Page 51 of Morsel

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.

Part Two

Tongue

Chapter 19

You never really hear about the aftermath of cannibalism. Everyone is so obsessed with the actual eating that no one thinks about the practicality of it. And when your crazy girlfriend breaks into your home to surprise you with a devotional gift in which she literally removes a part of herself, no one thinks about the fact your house is now covered in blood, or it’s going to take hours cleaning up the stains, or she probably won’t stay to help you clean up.

No, you don’t think about that.

You think about coming home from work.

You think about eating more of her.

You think about savoring every bite.

And that’s where my head is at—exhausted and dazed—when I arrive at the processing plant. The supervisor stands outside of my locker, his head bowed.

“What?” I ask.

He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Look, Kent,” he says quietly. “You’re a good kid, but we caught you stealing on camera, and with your missed shifts lately, we just?—”

---