9Chews

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  THE END.

  HARVEST OF THE CHRIST by D. A. D'Amico

  I didn't believe Michael when he told me I'd betray him three times. I thought he was being Biblical and mysterious, especially since he'd been somewhat of a jokester when we'd known each other in college twelve years earlier. It wasn't until much later, the day after the incident in Toledo, that I feared he might be correct.

  "Daniel, my brother..." Michael smiled as I dabbed at his forehead with a damp cloth. The old Catholic priest had caused quite a gash when he'd thrown that stone. "You've been a good and true friend. That's why I forgive you."

  "For what?" I was still a little hot over the way he'd been treated, but my anger faded with the same startling rapidity as the gash in Michael's forehead. I couldn't believe I'd ever doubted him when he'd come to me out of the blue, telling me he was the new Messiah.

  "You'll see." He gave me one of those looks full of Spirituality and Grace, and went back out into the crowd to heal the sick, the lame, and the stupid, with nothing more than a touch of his divine fingertips.

  I sat there for a moment telling myself I'd never pull a Judas on Michael. It just wasn't my style to seek my thirty pieces of silver. Yea, money was getting tight because Michael refused to take offerings for his work, but I grabbed what I could when he wasn't looking, and I managed to pay the bills every month. Still, if there was a way to get him out there more, to have him heal people who had access to real cash instead of just the indigent and downtrodden...

  My fingers hurt. A small cut, more like an abrasion, covered the knuckle of my right hand. I must've gotten it from Father Mulroney's teeth when I'd punched him for lobbing that rock at Michael's head. Catholics could never get behind the "New Savior" proposition. Without thinking, I dabbed at it with the cloth I'd just used to staunch Michael's bleeding... and lo, a miracle occurred. The cut healed almost instantly, and without Michael actually having to be present.

  That's when a light bulb went off in my mind, and I began planning my first assault on the New Son of Man.

  "I forgive you for what you're about to--" Michael had his back to me, so I don't know how he knew, but he never flinched when I swung that cheap aluminum bat into the side of his head. He went down like a sack of confessional wafers, out like a light.

  I didn't want to hurt him, so I siphoned only three pints. I'd heard four might kill a man, so I held back out of respect. After that, I spent a long night dabbing precious blood onto tiny slips of paper. Twenty-eight thousand or so drops later I had a marketable product, and at ten dollars a pop, I got rich. Once I proved the potency of my cure-all with a few free samples, the magic blood vanished faster than blotter acid at Woodstock.

  Michael did eventually forgive me when he regained consciousness, and as an act of contrition I donated half of my ill-gotten gains to a homeless shelter in Detroit where we'd ended up on the next leg of our journey. I also promised never to steal his blood again, and he reminded me that I'd betray him twice more.

  "Does that mean I can steal your blood again?" I asked. Hey, if it was a free pass...

  "You promised not to." He glared at me with those piercing blue eyes. It made me feel like he could read my soul, and maybe didn't quite like what he saw.

  I sighed. "No blood stealing. Got ya."

  But I began to get nervous that maybe someone else would find out they didn't need the actual Savior to perform miracles. So I started watching the crowd when Michael went out in public. I stood behind him in my role as bodyguard, jealously shielding his touch and his flesh, screening the great unwashed masses for shifty eyes and idle hands. It got so bad that Michael himself admonished me one hot summer day in Los Angeles.

  "Daniel." He put an arm around my shoulder. His long lean face was moist with sweat, his long hair limp and lifeless in the sultry air. "If I'm to heal these people I will at some point have to touch them.

  I sighed. "You're right. I've been a bit too... zealous. I'm sorry."

  He smiled and patted me on the back as a brown-skinned woman approached. She held a young girl with sad black eyes and a horribly cleft palate. Michael took his handkerchief and wiped his brow, handing it to the little girl. She smiled as best she could, lifting the cloth to her face. When she pulled it away, she'd been healed. Her affliction was gone.

  It was then I realized I didn't need the man or his blood. Any part would do.

