What do Beans Mean?

Someone challenged me to write a short story about cannibals and a giant tin of baked beans. So I did. Sort of.






The first thing that Jamie became aware of was the unpleasant smell and sensation emanating from and focused around his trousers. It says much about the strange workings of the human brain that his first conscious thought was that of disgust; at some point between passing out in what he presumed to be a drugged haze and now, Jamie had shat himself. And he was mortified as to what his companion might think. Even as the urgent demands of his recent memories began to make themselves heard, and he was reminded of some of the rather more excellent reasons to feel upset, the nagging feeling that he had somehow rendered himself less manly stayed with him.

“Beenz meenz Heyenz!”

The words were barked out a few feet in front of Jamie. Although fear (and self loathing) had kept his eyes closed, his curiosity (which had no times for faeces-related self pity) was piqued by hearing this vaguely familiar phrase in this unexpected context. That same curiosity fought a brief battle with his mewling fear, was victorious, and forced Jamie’s eyes open as its prize.

“Beenz meenz Heyenz!” said the ragged, rangy, filthy figure on the left, presumably to return the…greeting? Let’s go with greeting…to return the greeting of the equally dishevelled and marginally more hairy man on the right. It was difficult to make out much more detail than that due to the opaque cloth that had been used to blindfold him; it was night now, and the two men were stood in front of a large fire. Had Jamie been a little less concerned with the smell of shit, and a little more anxious to find out just what was happening, he might have wondered a little more about the 10 foot tall metal tube sat in the centre of the fire. He would certainly have been professionally intrigued by the scratchily written “Heyenz!!” that had been scored into the metal tube over and over again.

Instead, his brain picked this moment to provide him with a full summary of his current situation.

The field work for his Anthropology doctorate was, basically, not going very well. As a lover of the easy life, Jamie had thought that studying some of the remote settlements of the Appalachian Mountains was a stroke of genius. Not only were these hillbilly hamlets relatively untouched by academia (thus guaranteeing him publication once he’d completed his thesis), but he wasn’t too far away from the creature comforts of the big city. He’d only need to endure one night of camping. Two at the most. And he’d be hailed as the first man to try and untangle the anthropological roots of the modern redneck. That he had an attractive undergraduate with him on the trip made it all the sweeter. He may be an overweight, prematurely bald, middle aged man with a scattered brain and questionable hygiene, but like all men he was convinced that any woman who spent enough time with him would find herself unable to resist his obvious charms.

This last thought, having nagged at him for a short while, kicked his conscience back into gear; where the hell was Lucy? They had both been sat in one of the 5 desolate looking shacks that made up this hillbilly hell when he had began to feel woozy. He’d knocked back his draught of moonshine (to his hosts obvious delight; Jamie had always prided himself on being able to relate to the lesser peoples he studied), whilst Lucy had looked on smiling. She had refused hers, which had annoyed Jamie no end; she’d NEVER make a decent anthropologist in his opinion. Too stand offish, and unwilling to get her hands dirty. Too concerned with keeping up appearances, thought the man who was taking time out of contemplating his imminent doom to fret about having shit in his trousers.

From behind him, a hoarse female voice erupted;

“You shower of fucking CUNTS! People know we’re here! They’ll come looking for us, and then you hillbilly ARSEHOLES will be FUCKED!”

Said pair of hillbillies made a strangled, snickering noise at this outburst, which continued without hesitation, repetition, or deviation regardless of the men’s seeming amusement at it. Jamie tried to turn his head. His failure to do so gave him his first clue that, just maybe, he was bound and gagged. In fact, this was a perfect opportunity to use the words “trussed up like a turkey”. Perhaps Jamie’s brain was being kind to him by not providing this alarming turn of phrase; he would then have had no choice but to consider what happens to turkeys once they’re trussed up, and then his last few minutes on earth would’ve been even more horrifying than they actually were.

He started to half-heartedly struggle, but after a few ineffectual moments, he instead began to cry. This seemed to break Lucy’s concentration from her efforts to break the world record for the longest uninterrupted stream of abuse.

“Jamie? JAMIE! Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

He paused in his weeping, strained to turn his head properly to see her through his makeshift blindfold, failed, nodded an acknowledgement, and then he carried on with the important business of crying.

Unfortunately, this also seemed to attract the attention of the two men. He felt rough hands on his face, and the blindfold and gag were pulled away.

“Izhee ruddy fur tost?‘

”Ah reckun.”

