A Halloween story: Tuyor's Adobo

“Even though I cooked it very well, there’s still a curious aftertaste when I ate it.”

HE had less than an hour to finish. His family, he thought, might start wondering where he found the meat for supper so late in the evening.

Jovencio Tuyor chopped onions and garlic like a man possessed. He crushed peppercorns under the blade and crumpled laurel leaves between calloused fingers. Beside him, the prized meat — his prized meat — was broiling over open flame. “Maybe this will lessen the smell,” he muttered, half to himself.

After twenty minutes, he poured vinegar and soy sauce into a pot, added what he had chopped, tossed in salt and monosodium glutamate, and let it simmer again. The aroma filled the small kitchen—familiar, almost comforting.

“Dinner’s ready,” he called out to his wife and children.

It had been weeks since they’d eaten meat. The Tuyors devoured the meal that night as if they were tasting life again.

Hours earlier, on September 30, in the quiet coastal town of Naawan, Misamis Oriental — thirty minutes from Cagayan de Oro — Jovencio had been drinking with his son Melchor and their neighbors: Rey Dadole, Arante Maravillas, and brothers Johnny and Junmar Candar.

When the bottle ran dry, they stumbled home. Ten, maybe fifteen meters down the dirt path, the group heard a scream. A frantic voice cut through the dark — “Mama, tabang!”

They turned, flashlights trembling in their hands. The beam found Rey on the ground, and over him, Jovencio — his arm rising and falling with a scythe. Each blow sank deep. Each hack, a wet sound against the grass. The blood hissed as it met the earth.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Jovencio said between gasps, his face catching the light.

They ran. All but Melchor.

Jovencio scalped half of Rey’s face, sliced away muscle from the arm, packed what he needed, and walked home with his son.

By October 2, Rey’s mother — sleepless, desperate — filed a missing person’s report. Hours later, police found his body on a grassy knoll near the village store. Half a face gone, half an arm missing, thirty-one stab and hack wounds marking the rest.

Rev. Sanny Limbag, a UCCP minister, could only shake his head. “Blinding rage,” he said. “That must have been it.”

The story was that Melchor had been beaten in an alley weeks before, and he named Rey as the culprit. A father’s vengeance, some said. But neighbors knew Jovencio’s madness ran deeper.

They remembered him eating raw carabao meat he’d stolen from another barrio. They whispered about how he sometimes cooked cats, feeding them to his children as if it were nothing. His wife, they said, never questioned it. He was the cook of the family.

Police arrested Jovencio hours after finding Rey’s body. During his inquest, he was calm—blank even—as the prosecutor pressed him with questions.

He felt no remorse.

His drinking companions — Arante, Johnny, and Junmar — were cleared of any involvement and released. Melchor and the rest of the Tuyors vanished from Naawan soon after, leaving Jovencio alone in the Misamis Oriental Provincial Jail, waiting for trial.

It was there that he confessed to the local press. He said it plainly, without flinching.

“Even though I cooked it very well,” he told them, “there’s still a curious aftertaste when I ate it.”

Today, Naawan still whispers. The story is never told in full voice, but everyone remembers.

“After the Tuyor incident,” Reverend Limbag said, “the people here were never the same. It’s something this town will never forget.”

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(This creative non-fiction is based on sworn affidavits, police reports, and the testimony of the self-confessed cannibal himself. This story was first published in Gold Star Daily on October 30, 2009.)