  "I'm really sorry about this, Michael." I pulled the straps tight around his waist and shoulders. "But a guy needs to make a living."

  "I forgive you, Daniel," he screamed repeatedly as I sawed. "I forgive you."

  I remembered Michael had told me I'd betray him three times. I certainly hoped taking his arms and then his legs counted as numbers two and three, because as I looked down on his limbless torso, jagged amputations already coagulating and smoothing over, I shuddered at the thought of where I'd go from here.

  THE END.

  A MEAL MUST BE PREPARED by Sara Green

  I didn’t know he was the Devil.

  You see a person first, he looked like you or I if we were crouched over another body, face and hands bloodied. But it wasn’t the blood that made his face so horrifying. It was that twisted expression of pleasure. Even the sirens, the blue lights, and my pistol pointed straight at his stupid grin didn’t unmake that contentment.

  I don’t know why I didn’t shoot him.

  No one would have complained if I had. The story, the scene—it was all too gruesome to be played up by the media as a traffic stop gone bad. No, this was the kind of thing horror filmmakers add a witty line in afterwards so that everyone can remember it’s just a damn movie.

  Here’s my witty line: “Freeze, asshole!”

  That’s what I managed. The voice within my six feet five inches frame popped (I’ll let you decide where). I repeated that a couple of times, each time, my voice cracked somewhere else.

  And he just looked back at me like I had offended him by suggesting he freeze the leftovers, when his appetite was still strong. Not that I cared if I offended him. Maybe I do now, but at that moment and for quite a few hours afterwards, I didn’t give a shit what this asshole felt. He lost the right.

  “I’m not crazy,” he said—exactly like a normal person would say. I can separate the sound of his voice from the image, it replays in my head to this very day and he says it exactly as I would say it… would have said it.

  He came up off of one knee, hands raised. He didn’t repeat what he said, he came up with another line that had gone on to echo in my brain.

  “I know this looks bad.”

  “On the ground, asshole.” My vocabulary of vulgar terms was reduced to this one word and I haven’t the faintest idea why I was being so cordial. Now, you all see the comma in my phrase, but I must’ve spit it out so fast that he didn’t notice the comma and instead looked at the victim on the ground—faced down on the ground—then back at me and said:

  “It is not touching the ground. Did you want it?”

  It was a genuine question and I didn’t understand it at the time. I put little thought into what he said, which is why my brain must’ve cataloged everything he said for later consumption—no, that’s not the right word—but it is.

  I still don’t know why I didn’t shoot him. I couldn’t even touch him.

  Hendricks waddled over and put his boot into the man’s (man?) shoulder and drove him to the ground, then mounted him and cuffed his hands behind his back. It was something I’d done before to other people (people?).

  I don’t know why Hendricks put him in my patrol car. Sure, I had a cage, but so did he. I just can’t figure out why mine and not his. This was going to be Hendricks’ collar, he put the cuffs on. He was the real hero.

  I was just the guy saying, “asshole.”

  But it happened quickly, Hendricks even knocked the man’s head on the roof of the car when he tossed him in my backseat. I remember seeing it, because I had looked away from the victim at the point and I wouldn’t
look at her again until she was a series of close up photographs detailing all the bite marks.

  He sat there until the whole circus arrived (not the monkeys and elephants mind you). Then my Captain, oh my Captain said to me, “Get him down to the precinct before the news knows he’s still here!”

  So without anymore thought on my part, I obeyed my Captain and hopped in the front seat of my patrol car and drove away from the scene. Only a few miles down the road did I wonder if I had done the right thing turning on my lights when I pulled out.

  But no news vans pursued me. I left the suburban neighborhood and headed downtown at about 10 miles over the speed limit. This was normal for me, but it felt faster—it felt reckless. None of the other drivers honked or complained—they were doing the same speed, cheering me on as the tailed me. Anyone in front of me made a quick glance in their rearview mirror and then turned or got in another lane, the eagerly resumed speeding at my pace. It was smooth traffic. The way traffic should be. Everybody speeding—just a little bit.

