He could wrap his empty stomach around his waist like a belt, and began eating his bodyweight in meat every day as a preteen. His lips were nearly non-existent and his mouth was so wide it could hold 12 eggs at once. In other words, the story of Tarrare is the kind of horror story that started out innocently enough and snowballed into one of the creepiest, well-known chapters of French history.
And yet, his affliction remained a mystery for all eternity and so did his feelings...
He does not mind the logical explanation History managed to come with. To know that his parents kicked him out of the house when he was around 16 years old because they couldn’t afford to support his eating habits——well, that could be the truth, if they want to believe this. What good would come from telling that he was the one that decided to run away because he was scared of the crimson hunger that took his body since that fateful day? Would anyone believe him if he said that he heard whispers, and that his body longed to devour his own family?
—Oh, most definitely they would. But the boy decided to quietly allow the world to spin their tales, instead. He was oh-so used to a lifetime of not fighting back, since that night.
He hears with a newfound amusement the tales of how, without much choice or imagination, he resorted to the easiest way to make some money: to become a street performer in Paris. That is indeed the truth… He hears with a blank face how he downed just about anything for his act, including barrels of apples, corks, rocks, and even live animals… And that, too, is indeed the truth. That no one bothered to see what was so clearly wrong with him since it was a dog-eat-dog world and he seemed to be just another filthy human being out to make a buck——ahh, yes, that did happen as well. Life was a collection of lonely and scary days, where only the crimson whispers would make him company.
Days became weeks and weeks became months. Months passed by and transformed into years. And then happened the French War of the First Coalition. As a seemingly healthy male in search for the next meal, he enrolled in the Army, but what he found there was hell: the Army’s practice of rationing meals drove him even more mentally and physically ill. He was hospitalized under supervision, which is when the severity of his condition became apparent… But no one could hear the whispers but him. No one could understand the horror that permeated his every step but him. He was an alien stranded in a planet full of strangers—he was all alone, even when he was surrounded by humans.
He does remember how the field doctors were horrified to see him eat the bones and fur of a cat… He also remembers the tears that always fell from his eyes at these moments, the absolute terror of not wishing to do something and yet, watching his body move on its own. That was an old nightmare, one from which he never woke up since the day he stepped into a dark cave. But the generals, on the other hand, saw an opportunity on that filthy hunger…
The General Alexandre de Beauharnais gave Tarrare the task of swallowing documents in a small box to be delivered across Prussian enemy lines. But naturally, without any training, not knowing the local dialet and with such an obvious ailment, the young soldier was quickly pruned as a spy by the authorities; however, the worst torture of all was not the heavy beating that left his body in a sorry state, not lack of his huge food intake.
It was that… That one look. Just one look of pity from his torturers and he understood that all had been lost. Like the finest delicacy that could be only tasted once, he knew that it meant that he would never reach again that single moment of being understood as a human being with feelings of his own.
He was so happy before…
A mission that only he could complete. A faith that could not be placed on anyone, but him. For the first time in his entire existence, he had been seen not as a freak of nature—rather, they addressed him as a fellow “human being.” For the first time, he was not a burden. He was necessary.
But there he was… Not just condemned to the humiliation of the failure—that was bearable. He was laughed at for his entire life. He was also condemned, yet again, to that torturous and alienating solitude, while now knowing that there was a small window of time where he wasn’t alone. And that was the scariest thing in the entire world, more than a scarlet moonlight in a dimly lit cave.
——In the silence of his prison, that night, he cried.
That, he too remembers all too well.
When he finally made it back to France after a humiliating parade, he was hospitalized again under an understandable and severe trauma that left him both incapable of continuing his military service and desperate to find a cure for his condition. After an entire life incapable of fighting against unseen forces that seemed to dictate his every move, he wished to finally give the act of struggle a try.
—A glimmer of hope that shone so brightly under the darkness of his eyes.
Laudanum opiates, wine vinegar, tobacco pills, and a diet of soft-boiled eggs were all employed, but Tarrare was still forced in the end to walk the streets fighting stray dogs for discarded slaughterhouse cuisine, drink the blood of patients who were being treated with bloodletting, and was even caught consuming cadavers from the hospital morgue multiple times... Each and every time, a silent despair grew stronger; an abject horror that matured inside of his heart——he would live like that for eternity. And he would die like that too. A defective human being incapable of mingling with the others; he was changed for the worst since that fateful night, and no matter how much he chased after normalcy, it was out of his reach. Eventually, even a toddler went missing from the hospital and Tarrare, the suspected culprit, was chased from the premises before disappearing into the city.
——From there on, what happened was a blur.
Or rather, he has no wish to disclose his lowest point in life. He merely allowed those crimson wires to move his limbs, closing his eyes as if someone too tired to fight against the undertow any longer, choosing to drown instead. His head full of strange whispers, his humanity drowned in a bottomless hunger. He roamed free, a beast unknown to mankind.
And then four years later, a doctor was contacted by a physician of Versailles hospital at the behest of a patient on their deathbed. Sure enough, it was Tarrare, now brought to death’s door by what he said to be a golden fork he had swallowed two years previously and was now lodged inside of him. Unfortunately for him, it was not a fork that was killing him, but end-stage tuberculosis. Within a month, he passed; all the mystery he represented died with him.
“His body, as soon as he was dead, became a prey to a horrible corruption,” said the opening lines of a paper published by this same doctor, decades later. But the truth was that he was afflicted by an accursed corruption that would follow his soul to the grave for much, much longer…
Originally Posted by Kamerad
Reply With Quote
