Morsel

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Four black garbage bins enter my vision. My heart pounds. The alley behind the butcher shop is just wide enough for a car, which means there’s less traffic, and it makes my hunt for animal discards easy. Mona isn’t meat, not yet anyway, but I didn’t stab these animal discards, and they won’t talk back or try to enforce their will on me. I’m the one who conquers them.

Then I see metal locks dangling from each bin, shiny and new, taunting me with their barricade.

“Fuck!” I shout.

I slam my fists into the top of one of the bins. It knocks over and smashes into my shin. I howl and heave until I’m back in a calmer state. It’s been like this—clumsiness and agitation—ever since Mona spilled the pig’s blood and let me eat her period. Everything is going to shit.

I can’t let her control me.

“This is fucking bullshit,” I groan as I hoist the garbage bin up. Is the butcher locking me out? I grit my teeth. Why would he lock me out?

There’s a chance he’s locking out wild animals. Bears. Coyotes. Raccoons. Sacramento is full of densely populated neighborhoods, but it’s not unheard of to spot the occasional predator on the outskirts. And who knows what would happen if the zoo animals escaped?

I run a hand through my hair. This isn’t about me. It can’t be. Even if my favorite butcher shop blocks my access to their leftovers; even if my girlfriend—fuck buddy, professor, artistic meat hole, whatever the fuck she is to me—is the one leading our relationship; even if it seems hopeless, I can regain control.

The butcher can’t control me anymore than Mona can. Make a copy of the butcher’s key, and I’ll be back in the premium discards. And when it comes to Mona?—

Cold seeps into my bones, and every ounce of my control leaks onto the ground.

I don’t know what to do about Mona.

But the butcher? I can figure him out.

I open the front door of the butcher shop. A small chime rings through the air. An old bitch takes her time at the counter. While I wait, I stare at the cold display cases, and my mind wanders: I imagine taking Mona to the grocery store. First, we’d find our favorite cashier, perhaps someone sweet and tender, someone who reminds us of an innocent lamb, and we’d tell the cashier that we just got back from our honeymoon.

The next year, Mona would come in without a leg. It was the illness, she’d say solemnly, explaining her missing limb, and once we were in the parking lot, Mona would wink at me.

The year after that, we’d return again, and this time, Mona would have a missing arm. It was a terrible accident, I’d say, and perhaps it would be. Maybe I’d try to argue with Mona about only taking her forearm, but she, the stubborn little morsel she is, would strongly insist on me taking her whole arm, and I’d have no choice but to fulfill my lover’s desires.

And then I’d push her wheelchair. She’d only have an arm left, and yet, my precious little morsel would still have a smile on her face. The cashier would gawk at us, knowing there was something insidious behind our stories, our lies, and we would keep our secret close: there’s no better connection than a love like ours, where you literally give yourself to the other, and the other consumes, never letting a single flake go to waste.

After that, I’d come to the grocery store without Mona. I’d tell the cashier my wife was in bed. I wouldn’t mention the fact that she had to be spoon fed now, or that none of the food on the conveyor belt was for us but for me to cook Mona with. Naturally, I would ask the cashier to come visit my wife. She misses you, I’d say. Please. Won’t you come to our house and see her? And because the cashier was sweet inside and out, she’d come to our home. By then, Mona’s torso would be trussed like a turkey, seasoned with rosemary and garlic, a wreath of rainbow carrots surrounding her like a nest. Of course, the cashier would notice those were the ingredients I had recently purchased from the grocery store, and she’d be frightened. With the locks in place, the cashier would have nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. And then I’d?—

The door chime jingles. I grimace and adjust my erection, a headache forming between my temples. This is why my relationship with Mona is a problem. Whether it starts with a toe or something even smaller than that, as the years pass and slices are taken from her body, I would have no choice but to continue eating her. Even if I supplemented with animals or other women, Mona would eventually become an inanimate object: a reliant torso, bed bound, and still serving me.

