Morsel

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Taking care of Mona is difficult when she makes me wait.

I’m working on our project. Patience, love. Wait for me, she texts.

Like a good soulmate, I do. It’s kind of pathetic to let her lead the situation, but I’m not stupid enough to risk everything for a text message that gets on my nerves.

Instead, I go to her lectures each week and raise my hand when she asks questions. She never calls on me, probably because she thinks I’m auditing, but she keeps eye contact with me, as if she’s lecturing solely for my benefit.

One day, her tongue flickers over her bottom lip, and it sends chills straight to my groin.

“And at the lowest point, when the soul seems to be eaten alive, that’s when true art is born,” she says.

In my mind, I pull pieces of her flesh from her skull and run my fingers over what’s left of her tongue nub.

“Is that why you created the exhibition on sex worker trauma?” a student asks. “The recent one at Sway?”

“Sex work is art too,” Mona says.

“They were being paid. It’s about capitalism,” the student next to me chimes in. “Money means capitalism.”

“Capitalism and sex,” another student says. “That’s what sex work is. Duh.”

Mona’s eyes are hooked on mine as she speaks. “Every interaction we have is about the consumption of the other.”

And just like that, I know she’s teasing me. Begging me to be patient. To wait for her sweetest treat.

The next few weeks are like a loud, empty stomach, until she finally reaches out while I’m at the processing plant. My phone buzzes on the break room table. Her name fills the device’s screen, and my stomach lodges in my throat.

I’ve got a surprise for you, Mona texts. Can I come over?

The urge to play hard to get surfaces. If she’s going to make me wait, I want to make her wait too. Besides, my excuse isn’t a lie.

I’m at work, I reply.

Call out, she sends.

No question. No request. No hesitation. It’s a fucking demand. Mona is calling the shots again, and though some buried part of me is pleased that she finally wants to see me, a bigger voice demands to be heard too.

She can revoke your power, Artemis’s voice booms in my mind. I’ve ruminated over his words so many times I can’t remember what he actually said anymore. Every warning sounds like him now, his stupid words regurgitating society’s expectations. She’s the one in control, he says. She rules over you.

My stomach drops. I have to take back control.

Can’t, I text.

She responds with an unhappy face.

I gaze at the big window, giving a view of the processing plant’s main floor. I zone in on the furnace in the corner.

A hand slaps my shoulder.

“This bitch’s pussy was unreal,” Jerry says. “I ate her like a tuna sundae.”

“Tuna sundae?” some new guy with a shaved head asks. “The fuck does that even mean?”

“Pussy is tuna, right?” Jerry explains. “But add ice cream cum and shit.”

“You ate her cum and her shit? ”

Jerry rolls his eyes. “Come on, man. You know what I mean. I didn’t eat her shit. I just know she tasted good.”

My dick pumps with blood, my erection growing to half-mast at his words. It’s been too long since I tasted Mona’s skin.

“How good?” I ask.

“Like a creamy little fish sandwich,” Jerry says. “She came like a waterfall too. I showed that pussy who owns it!”

We both laugh, and he pulls out his phone, then scrolls through his gallery to show me a picture.

“What about you?” the new guy cuts in. “Have you ever shown a pussy who owns it?”

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me. He’s in the same white jumper as we are, but there are no safety glasses hanging out of his pocket or on his collar. The supervisor is a stickler with safety rules. How did this guy get away with that?

“What Kent and I say about chicks is our business,” Jerry says. “The fuck kind of question is that anyway?”

“A question of complete domination,” the new guy says. He nods at me. “Have you ever beat up a pussy before? Made it raw? Made the woman fight? Take away her agency?”

Agency? The word is off. Stiff. Like cardboard. A buzzword he’s been hanging onto.

But why do I get the feeling he’s attacking me?

“All girls like it a little rough,” Jerry says. “Right, Kent?”

“A little, sure,” the new guy says. “What about when they beg you to stop?”

Jerry forces a laugh, like he’s trying to break the tension. “This chick wanted me to tie her up once,” he says. A few other workers laugh too, and I bob my head. Jerry howls. “She was a real freak!”

“Sometimes I get the urge to tie them to a bed and force them to beg for mercy,” the guy says as he examines me. “Don’t you?”

He bares his teeth, and I swear, it’s like he’s insinuating I did something wrong, like I’m the guilty offender here when he’s the one confessing these violent tendencies.

I straighten myself in my seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I bet you do,” he says. “I bet you know exactly what I’m talking about. I bet you like chaining them to the floor.”

