Page 27 of Morsel

I kneel down.

I lick the blood.

Warm liquid, like metal and pepper and nectar, swims over my tongue. I seal my lips around the wound and suckle more of her life source.

“Yes,” Mona murmurs. “Go on. Eat more. Pull at the skin.” She pushes her thigh, disrupting my suction. My nostrils flare. What the fuck is she doing now? “Chew it off,” she commands. “Eat me?—”

I didn’t plan to chew anything off.

I just wanted a lick. A little taste.

But this isn’t about me or what I want, is it?

It’s about her power over me.

I don’t want her to have power over me.

But I like how she tastes way too fucking much.

My chest compresses, and I adjust my pants. I swear I can’t breathe around her right now.

“I need some air,” I say, and I run out of the home.

Chapter 10

Outside, the winter wind whips past me. A lamp hangs from the mobile home, lighting the back of the property. I stare down into the shadowed offal pit, at the decaying meat covered by salt and flies. I should probably rotate the older leftovers out and mix a new batch of ground meat soon. Even if it’s a risk to bring my ground meat to the processing plant, Jerry always likes it, says it gets him high because it’s fermented or something. I don’t know if he’s right about the fermentation, but I admit, I enjoy sharing what I have. It’s nice to give protein to others, especially knowing that back when I was a kid, I didn’t have that option or anyone who did that for me. And I like my ground meat better than the supermarket variety. When I blend the animals together, it’s easier to convince myself that the final product has a human flavor, even if it’s only a subtle hint of it.

The flies swarm me for a few seconds. When they realize I’m as much of a part of the fields as they are, they grow disinterested and leave me alone.

I may have tasted Mona’s blood, but I’m not a cannibal. I didn’t hurt her; she hurt herself. On top of that, she did it for me. If I didn’t consume her, it would have been rude. Wasteful.

A memory flashes; in it, I’m ten years old.

You shouldn’t have pissed him off, my mother had said. There’s no such thing as leftovers in our family. You know that.

Things were never good, but that night was especially awful. My mother couldn’t leave me at home, so she took me camping with her boyfriend. They drank beers, and he even gave me a few, but when he fed me a third hot dog, I couldn’t finish it right then. I wanted to eat it. My stomach was full though. I just needed a few minutes to digest.

You beg for food like a little bitch, and this is what you do when you get it? he asked. Is my food not good enough for you?

Then he punched me so hard, I fell to the ground and threw up.

Once I finally stopped vomiting from the impact of his fists, I crawled to the tent. My vision was blurry, and I could barely move, but that didn’t stop my mother and her boyfriend from coming into the tent and fucking right in front of me. He barreled into her. Slapped her. Choked her. Bit her so hard, a blurry patch of red streamed down her breast. She panicked, writhing underneath him. He growled, and that primal noise made my mother moan as if she liked it. As if she wanted more. As if she needed it.

A cold hand snakes behind my back. I jolt and swing around.

Mona stands next to me. The flies rise to greet her. She gives me a funny look.

“What’s that?” she asks as she motions to the dark hole in front of us. “It smells.”

“An offal pit,” I say.

“Huh. I didn’t realize that was a thing here.” She clears her throat. “You butcher animals at home too?”

I scratch the back of my neck. “Not exactly. It’s another means of preserving meat.”

“Oh. Cool.”

I keep my eyes on the pit. In my periphery, I see Mona’s bare toes sinking into the dirt, and I wonder if there’s a chunk of animal flesh—a scrap I accidentally dropped—that’s mixing with her feet. I’m too careful to drop meat, but there’s something appealing about mixing her flesh with my collected meats, especially without her knowing. Like she could end up in the offal pit one day, and I’d eat her in a meatloaf.

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