Whispers flutter past me. I turn over my shoulder and see the woman who was recording me in the break room, next to the same man with the shaved head who was goading me into talking about raping women.

The hairs on the back of my neck rise. Are they following me?

No. That would be crazy. This is a local butcher, the closest one to the processing plant in fact, and if they work there too, then they’d come here before or after work, like I do. This shop has the best organic meat in the city. It makes sense.

The woman stands on her toes and keeps her eyes on me as she whispers to the man. He bares his teeth at me.

I ball my fists. “The fuck are you looking at?”

The woman skitters closer to him like a bug hiding under the cracks of a tile. I sneer. The bitch would be better off as barbecue than a plant worker.

The butcher clears his throat. I blink rapidly. The old bitch is gone. I walk up to the counter, and the butcher glares at me. The fuck is his problem?

“I’d like a filet mignon,” I say. I briefly scan the chalkboard for today’s inventory. “And some pig’s feet. Two pounds if you’ve got ‘em.”

“I think you’ve got enough to take home with you,” the butcher snarls. “Your business is not welcome here anymore. Leave, or I’ll call the police.”

A painful pulse radiates between my temples. He must have seen me stealing the offal and rotten meat. So it was me then; I’m the reason he’s got the garbage bins locked up. He must’ve added security cameras, and I must have completely missed them.

“So what?” I say. “It was in the garbage.”

“I can’t have perverts jerking off behind my store,” he growls. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

My vision reddens. A pervert? An outcast. A loser who will never be anything.

A cannibal monster.

“Fuck you, you wasteful piece of shit!” I shout as I storm out of the shop.

I sit in the van for ten minutes before I truly calm down. I remind myself that there are more butcher shops. Grocery stores have offal and meat scraps sometimes. Even if the stores have other waste clogging their bins, and it’s harder to find the actual meat product, I can figure out another way to fill my pit. I can find a new plan.

I can deal with this.

I reverse out of my parking spot and head back to the mobile home. I switch on the radio, and the smog from the city winds through the streets like a fine mist. I take a deep breath in and force myself to relax.

Once my heart rate is even, I pretend like there’s a neat package of white paper on the passenger seat, keeping me company. A slice of Mona wrapped like a present for me.

Everything is fine.

I glance over at the passenger seat. Black hair, pale skin, sunken eyes. Not a slice of Mona anymore, but the full ghost of her.

We don’t have to pretend anymore, the imaginary Mona says. I don’t want to play games. I want you to eat me.

I put my hand on her thigh, stroking her pliant skin and inching closer to her pussy.

“You want more?” I ask. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Take me to the farm, she says. Let me go free. We can run wild. We can do anything, Kent. Anything! You can eat me. I want you to eat me.

“I’ll take little nibbles off of you.” My fingers worm closer to her meat pocket. “We could fuck like rabbits while I dine on your breasts.”

How about a wolf and a rabbit? she says.

There’s nothing in the passenger seat. Still, my imagination fills the emptiness: Mona smirks at me. Like she knows more than I do. Like she’s better than me. This is just a fucked-up daydream, and somehow, she’s still manipulating me.

A figure in a leather jacket leans over the center console.

Hate to break it to you, Artemis says, but she’s the wolf.

The van bumps over an object. I swerve off of the two-lane highway and ram right into the fence. The metal crunches against my van, and I rail my fists into the steering wheel.

“Motherfucker!” I shout.

I stomp around the van. A few scratches scrape the front of the car; other than that, it’s fine. The fence is bad—dented and ripped open. When the property owner finds it, he’s going to be pissed.

No one pays attention to these lands though. I’m within walking distance of the mobile home, and the only people that come this way are the dump workers, and they stay in the human waste.

I suck in the dump’s odor. The fecal stench of decay, rot, and humanity is strong here. I sigh deeply. The van looks like shit now, but there’s no damage to the engine. After everything that’s happened today, I have to take that as a win.

My phone buzzes. Mona Milk fills the bright screen, the Accept Call button taunting me.

