Morsel

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

It takes a long time to come down from something like that.

I stare at the open front door of the mobile home for hours. I tell myself that Mona is gone for good.

Deep down, I hope that’s not true.

Eventually, I go to the processing plant. I don’t have a shift, and the supervisor says he can’t pay me overtime. I dress in my jumper anyway and hang out in the break room. It’s better than waiting for her at home when she’ll never show up. She can’t, because if she does, there’s a chance I won’t be able to stop myself from killing and eating her.

And I’m not a cannibal.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

Jerry looks up from his phone. “What’s up?”

“I can’t stand women.”

A grin spreads across his face. “That artistic slut again?”

I nod, and he slaps me on the shoulder.

“I know a chick. Real artsy, since that’s your thing.” He nudges me. “She’s always listening to her earbuds. Wears these sexy fishnet stockings. I swear, one night with her, and you’ll forget about your ex.”

My ex? Is that what Mona is to me now?

Jerry flips through his phone and shows me a picture. The artsy chick is attractive: brown hair and nice, round tits. Tits like that would taste fantastic, and yet I know this stranger would ultimately taste worse, because she isn’t Mona.

I shake my head. “Thanks, man. I’m taking a break from pussy.” I shove my head in my hands. “The bitches are crazy around here.”

The break room cackles into whoops and laughter. I get up and head to the large window facing the work floor. To one side, an industrial furnace stretches up and puffs smoke through the vents. The furnace’s opening is big enough for the unnecessary shit we don’t keep here, like the scraps we can’t sell to the rendering plants that the higher ups like to call “toxic waste.”

A random thought crosses my mind: Artemis could fit in the furnace.

I grimace. I don’t even know why I’m thinking of him. I don’t like wasting food, but the idea of eating him makes me sick. The pompous bastard probably tastes stringy and metallic like lean turkey meat. Flavorless, like his personality.

Not that I would kill him. I’m not a killer. And, for fuck’s sake, killing Artemis won’t bring Mona back. Though I would probably kill him if it meant keeping Mona safe.

If it meant keeping me safe.

I get bored of the mindless break room chatter and head back home. A mist hangs over the empty fields, and with the sun rising over the landfill’s huge pile of waste, it’s almost pretty. Hopeful. The kind of thing an artist paints to represent heaven. That idea soothes me as much as it hurts. Would Mona paint something like that?

No. It would be too simplistic for her.

My throat drops to my stomach. I keep driving. I didn’t want to end things with Mona, but I did what was right for her. I can live with that.

As I drive closer to the mobile home, the fog clears, and an SUV comes into view.

Mona’s car is parked in the driveway.

My mind stops. A thudding pulse clangs in my chest, my mind racing a marathon.

She’s not in the front seat of the car. The SUV is empty.

I check the offal pit, where she was last time she came by unannounced. There’s an empty bucket next to the hole, similar to the one she used for the pig’s blood. It may even be the same one. I don’t remember exactly.

The flies rise from the bloated rabbit corpse. There’s no Mona.

Is she inside? Did I forget to lock up?

I push on the front door of the mobile home, and it creaks open. A trail of red drips across the laminate then becomes a red puddle.

Blood spreads in every direction.

In the kitchen, red stains every surface, clinging like it’s half-coagulated, slick, and sticky. Red utensils. Red photographs. Red wood paneling. On each side of the dining area, two cameras, set up on tripods, are dotted with bloody fingerprints. She must have set them up when she was already halfway through her blood bath.

And in the middle of the floor, Mona sits cross-legged in a loose nightgown, so drenched in red that I can’t tell what color the fabric is.

Her hands tremble. She holds a small knife in one hand; the other hand is lifted into the air, blood oozing from the tips of her fingers.

Did she cut herself? Is all of this her blood?

“What the fuck?” I whisper.

Mona offers me her cupped, bloody hand, showing me something in her palm. A small item.

“I did it,” she says. “I did it for you.”

I step carefully across the slippery surface. I don’t see anything inside of her cupped hand. Once I’m standing within arm’s reach of her, I finally see the pieces in her palm.

