Free Eat Thy Neighbour by Daniel Diehl

villages of Lindalfoot and Ballantree near an outcrop of land known as Bennane Head. Situated at the foot of a steep cliff, the cave wound for nearly a mile inside Bennane Head, leading off into one dark, dead end after another and peppered with numerous rooms where they could make a home that was equally safe from prying eyes and the long arm of the law. Best of all, when the tide came in, the crashing surf surged into the mouth of the cave for nearly two hundred yards. No one would ever suspect that members of the human race could survive in such a place.
    Their new home may have been safe and sound, but being confined to one spot presented certain problems to their livelihood as thieves. They might become known in the locality. To avoid being recognised and followed back to their lair, they could simply kill all their victims, but this still left them with the problem of disposal – not of their victims, but of the spoils. They could not take the money, weapons and valuables they stole to any nearby town to sell or trade for food and goods. This was a very small and isolated world. Not only were all strangers suspect, but someone would inevitably recognise the plunder as belonging to a friend or relative who had disappeared. But if the Beanes never went into a town or village, how would they get food? They could always steal cattle; cattle rustling was one of the most common occupations for Scottish outlaws, but it was also impossibly dangerous. A captured cattle thief was guaranteed to die on the end of a rope and this did not appeal to Sawney in the least.
    The Beanes may have been morally deficient, and possibly even mentally under par, but they were not lacking in a degree of animal cunning and soon the solution to their problems became clear. They would no longer waylay and murder people for their possessions; they would simply use their victims as a source of food and thereby eliminate the need to dispose of their valuables. The first few dismemberings may have been a little distasteful even to Sawney Beane; but after a while it became routine.
    Assuming that an average adult human being would render up about 60lb of edible meat, the Beanes could survive on a single kill for a month or more. But the speed at which flesh rots presented another problem. This time it was Mrs Beane who stepped in. To prove she was a good and thrifty homemaker she began to salt down the body parts with salt from the tidal basin, like any other meat being put up for the winter. Eventually, some parts were soaked in ocean brine and other tasty morsels hungover the fire to be smoked like a fine bacon or ham. Now, when Sawney had a particularly good day and brought home more than one victim, nothing would go to waste. And if pickings got slim out on the highway, there would always be enough food in the larder to see them through the lean times.
    With life in the cave safe and secure, and assured of a plentiful supply of food, Sawney and his partner-in-crime settled down to produce a new crop of Beanes. And produce they did. Over the years – while busying himself with depopulating the countryside – Sawney and his mate propagated no fewer than fourteen children. In the fullness of time, these provided them with a collection of eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters, presumably through conjugal combinations best left uncontemplated.
    As the children grew up they naturally came to accept that anyone outside their own barbarous clan was to be considered as nothing more than a legitimate food source. What little education they received would have centred on the skills of the hunter-killer and, when they were old enough, they joined their dad in bringing home enough victims to supply the expanding number of mouths lurking inside the cave.
    Undoubtedly, the populace around Lindalfoot and Ballantree were now wary enough of the lonely stretches of road between their towns that fewer and fewer travellers dared travel alone. This meant that