And with that, the hairier of the two hawked up a gobbet of phlegm. He did so in truly epic style, spending almost 20 seconds snorting and clearing his tubes before, satisfied with the mouthful he had acquired, he spat in onto the ground next to Jamie, where it landed with an audible thwack.

Jamie became aware of some movement around the edge of the fire, He could make out the hunched, ungainly shapes of what he assumed were the other villagers. Something like 15 to 20 people were beginning to gather, seemingly only showing their faces after hearing the apocalyptic spit of what, had he asked her, Lucy would have identified as the Head Hillbilly.

He wouldn’t have asked her, even if his throat wasn’t dry and parched. Because right now, he had finally noticed the enormous steel cylinder and the fire. He had also noticed the steam rising from the top of the cylinder. And, now that he REALLY concentrated, the bubbling noise coming from within. Despite himself, and regardless of the fact that he estimated that he already voided himself completely, he shat himself a little more.

Lucy, having remained conscious for the 4 hours of Jamie’s drugged sleep, was already well aware of the contents of the vast tin can. She’d watched the 5 hillbilly women fill it with pail after pail of water. They had dumped handfuls of what might have been either beans or seeds in there as well. Then they’d lit the fire and waited. She may only have been a 1st year student, but she didn’t need any sort of degree to speculate on just what these grinning, moonshine-swilling savages had lined up for her. As such, she spent most of her time bellowing insults and venom at the increasingly amused rednecks. This suited her just fine, because whilst they were amused, they also assumed she was expending all of her energy on impotent fury. This further meant that they hadn’t noticed her free herself from her bonds, or that she was tensed and ready to grab whichever one of their captors came anywhere near her.

Disappointingly, they were concentrating entirely on Jamie. The two men hoisted him up and carried him toward the tin can. Her eyesight wasn’t great without her glasses, so she couldn’t quite make out the “Heyenz!” scrawlings on its surface. Jamie, however, could. He could also hear the low murmuring of the crowd that was now gathered. “Been zontost…Been zontost…Been zontost”. Initially with some solemnity, but with a rising undercurrent of excitement as the two men brought Jamie closed to the tin can, the crowd chanted in unison.

Lucy was in a dilemma. She could, at any moment, make a run for it. All eyes were focused on the shaking corpulence that was Jamie (quite a few noses were too, even through the sour stench of redneck sweat).She knew the trail they’d taken to get here, and she was confident she could get back to the hired pickup within a few hours. She was young, fit, and could run at a decent speed even without the incentive of not being killed and eaten by morons. But what about Jamie? Okay, so he had treated her as a glorified note taker, and if his hand had “accidentally” brushed against her arse or her chest once more, then she would’ve probably killed him herself and cheated the cannibals out of a hearty, if somewhat fatty meal.

Fortunately for her, though not for him, the decision was taken out of her hands.The men put Jamie down, and the senior hairy bastard raised his hands aloft. The crowd went suddenly silent.

“Woss Beenz meen?!” was his shouted question.

“BEENZ MEENZ HEYENZ!!” came the bellowed reply from the crowd.

This was quickly taken up as a chant by the assembled hillbillies. As they gleefully yelled their bastardised slogan, the two men once again hoisted Jamie up, and took him toward the enormous tin can.

For his part, Jamie had time for two final thoughts. His second-to-final thought, he was pleased to note, spoke volumes of his dedication to his discipline; he wondered what had led this isolated hamlet to set up what appeared to be a bizarre, cannibalistic cargo cult. Why were they all so entranced by an advertising slogan from 20 years ago? What made them ritualistically worship a vast idol representing a tin of beans? He would love to spend more time trying to unpick the threads of this mystery, but time was something that was in diminishing supply.

His final thought, as he was hurled into the boiling mass of water, herbs, and beans amidst the whooping and hooting of the crowd was a certain satisfaction that the hot water would at least clean the shit off his bottom. “Because no-one wants to die an undignified death” he thought, as his eyes melted from their sockets and his organs burst inside him.

As the crowd hollered their approval and their bellies gurgled in anticipation, there was no attention paid at all to the Lucy-less area of the enclosure where the two had been tied up. She had made her decision to make a run for it just before poor Jamie was sent fatally into the beans. It was over 40 minutes before her absence was noticed, and by the time they started their pursuit, she was almost back at the car. She had driven almost 70 miles away before she saw a billboard advertising Heinz beans.

The police were puzzled as to why she was screaming, laughing, and crying at the same time when they found her.