Three small slices, no bigger than pennies, lying in her hand. The flat ends of her fingers are turned up, blood dripping from the tips.

All of this blood?—

It can’t all be from her fingertips.

Can it?

Blood surges to my groin, filling me with hopeful desires. But then that dry itchiness wriggles in my throat and kills the wishful thinking in its tracks. Something is off. Where is this blood all from? This has to be a trap. A huge fucking game where I’m her pawn and she’s playing with me.

But I can’t stop myself from stepping closer to her. I want to see what happens next.

“It’s not just pig’s blood this time,” I whisper. “Is it?”

She lifts her palm, and her body shakes uncontrollably, close to shock.

Three small pieces, like thinly sliced beef medallions, ready for a wet mouth. Meat like her fingertips won’t melt on my tongue. Meat like that would be chewy. Savory. Gamey in a pleasant way.

My tongue thickens, my mouth salivating with desire, my throat finally wet again.

With fingertips like that, you’d have to savor it. Chew it. Let it break down on your tongue.

I can’t throw it away.

“Eat it,” Mona says. “It’s like the menstrual blood, but I did this for you, my love. Just you. Now you have to do this for me.”

Three small pieces of her body. Flesh she doesn’t need.

Fingertips.

It dawns on me that she took pieces of her hands—hands she said she needs to create art—and yet she’s destroyed herself so that I can eat her.

This is what I want. What I’ve dreamed of since my mother died. Men don’t taste right, but women? Women are different. Tender, sweet, and pliable. I’ve waited so long for a woman who would be willing to do this for me, a woman who will give me a piece of her so that there’s no distance between us.

She’ll never be able to truly run away, because I’ll have a piece of her in my body. She’ll never be able to ask for her fingertips back, because they’ll be inside of me.

If you do this, you won’t be able to stop, my brain warns.

I know that. I know that. I fucking know that!

I inch closer. Into her trap.

“You know I can’t eat that,” I say, my voice hoarse.

“Stop thinking about me and my safety,” Mona snaps. Then she begs in a soft, pleading tone. “Come on, Kent. Think about yourself for once. You keep putting everyone else before your own desires, including me. Do what you want for once.”

She’s pressuring me, treating me like a little boy again. I grit my teeth, but I’m focused on those red pieces of flesh.

Flesh she cut from herself.

For me.

“What I want,” I repeat.

I kneel on the ground in her blood. It soaks my pants, the cold temperature creeping into my bones. Maybe it’s not just her blood. Maybe it’s pig’s blood again. I don’t know, and I can’t ask. I can’t do anything. I can only meet her on the same level.

Mona’s dark caverns burn into me, ordering me to step into her darkness.

I should tell her to leave; it would be the right thing to do. After a refusal like this, after denying her bloody gift, maybe she’d finally give up on me and move on with her life. She can go back to art, and I can go back to sex workers and animal meat.

I don’t want to hurt her. At the same time, I don’t want her to leave. They always leave.

But not Mona. Mona understands me. And I understand her.

“Yes,” Mona murmurs. “What you want.”

I cup my hands under hers. The blood on her hands sticks to my skin. I bring her palms to my mouth, my heart beating against my rib cage. I’m a good person. I don’t eat people. I just think about it. A fantasy never hurt anyone. It’s a daydream. I can make the urges go away.

But wouldn’t it be wrong to waste her meat, especially when it’s a gift like this?

She angles her hands, and the morsels of meat tumble down her palm and skim my lips. I open my mouth and let them fall onto my tongue. Her meat is slightly bitter—perhaps from her carnivorous diet—and the skin is malleable, like a soft jerky. My mouth waters. Blood rushes to my groin, my dick full and weighty as I chew her fingertips.

Mona smiles at me, and that’s when I realize that her meat reminds me of pork. It’s sweet and mild like a pig, but there’s something more complex about it. Something different. Something arousing. Something powerful.

That power is her. Mona.

And now, it’s mine.