. His voice almost brought me back, almost reversed the nauseating unreality of my sudden affliction. In my mounting delirium my mother’s whimpering sounded almost musical. Sing-song. Like a lullaby she’d whisper-sing to me as a child.

When I felt my face begin to slide free from my skull, I screamed. But it was altered, distorted as my lips came loose. As my tongue followed in their wake. As if taking on the burden, my mother let out a scream of her own. To me, the world was now no more than a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of images, one of which was my maniacally shrieking mother.

The rest of my body fell apart in turn. Bits crumbled away, layers sloughed off; fluids leaked and oozed. 

When there was finally just my skeleton, held together by strips and stubborn sinew, my father began cleaning up the mess. My mother’s mind was pretty much gone – she’d screamed herself senseless. Unable to move, lacking the connective tissue to do so, I just sat and watched as my remains were collected and deposited into a bucket he’d gotten from beneath my sink.

The stuff – the meat – was then slowly poured into the sink. The grinding and gurgling of the garbage disposal as it worked to break up my flesh somehow calmed me. Would’ve soothed my nerves if I’d still had them. 

When the deed was done, he lifted my bony hand and placed it gently on the table, then did the same with the other. I could only watch – my eyes hadn’t withered away. He then shuffled around the kitchen, and not finding what he was looking for, went searching throughout the apartment. I couldn’t guide him – not that I would’ve. I knew what he was searching for, and the last thing I wanted was for him to find it.

But he found it, eventually.

He set the toolbox on the kitchen table as if it were the most delicate thing in the world. It was old – it had been his – but it was sturdy, and the tools inside hadn’t been used once since he’d gifted them to me. With both hands, as if there were precious jewels inside, he raised the lid and removed the hammer and a few nails. He raised the hammer, then lowered it, and helped my mother out of her chair. He led her to my couch and returned, his expression pained, but set. He was ready, no matter how much it would hurt him – and me.

A nail was placed atop my left hand. The hammer struck once. Twice. A second nail was placed on my right hand and was embedded to its head with three solid, table-shaking strikes. There was, somehow, pain. All that was left of me was bone, some flimsy pieces of dead flesh, and somehow, I felt it. More than just a vibration, I actually felt the puncturing of the bone, the fracturing of my hand. Some phantom skin sensation.

Affixed to the table in a seated crucifixion, I was a prisoner. I knew that I had every right to be, given what I’d done. What I’d do, if I were free. And yet I was terrified. Appalled. By my father’s eyes, by what I had become. By what he’d done to me without so much as a few calming words.

The stink of my discarded, ground flesh lingered, wafted up from the garbage disposal; the viscera still clinging to the pipes. I wanted to cry, wanted to scream. But I could only stare and suffer. And then the urge came, insidious and powerful. Like a switch had been flipped in my brain, the newly emergent psyche demanding that I perform the unthinkable. It galvanized me. Made my bones pulse and quiver. They rattled in place, and I heard my mother moan in fright. My father sat across from me, watching me with hammer in hand. And I, torn between minds –one terrified, the other unthinking, save for that deplorable impulse – stared back. That abysmal silence returned.

When my skin began to grow back, the urge increased by magnitudes. I nearly lost myself completely to that abominable impulse.

My parents left around the time that my face finished reconstituting itself. It felt new, so I’m sure it looked incredibly uncanny, probably more unnerving than the skeleton they’d stared at for nearly an hour. I thought I’d die when the skin formed around my hands. When those new nerves, excited to sense and feel, were unfairly bombarded by the sudden, inexpressibly excruciating sensation of those long nails in my hands, I let my mind fold into myself. I withdrew into an unthinking fugue.

Even after I’d finished regenerating, I sat there for twenty, thirty minutes. Dreading to rip out the nails. To bring even greater agony upon myself. But I had to – and I did. Thank God I didn't have the voice for the pain; that my vocal chords hadn't yet grown taut enough to handle the sonic burden. I would've brought the whole complex running to my door with my screams.

I know that had my father not done that, I would’ve done far worse to someone else. As something worse than a ghoul, as some kind of fleshless revenant; I would’ve gone on a monstrous prowl. Would’ve seized and devoured someone.

Long ago, centuries before my birth, some far-distant ancestor committed atrocities against a few fellow townspeople in some long-forgotten village. Either out of extreme desperation in dire circumstances, or simple sadistic gluttony. I never found out why. I just know that he committed terrible, anthropophagic crimes. Cannibalized multiple people.

The people related to those he’d hurt were so devastated and subsequently filled with wrath that they employed all manner of curses and maledictions, dooming him and his kin – forever and ever – to unforeseeable and unpreventable malignancies and restrictions – Consequences - related to the consumption of meat. Not long after, an entire generation was rendered gastrointestinally incompatible with meat. Others down the line had been able to eat and eat and not get full, no matter the quality or content. I don’t think I could’ve lived with that polyphagic plague. Not for long.

My family? Our Consequence? For whatever reason, we cannot eat meat after 6pm, lest we shed our flesh and transform into hyper-ravenous fiends; skeletal nightmares who’d prey on friend, foe, or family in a frenzy of insatiable hunger. Unless we’re detained, “starved” for a period of time dependent upon factors seemingly beyond our control.

For some, it’s hours; others, days. But the body eventually regenerates, and our humanity afterwards is, for the moment, restored. I’d never succumbed to that despicable, horrific state before. It was the most awful thing that’d ever happened to me.

Now, no matter the circumstance, I’ll never forget The Consequence. It’s not something I can afford to overlook or gamble with.