Page 1 of Morsel

Part One

Fingertips

Chapter 1

The butcher slams the cleaver into the meat, and my pulse races at the familiar thud. Instead of raw beef, I imagine a woman’s head as it rolls off the red-stained counter and drops onto the rubber mat-lined floor. Thump, like a sack of garbage slung into a bin. Thump, like my heart when it knows how close release is. My mouth dries, and I close my eyes, imagining my fingers twisting through its tangled hair as I lift the head from the floor.

The paper crinkles around the filet, and I’m back to reality. I glimpse at the door, pretending I’m in a hurry like everyone else. I used to buy two filets—one for me, one for whomever I was paying that night—then I realized they didn’t give a shit about steak. They were with me solely for the money.

There is always something better about vegetarians anyway.

“Sixty-five dollars,” the butcher says.

My jaw ticks. Sixty-five dollars? That’s five dollars up from last time. I tap my boot, holding back the urge to rip the meat from his fucking hands.

“I need a damn loyalty punch card,” I mutter.

“Do you want it or not?”

My skull tingles as I hand over the cash. I save money and live a meager lifestyle to pay for indulgences like this. The price for organic, free range, grass-fed meat can get outrageous—sixty-five dollars for one fucking filet—but in the end, it’s worth it. The savory undertones are richer than you’d expect, layered with the healthy, green life each animal had, and those flavors build on your taste buds with every bite. Sometimes, I even ask the escort services for vegetarians. Not because I’m going to eat them—I’m not a cannibal—but because of the idea of it.

If grass-fed meat tastes better, vegetarian women must taste better too.

A hollowness flutters in my stomach, the need inching to the surface. I collect my treat and clutch the brown paper sack. The butcher scowls at me. I keep gawking at the cold display cases anyway, taking my time. I’ve practically memorized it all, and yet I marvel at a perfectly marbled sirloin like it’s a slice of a woman’s back.

The door chime jingles; another customer has arrived. I take that as my cue. The butcher is distracted for now.

The butcher shop is in the middle of a strip mall. A narrow alleyway is in the back, which is where the mall’s garbage bins are smashed between the stores and a row of trees. I head directly to the butcher’s bins.

My fingers vibrate with nerves as I jab at the waste. I need to finish shopping for very specific extras before the butcher notices me back here. When it comes to what I need, turkey is pointless; it’s too fibrous, and the follicles are annoying. Chicken will do in a pinch, but I can get that kind of meat at work. The best choices are pork and beef: their flesh is textured, yet strong enough to stay intact.

And near the top of the first bin, there’s a thin, black slab covered with a scaly green membrane. Thick, pink liquid drips down the sides, like blood and saliva sliding down a woman’s breast. I smile to myself. You can’t tell someone what they should or shouldn’t throw away, but you can do something with their leftovers.

And I can’t pass up a rotten beef tongue.

I open the second bin. As I reach for a piece of lightly used butcher paper, my fingers skim the hard surface of flesh. I freeze.

Don’t look, I tell myself. You already have a good piece, and you’re too curious for your own good. You need to be quick so that they don’t catch you?—

My dick twitches. I can’t help myself. I pick through the debris until I see it.

A beef heart, the fat tinted bluish green.

Warnings ring in my ears, but I’m alone, and I want this. I pry a ventricle open wide enough for my dick, then I unzip and unbuckle my pants and slide my cock inside. It doesn’t fit right, but that’s why I like it; the muscle squeezes the head of my dick, forcing pleasure up my spine. I close my eyes and let the ambient-temperature flesh soothe me. A woman’s heart—carved from her chest—would feel like this. A final fuck before eating her most vital organ.

A car honks, and I startle, dropping the heart on the pavement.

“Damn it,” I say.

I quickly wrap the beef heart and tongue into the brown paper I pull from the bin, then stow them under one arm, my bagged filet in the other. It’s not really stealing if it’s garbage. And it’s not really animal cruelty if it’s already dead.

My van coasts down the street. In the distance, brown hills circle each side of the road, and dull green trees speckle their terrain. In the bottom layer, unremarkable stores sandwich the asphalt, and people march around like ants.

Then the street becomes a two-lane road that pounds through the farmland. Corn fields. Sunflower stalks. And tall, tall grass. I pass the local dump—the high sides of the pit piled with waste and backed by dead grass. The stink clears, the asphalt ends, and the path shifts to a dirt lane, which ends at my home.

Although the mobile home is in decent shape, what I like most are the grassy fields surrounding it. We’re off the grid. There’s enough space that I built a platform for my industrial meat grinder, and I dug a large offal pit for any extra meat I collect. Offal pits aren’t something you usually find in California, but a week after I moved here, I began digging. Pork spleens, lamb brains, beef hearts and tongues, any organs or scraps discarded and left to rot get added to the six-foot-deep hole. Depending on the weather, the odor can get worse than the dump, and sometimes the larvae and the odd wild animal get to the meat. But if you add enough salt, they stay away.

When I get time, I grind and freeze the salted meat for further preservation; I even custom ordered an oversized hopper to chop up the biggest chunks of meat. And when the urges come, I always have the offal pit to come back to. Rotting meat, salted or not, feels better than a silicone sleeve. It feels real, and with the gamey stench in my nose, I can almost pretend it’s a dead woman.

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