Morsel

Epilogue

one year later

Cicadas hum through the trees, whistling through the branches. Sometimes, their song gives me a headache, but I like cooking outside when I can. Working like this feels natural to me.

A carcass is slung over my lap. I slide a metal rod into the spine, lining it up with the woman’s nervous system. It’s a fucking bitch to do, but it helps to paralyze the tissue, keeping the body from rigor mortis a little while longer, and it helps with roasting. The fishermen like to insert the rod straight into the fish’s spine. Personally, I enjoy sliding it into the woman’s asshole first, then pushing it through the spine and up out of the mouth. I like gutting them like that. It’s my favorite kind of spit roast.

It takes some effort, but after a while, I get the woman over the open fire and hook her to the oversized rotisserie. Her brown hair dangles down like feathers each time the machine rotates her meat. I marvel at her skin; this one is speckled with freckles, and I like the way it looks in the fire’s flickering light.

The truck camper glows behind me, surrounded by swaying pine trees. By saving up from odd jobs and from emptying the women’s wallets over the last year, I was able to buy the camper outright with cash.

I climb up the steps and make my way to the closet.

Down at the bottom, where most people keep their shoes, cheap duffel bags line the floor; each contains various bones and Artemis’s decaying head. Maybe I’m sentimental, but I can’t let any piece of them go, and eventually, I’ll find a way to use the rest. And on the top shelf, where folded clothes usually go, four decapitated heads are propped up, like filet mignons in a cold display case. Each head has a different skin tone and a different hair color. With salt and other organic material, their faces have stayed intact, like ancient mummies in a museum, and once I’m done roasting the woman outside, her head will join the display too.

The heads won’t last forever; they will eventually decay. Still, I like looking at them. Mona taught me that I don’t care for face meat anyway, and I don’t think of their decapitations as wasting; I think of them as trophies to remind me of how far I’ve come.

It feels good to be a self-made man surrounded by women who will never leave me. I had to survive, so I ate my mother, and eventually, I ate my lover too. When it comes down to it, I never had a choice.

And now, they don’t have a choice either.

Propped up on the floor behind a few duffel bags, I pick up the only corpse with its head intact. No legs. No arms. Just a torso. The skin is browned and dried like leather to the touch, and slices have been shaved off of the cheeks and stomach. Layers of skin flake off of the corpse, and a cockroach crawls out from a hole in the breast area. I swat it away, then pick up the skin flakes from the ground. Nothing will ever be wasted when it comes to her.

My little morsel.

I take Mona to the folding table. Her pussy is like fucking the scaly skin of a pineapple now, but I do it because I owe everything to her. After all, she’s the one who helped me embrace my true self. Her eye sockets are actually hollow caverns now, her hair is burned off in patches, but she’s still beautiful to me: a symbol of everything I’ve accomplished. I hammer inside of her, and the dry interior scrapes my dick. A patch of skin sloshes off her thigh stump. She stinks like a sewer, but no matter how many women I fuck, rape, kill, and eat, no one will ever feel as good as her.

She’s the only one who ever came close to understanding me.

I pick a piece of her waist, then toss the scrap and the other flakes into my mouth. The texture is similar to beef jerky, though it’s slightly bitter, with a garlicky aftertaste.

In the background, I hear the news on the television.

It’s been one year since we lost such a strong female artist, a professor says to the reporter. She was a total icon. And her influence shows that she was a nationwide role model for all of us. It’s only right that we dedicate the university’s new art studio to her.

Another voice cuts in: Thank you for that. The story of Mona Milk’s disappearance has touched us all. But now, we leave California and head to our home state of Florida, where there’s been another disappearance. Lindsey Jones was last seen a week ago outside of Panhandle Elite Community College.

Another woman’s voice cracks as she adds: We just want our daughter back.

I turn over my shoulder and watch the screen while idly thrusting into Mona’s dry cunt. On the screen, the father wraps his arm around the mother’s shoulder. The mother has the same freckles as the woman on the roast. I laugh. If they wanted her so badly, then they shouldn’t have let her walk home by herself. Maybe they should’ve taught their daughter better than to get in the car with a handsome stranger who claims to be in her classes.

The mother cries, and with that noise, my dick explodes inside of Mona. I pull out, then leave her decaying torso on the table.

I power off the television and head back outside to check the rotisserie. Lindsey’s skin is a golden brown now, her freckles darkening under the fire’s heat. With each woman, I perfect my craft. And if you only count the women—not Artemis or the mobile home’s previous occupant—then Lindsey is my seventh kill. My mother was my first. Mona was my second. Then there’s the five additional women since then, and that’s only the beginning of my legacy. After all of this careful control, I finally have everything I’ve ever dreamed of.

The trees are thick in every direction. If you go back far enough, you’ll find swampland, and the locals are rightfully afraid of alligators out here. That’s why I stay away from the water myself. Florida is funny like that; you can be close to the interstate, but when it comes to the woods, no one goes into the dense trees to find the monsters creeping around and feeding on flesh, like me.

If I stay here any longer, they’ll find me. So instead, I’ll keep moving in search of an abandoned farm where I can keep a woman like a pig. Where I can raise her, kill her, then eat her. And even then, I won’t stay there for long.

I didn’t need Mona to love me like I thought I did. I just needed her to give me that final push into self acceptance. And with each passing day, I grow stronger because of everything she did for me. That’s why she’s on the folding table. I like keeping her by my side.

Most days, I feel invincible, but sometimes, the clarity rings through the hunger and for a few seconds, I know I’m not unstoppable. Meiwes had one, Fish had at least three, and Dahmer had sixteen. We all have our weaknesses, especially when it comes to our pride, but I’m better than them. They got caught, but me? I’m smarter. Stronger. Faster. I’ve avoided the government before, and I can do it again.

Mona showed me that all it takes is cutting off someone’s legs to make them stay with you. So, I’ll keep this going for as long as I can, maybe even into old age. And when the police find me—no, if they find me—they’ll know how powerful I am. How many women I’ve eaten. How many cunts I’ve slaughtered. And there won’t be any leftovers. I’m not wasteful like that.

These women are the source of my nutrients, and their heads are my collectibles. I’ll keep them all. Especially Mona.

After all, food is more satisfying than love.