I snarl, my nostrils flaring. I may have chained a sex worker to the oven, but that doesn’t count. I don’t like being accused, and I certainly don’t like the fact that he’s trying to corner me.

I zero in on a woman in the corner of the room, sitting alone at a table with her smartphone camera lens aimed at us. Like she expects me to do something violent. Her next viral video.

She’s wearing the standard uniform jumper too. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A completely unremarkable face, and yet there’s something familiar about her. She’s fixated on the phone’s screen, her lips pulled back slightly, greedy for my next action.

She thinks she’s smarter than me, doesn’t she?

“Are you fucking recording me?” I ask. I stomp past the new guy and corner the recording bitch. “You think you can record me like I’m some kind of freak?”

Her face drops with fear, her skin pale.

“I-I’ll delete. I swear,” she stammers. “I’m sorry?—”

I yank the phone from her hands and smash it into the ground. The screen shatters into a million pieces.

The room falls silent.

The woman gawks at me, her mouth hanging open, her wide eyes full of tears. Full of fear.

My groin surges awake. The agitation dissipates, replaced by adrenaline and desire.

She’s afraid of me.

I storm out of the break room and through the main floor. I grab a chicken breast out of a bin, stuff it in my pocket, and find the quickest path to the storage area in the back. The need pulsates inside of me, and until I get rid of it, I won’t be able to think straight. I unbutton my jumper uniform, pull out my dick, then wrap the lukewarm meat around my cock. I groan, the slick juices coating me, and pleasure shoots through my spine. It’s like fucking a woman’s gaping wound.

If the supervisor finds out about me breaking that girl’s phone, I’ll probably get written up, or maybe even fired, but the memory of the look in her eyes sends me soaring above the clouds, and I can’t contemplate the future of my job.

I can only think of her fear.

The woman’s fear was tangible, there on my tongue. Like she knew I could kill her. Like she knew, just from a single look, that I wanted to eat her and watch her die.

My chest tightens, my skin sensitive and itchy. It should be Mona I’m thinking about, not some forgettable brown-haired stranger. I scrunch my eyes and change the image until I see Mona cowering underneath me.

I hold the chicken meat to my lips. I lick the smooth flesh, my tongue writhing over the pebbled pink skin, the taste subtle and musky, and I imagine it’s Mona’s puckered nipple. I suck the blood and milk out of Mona’s imaginary tit as the chicken’s slimy pink liquid coats my tongue. Mona’s tears roll down her face, fear crawling over her body like sweat. She gives me everything she has, whether she wants to or not, and when I’m done with her, I’ll eat every last bite until she’s only bones.

I come, my jizz squirting over the raw meat sleeve and covering my hands, down my wrists, and dropping onto my boots. It’s more cum than I’ve had masturbating in a long time.

Usually, I try to think about the eternal love of cannibalism. This was different. This was like I was embracing the predatorial side of it: the total and complete control of a woman. And it’s all thanks to the palpable fear of that woman who was recording me, because for a split second, she thought I was going to kill her.

She was filming me without my permission. The only person who has ever gotten permission to film me was?—

Wait. Did Mona send that woman to record me?

The thought pops into my head, bursting any sort of leftover lust from seeing that woman panic. If Mona did send her, then we’ll have to talk about it. I don’t like being a part of her little art shows without my knowledge or agreement. It makes me feel off-balance.

I clean up, then check the dial on the side of the industrial furnace. The highest temperature is 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. I picture Mona’s decapitated head being tossed out of a basket and into the preheated oven.

I shake those images away. I’d never cut off Mona’s head and put her in an oven or a furnace. I’m only thinking of that because the woman in the break room reminded me of the sex worker who freaked out when I chained her to the oven. Mona would appreciate the steak-and-knife play more than that sex worker. She’d probably enjoy it more than all the sex workers combined. We were made for each other.

And whatever surprise Mona has for me is probably even better than steak and knife play anyway.

Back in the break room, I slap Jerry on the shoulder. “Speaking of eating pussy, I’m starving,” I say. I motion toward the supervisor’s station. “I’ll see you later.”

“You’re calling out to get laid?” Jerry says. “Yeah, bro. What a man. Make that pussy cream!”

I find the supervisor and give him an excuse about having an upset stomach, and though his face twists in disapproval, I don’t hear his words.

I text Mona I’m home early. It’ll probably take her a while to get to my place, and I want her to be there right after I arrive. I don’t want to wait anymore.

But as I drive up and the mobile home comes into focus, I notice another car in the field.

Mona’s SUV.