Page 62 of Morsel

A beat passes. Neither of us moves. We stare at each other, two predators circling. My jaw strains.

She rolls her eyes. “We never agreed to be exclusive, love. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to share me.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “You can find someone else.”

Her threat lingers in the air, like the stench of rotting meat from the offal pit, drawing the flies closer.

It took a long time to find her. She knows that. And she knows how easily she can cut me out.

I won’t let that happen. I’ll do anything to keep her.

“You’re right,” I say. “Artemis is right.” I stab a cherry tomato. It pops between my molars, and I imagine her eyeball in the same position. Would it be as juicy as a tomato? “We’ll stick to dirty talk.”

“Thank the muses,” she says. She forks a tomato too. “The brain is the biggest sexual organ anyway. We only need the dirty talk. Maybe a prop or two, sure, but nothing serious. It’s just pretend anyway, right, love?”

Before I open my mouth to answer, her vision catches on the wall behind me, on the oval of bright wallpaper where the photograph used to hang, the one she asked if she could borrow.

“What happened to your mother anyway?” she asks.

“That woman wasn’t my mother.”

“I know, Kent,” Mona says, her voice simmering with agitation. “That’s why I’m asking. I know your mother was crazy, but what did she do that was so extreme that now you’re a sexual cannibal?”

Every inch of my home takes on a red hue, like I’m seeing the world through tinted glass. Mona isn’t the pale woman in the black clothes anymore. She’s red, like raw beef on a cutting board.

I’m not a cannibal. I’ve only eaten what she’s given me. I haven’t taken anything from her, and I haven’t eaten the rest of her body. But it’s like she’s accusing me of something. My jaw clenches, and I imagine I have the jaws of an alligator, able to snap her body in half and trap her in my mandibles.

Mona is different though. She’s the only person who understands my inner struggle. I’m not going to hurt her like that.

I love Mona.

I swear I do.

And I can’t waste any of my steak salad, just like I refuse to waste Mona.

“She was going to leave me, and she died,” I say. I shove a forkful of lettuce into my mouth. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Did you kill her?”

I drop my fork. Mona tenses, though to her credit, she keeps her expression vacant, like she wants to see what I say before she gives a full reaction. I cock my head to the side. My shoulders broaden, irritation taking hold of me. I stay neutral too.

Killing would imply that a ten-year-old kid has the gumption to be able to shove a knife into a dumb bitch, and I never did anything like that.

“No,” I say. “What happened to her was an accident.”

“What happened, then?”

I swallow a lump in my throat. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine,” she says in a high-pitched lilt. She reaches forward and holds my hand with her gloved, wounded fingers, a small attempt to connect with me. “You won’t let an accident like that happen to me, will you, love?”

There’s an expression on her face I don’t quite understand. The tendons in her neck are sharper than usual, and her throat bobs, like she’s gulping down an apple. I’ve never been good at reading people, but I’ve been around Mona enough to know that something is different tonight.

Is she afraid of me?

I shake my head. She’s not afraid of me. She thinks I’m harmless, and I’m aware of how good I have it with her. She’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’m not going to fuck that up by accidentally stabbing her.

“No,” I say. “Never.”

“Good,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

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