  “It was just a little bit,” he said. I don’t think he was talking about the other drivers. But I just gave a glance in my mirror, let him see my eyes were deadly serious. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking out the passenger side window as we passed several fast food restaurants.

  His stomach had the nerve to rumble, I thought, then I realized it was my own. He was still licking his lips. No one had wiped the blood from his face… or flossed the flesh from his teeth.

  “Healthy diet,” he said. “I’m a health nut. I’ll admit that.”

  My brain said something involving nuts, but it came out as, “Shut it, asshole.”

  “Obviously there are good calories and bad calories, and what our food consumed is key too. It’s all too complicated, that sometimes, as my good mother used to say, one must squeeze their nose and swallow.”

  “Asshole,” I repeated.

  “The brain has more calories—good calories,” he said. “But I don’t think it tastes as good as some of the other parts of the body. So I usually save it for last. They freeze well—brains, that is.”

  Damn it. You can see the words, brain and body, but he spoke like a normal person! Substitute those works for Ribeye and New York Strip and suddenly it just sounds like a guy who was particular about what cut of steak he preferred. That’s how I heard it—like it was normal.

  And like that the thought had itched my brain. Could I ever eat a human being?

  Would I?

  Should I?

  I was a man of ethics, rules, responsibility, and utterly poised to defend what society held as decent—even if society was no longer decent. It’s not. It might never have been. But we put on a pretty go show during our 9-5s and family reunions.

  “You should try it. Before you die. I realize now that you haven’t tried it. I thought you had. I mean most people chew on a fingernail, bite the flesh around the nail—swallow rather than spit—my mother always said that as well,” he continued on, saying more things that I can’t forget, but at the time, they took a backseat to the real thoughts raging in my mind.

  I wanted to kill this evil bastard. I wanted to feed him to pigs or rabid dogs. I wanted him to be devoured. Yes, the Old Testament beat a drum in my head—and still I did not recognize this man as the devil. I’d stopped believing in the devil after all. I’d seen what people did with the best intentions—their best intentions in mind. We always justify our own actions, even when we’re at fault and can bravely admit it, there’s a hundred excuses as we queue up all the ways that led us to that one moment.

  I braked extra hard when we reached the precinct.

  And while he kindly went as directed. I shoved him until my co-workers—my buddies on the force—had to restrain me and take him the rest of the way in.

  “Screw you, asshole!” was the last thing I said to him.

  He turned and politely smiled and then started talking to the other cop who was escorting him to processing.

  I paced around for a few hours, telling everyone what this sick bastard had said. Repeating everything and the details until I realized none of them wanted to hear any of it at all. And the conversations kept ending with.

  “I don’t think I’d ever eat a person.”

  “Hell no!” I said. Defiant as ever.

  When my shift ended, I went home. Home to dinner. But how could I eat. My wife, Donna, had prepared dinner for me as she usually did—I say usually because some nights we were not home together at the same time—and some nights she pleaded for a pass from her womanly duties—to which, I gladly popped in a microwavable dinner. I liked them. I don’t know why I did. I knew they couldn’t compare to her cooking. But I assume I liked them because she did not make them and therefore there was no guilt in my heart when I didn’t really like the taste.

  Of course. I toyed with my food. Imagining flesh. It was macaroni and cheese and my mind was on flesh. I stirred it and it made a sound unlike flesh. I stabbed it and it pierced different than flesh. I’d had enough paper cuts to know it wasn’t the same. And I wondered just how anyone ever decided, ‘okay, time to try people.’

  Donna noticed and told me to go sit on the couch.

  The couch! I use the recliner. Always have. But she said couch. And when I moved to my recliner she corrected me before I could prop my legs up.

  “I said, the couch,” with a lurid smile. “It’s easier on my knees.”

  I had no idea at first and then gladly unbuckled my belt.

  “I’ll take your mind off it. Just sit back and relax,” she said.

  The effort was fierce and as she engulfed me with her mouth I knew. I just knew she was going to eat me. I could feel her tongue, her teeth. They were too close. Then a pop as she pulled it out and looked up at me and said, “I love the way you taste.”