I hit Ignore . I don’t need to be manipulated right now.

I head around the van to the driver’s seat, but in the grass, I see a flattened piece of fur. Two fluffy white ears poke up from the ground. I pick it up.

A dead rabbit.

A tendril of primal instinct creeps from my stomach and crawls around my groin. My chest inflates.

Maybe today isn’t completely useless.

With the rabbit dangling by the ears from one hand, I drive the van the short distance over to the mobile home. Then I walk around the house, clutching those furry ears.

I jump down into the offal pit. The animal corpses deflate under my feet, and the flies rally against me.

The rabbit is still warm, and the fur reminds me of velvet. Red liquid drips down my hands. I think of Mona in the restaurant, the steak clutched in her palms, blood dripping down her wrists.

I pull out my pocketknife and rip a hole into the back of the rabbit, the only part that’s still plump. I’ve fucked meat before, but I’ve never fucked it when it’s fresh like this. My dick aches in my pants, and I wait for those contradicting thoughts, the ones that tell me that this is wrong.

My brain is silent.

I lick the blood from my knuckles. It’s natural. Potent. Earthy. Like Mona.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I know it’s her. I let the device vibrate against my thigh. My heavy balls clench for more friction, for the dead warmth, for the proof that this thing can’t tell me what to do, because now, I own it.

I should own Mona by now too.

I bite into the flesh, and the fur wedges between my teeth. The skin is tough—too rigid for my teeth to pierce—but I move down the fur like it’s an ice cream cone, and I take another bite. I pretend it’s her. Two perfectly rounded crescents of meat, her breasts. Fuck it all—is there anything I wouldn’t do to taste her breasts right now? To consume her like she consumes me?

Has Mona always been the wolf?

The juices run down my chin, skimming over my stubble. I unzip and pull down my pants. I stab my dick into the wound and rub the warm sleeve over my shaft. It’s textured and bumpy like pussy walls, and it’s sinewy too. It’s got some give, enough to get me there. Enough to keep me satisfied for now.

I imagine Mona’s corpse lying on the kitchen table. Her legs spread, her arms removed. Her blank eyes staring back at me as I fuck her pretty little hole.

When she’s only a torso, will her pussy still be wet for me?

Fuck me after you kill me, she says. Use me. Kill me. Eat me. Oh, Kent, eat me ? —

I grip the rabbit tighter around my cock. In my mind, I pretend it’s her scared little cunt crushing my shaft.

“You dirty, filthy bitch,” I murmur.

And this time, it’s different. I am the fucking wolf, ready to tear her corpse apart. Her art can be the medium she conquers, but with cannibalism—with us —she won’t conquer or consume me.

I will consume her.

The jizz squirts into the rabbit’s warmth, the pleasure drifting from my body.

Blood stains my pants and my shoes, and fur sticks to the damp splotches. Anger trembles through me. I didn’t even kill the rabbit on purpose; I killed it by accident like a wimpy little bitch.

Even if she wants me to—even if I want to—I can’t kill Mona. I’ll go to jail, and in prison, if you eat another person, you will end up in solitary. I can’t eat my own flesh. Male meat is too tough.

Eventually, you’ll end up in jail, Mona’s imaginary voice taunts me. Or maybe you won’t. Her image reaches forward and puts her blood-soaked hand on mine. But there’s so much meat to hunt and eat before you get caught, right, love?

I drop the rabbit’s remains into the offal pit. Whatever this is with Mona, it’s too much. She’s gotten into my head and shown me that these games we’re playing aren’t enough.

I don’t give a fuck if she’s the wolf or the rabbit; I’m not going to prison for my sexual interests, and I’m definitely not going to prison for her.

There’s more to us than our primal instincts. Animals don’t think, but we are humans. We have brains that help us make complex decisions, and I know right from wrong. I can’t control Mona, but I can do the right thing. If we keep doing this, I’ll lose my mind and unintentionally hurt her, like the rabbit on the road.

And I refuse to accidentally kill her.