Page 52 of Morsel

I grit my teeth. We both know where this is going.

“You’re firing me,” I say.

The supervisor pats my shoulder. “I don’t want to do this to you, but the other option is reporting you to law enforcement. I convinced the big boss that we should just fire you, and let that be it.” His head bobs toward the locker. “You can clean up, then I’m afraid I have to walk you out. I told security I wanted to do it. You’re a good kid, Kent. You deserve that much.”

The way he calls me “a good kid” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m thirty years old, and yet it’s like the supervisor, Mona, Artemis, and everyone else in this world think they can look down on me.

I clear my locker, then we exit the building. The supervisor stays at the back entrance and watches me.

I pull out of the parking lot and take the van back to the fields. I don’t have a job, but I don’t care, because I have Mona now. For the first time, I’ve consumed human flesh consensually, and it’s so fucking good. My mother, my boss, and everyone else rejected me, but Mona? She gave her fingertips to me.

Mona is everything.

In the mobile home, I clean the blood stains for hours. I become so physically drained that even the dried blood on the kitchen counter seems appetizing. I drag my tongue over it and relish the gamey taste. It tastes familiar, but there’s something weird about it. It’s not quite Mona. There’s something missing from it. An emptiness.

I shrug my shoulders. It’s probably pig’s blood. She probably dumped the pig’s blood inside, then left the bucket by the offal pit where I found it. She must’ve used it to supplement her actual blood. Besides, if it was all hers, she’d be completely drained. The pig’s blood is another prop to include in her art performances.

Just like I’m another prop.

That’s okay, I tell myself before the irritation gets under my skin. It’s better if she uses pig’s blood. We don’t want her to die just yet. Not until?—

The front door opens, and Mona’s shadow fills the doorway. Afternoon light floods in behind her.

“You’re back,” I say.

She walks languidly, careful with each step, avoiding a slip in her own blood.

I scrunch my nose. The blood is almost completely cleaned up by now. There’s no reason for her to walk like that.

She leans on the counter. “I went back home to get you something.”

Her eyes twinkle mischievously. Black gloves cover her hands, and three of the fingertips bulge underneath the fabric; it must be from the bandages. That’s good. She needs to heal so she can provide more for me.

“Bandages?” I ask, then tilt my head toward her thicker fingers.

She nods. “Now I can’t be found guilty of a crime, right? And with my permission—my consent to your cannibalistic fantasies—you can’t be found guilty either.”

Her laughter cackles between us, and the hair stands on the back of my neck. Somehow, I’ve eaten her fingertips, and this is still a joke to her. I’m an object that she can mold for the sake of her art.

She thinks I’m stupid. Like I won’t catch onto her game. Like she’s the one hunting me.

I’m the one who ate her fingertips. I’m the one who is consuming her, and as much as I appreciate her, her smug attitude fucking irritates me.

“Mind if I take your picture?” she asks.

I grip the red-stained rag. “You want a picture of me cleaning?”

“No. I want pictures of you jerking off,” she says dryly. “Yes! Of course I want pictures of you cleaning up the blood. I want to capture everything you do.”

Before I can verbally respond, the shutter clicks. The camera’s mechanics chant rhythmically like smacking lips. Each step of hers is weighted, sinking into the laminate, and it’s like she’s digging a deeper grave for me with her feet.

Tension crawls up my spine. She’s following me and documenting what I’m doing, and it should feel good to know she cares about the menial stuff too, like cleaning. Instead, it pisses me off. It’s like I’m another one of her many followers, cleaning up her messes.

Why doesn’t she ask if she can help? It’s not like I’d make her clean. I don’t want her to clean, but for fuck’s sake, I want her to pretend like she cares.

No—I wouldn’t let her clean, even if she asked. I’d tell her to lie down before I tie her down and eat the rest of her fingers.

A normal person doesn’t say things like that though.

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