  I shuddered. She thought it was something else, and with a big smile she went plunged until I could feel the back of her throat. She wanted it—all of it—all of me!

  She was going to eat me, plain as day. I knew that –just thought it—was I wrong?

  I grabbed the whole end table, plucked it from the floor like the feather off a chicken. The lamp crashed, but her eyes were closed and she embraced it as a sign to swallow me more. I screamed. I screamed and I slammed the end table into the side of her head.

  She bit me.

  That’s exactly what she wanted to do. No it was most certainly an accident, but in the very moment I thought very little of coincidences. I was possessed with the notion. I hit her again for the offense. Struck her with the top of the end table (end table—end—so terribly apt). I held onto the legs of the table and chopped at her body, bludgeoning her—tenderizing her. That’s what I had done.

  If she was going to eat me, I’d do it first. I’d beat her at her own sick game.

  It was supposed to taste good.

  That’s what he had told me. He told me how surprised I would be when I finally tried it.

  But I wasn’t. I knelt down over the lump of meat—my wife—my precious Donna. She was still spitting blood between the recently enlarged gaps in her teeth. One of her teeth flapped up and down as she wheezed. It was so weak and fragile now. Not like mine.

  My mouth felt as strong as my fists.

  I’ll taste it!

  What more could I think? In the back of my skull was the knotting feeling that I might as well. I knew what this scene appeared as. Would my buddies on the force believe my wife had been a cannibal? I could twist some facts, look for a connection to the man we’d arrested (man! Ha!). The story would go that she was in league with him—behind my back—all these years I was betrayed. I whined in my own mind! The insanity chuckling away like a lone theater goer lurking in the back of my brain.

  The brain. He’d mentioned it was not as tasty as other parts.

  Which parts?

  Where does one start?

  I became consumed with consuming. Yes, and vocabulary limited itself once again. I looked up and down
her tenderized body. It was all meat. She wasn’t a work horse. She was a lazy cow. Her meat would be marbled like Black Angus.

  Should I cook it?

  No! Try it raw first!

  I took a bite.

  Chewed and swallowed. And repeated.

  A few times, just because I had shut my eyes and gone about trying to decipher all the flavors.

  To say nothing happened would be doing a great disservice to what actually occurred. Yes, I sat there, unsure of what I had done. I was paralyzed by my act, and the uncomfortable swelling in my stomach. No, not that, the guilt. The guilt of disappointment. The realization of being made a fool.

  It all happened after that bite and I just sat there and realized who had tricked me.

  The Devil made me do it—didn’t he?

  THE END.

  AN ACQUIRED TASTE by Ken Goldman

  Lester Denton was both a breast man and a leg man, but no one would have ever called him a ladies’ man. He saw nothing mysterious in a woman’s eyes, nothing seductive about the way she crossed a room, and nothing entrancing in the proverbial cut of her jib. Denton could have cared less about the lilt of a woman’s voice, the warmth of her caress, or the scent of her secret places. He felt indifferent about the eternal mystery that comprised the ‘whole’ woman because in his mind the whole could never equal the sum of her parts.

  Still, Lester’s passion for women burned with a white hot fury bordering on frenzy. This was the diagnosis Dr. Janice Matthews gave the Boston Police Department the night she interviewed Lester shortly after his arrest. The therapist would not have been incorrect had she added that Lester loved his women to pieces, although she would never have selected those exact words. There were not many words that would have made the night’s events palatable to cops who - until that night - thought they had had seen it all.

  Earlier, arresting Officers McGuinty and Cooper had found Lester Denton on a park bench near the Tremont Street subway entrance of the Boston Common. Shortly after twelve o’clock they discovered him casually munching on his midnight snack of Miss Tamara Daniels’ left ear. The bulk of Miss Daniels remained in her dorm room back in Brookline where Lester had picked much of the Boston University coed’s flesh clean, carrying the bones that had been her fingers into the kitchen to wash his meal down with some Dr. Pepper.