Genre: Realistic, Horror, Thriller

[Content Warning: Cannibalism and other extremely nauseating imagery]

[Note: This is meant to be a psychological thriller with horror elements and gross-out imagery. The characters are put in a life-or-death situation. A moral choice is before them, and emotions run high. The imagery should be shocking, vivid, and disgusting. The story should leave the reader wondering what they would do if they were in a similar situation.]

Somehow, a group of adults get trapped in a basement for such a long time that they become afraid they might starve to death.

While looking for food in the basement, they pull back a tarp covering a big pile of something. It turns out to be stacks of wooden crates. They find something to pry the crates open, and there are a bunch of pickle jars in the crates. It’s dark in the basement, so at first, they can’t see much more than the big green labels on the jars and that things are floating in liquid in the jars.

The labels say things like “Pickled Herring,” “Sweet and Sour Pickles,” “Dill Pickles,” “Pickled Eggs,” and so forth.

One of the people shines a light into one of the opened crate and sees a man’s head floating in the green liquid in one of the large jars. The head’s eyes are closed, and its fat face is frowning. The skin is discolored from the pickling juice.

The people are grossed out and scared. One of them asks who the guy is, but nobody knows. There aren’t any papers or labels that identify him.

They bring the light closer to the other jars, hoping they contain something edible, but all the jars in the entire basement contain pickled human parts. Some contain other heads, some contain just fingers, etc. It looks like someone had been collecting and pickling human parts in that basement for many years.

They’re afraid of starving, so they debate over whether or not to eat the pickled human parts. Someone mentions that there are cannibal tribes and that it’s better than starving to death, “We don’t know how long we’ll be stuck in here…It’ll probably just taste like pickles…”

Some of them try talking themselves and the others into eating the contents of the jars, but only because it’s better than starving to death. One person is very vocal, loudly stating that it’s better to starve to death than to eat another human being.

One of the people says, “Screw this!” and opens one of the jars with a satisfying pop. The smell is actually pretty good, like a freshly opened jar of pickled sausages. The person who opened the jar fishes a finger out of the pickling liquid and cautiously raises it out of the jar as the others look on. One onlooker can’t handle watching and runs to a far corner to gag. The person holding the pickled finger tries to take a nibble of it, but they can’t bring themselves to. They put it back into the jar and close it. Nobody else attempts it that day.

After a couple more days, a woman who barely has any energy manages to open one of the jars. She grabs a body part as if to eat it. Her friends ask her what the heck she’s doing. She says with determination, “I will return to my son.” She’ll do anything to make sure she survives to return to her child. And now that she thinks she might really starve to death, she’s willing to try the unthinkable.

She eats the body part, gagging and eating at the same time. She manages to get a few bites down, then she turns her back to the jar and the crates because she can’t stomach looking at them. She curls up on the floor, sweating and nauseated, and wills herself to not be ill.

Her friends try to talk to her, but she says, “Don’t talk to me right now.” It’s very obvious that she’s feeling extremely ill and needs to concentrate because if she gets sick to her stomach, she’ll be worse off than she was before she ate the stuff.

Everyone is shocked, and they’re watching her to see what happens.

There’s a water faucet in that basement, so after she’s finally able to sit up again, someone brings her some water. But still, none of the other people eat any of the parts.

After she sits up, one of the other people is freaking out and says to her, “You ate him! You ate a person! You’re not supposed to do that!”

The woman is sweaty and clearly not feeling well, and she replies, “I can’t die here,” as she speaks, she finds strength from somewhere inside, “I have to go back to my little boy!” She starts yelling and crying, “I can’t die! I won’t abandon him!” She gets very emotional…