Page 50 of Morsel

I push on the front door of the mobile home, and it creaks open. A trail of red drips across the laminate then becomes a red puddle.

Blood spreads in every direction.

In the kitchen, red stains every surface, clinging like it’s half-coagulated, slick, and sticky. Red utensils. Red photographs. Red wood paneling. On each side of the dining area, two cameras, set up on tripods, are dotted with bloody fingerprints. She must have set them up when she was already halfway through her blood bath.

And in the middle of the floor, Mona sits cross-legged in a loose nightgown, so drenched in red that I can’t tell what color the fabric is.

Her hands tremble. She holds a small knife in one hand; the other hand is lifted into the air, blood oozing from the tips of her fingers.

Did she cut herself? Is all of this her blood?

“What the fuck?” I whisper.

Mona offers me her cupped, bloody hand, showing me something in her palm. A small item.

“I did it,” she says. “I did it for you.”

I step carefully across the slippery surface. I don’t see anything inside of her cupped hand. Once I’m standing within arm’s reach of her, I finally see the pieces in her palm.

Three small slices, no bigger than pennies, lying in her hand. The flat ends of her fingers are turned up, blood dripping from the tips.

All of this blood?—

It can’t all be from her fingertips.

Can it?

Blood surges to my groin, filling me with hopeful desires. But then that dry itchiness wriggles in my throat and kills the wishful thinking in its tracks. Something is off. Where is this blood all from? This has to be a trap. A huge fucking game where I’m her pawn and she’s playing with me.

But I can’t stop myself from stepping closer to her. I want to see what happens next.

“It’s not just pig’s blood this time,” I whisper. “Is it?”

She lifts her palm, and her body shakes uncontrollably, close to shock.

Three small pieces, like thinly sliced beef medallions, ready for a wet mouth. Meat like her fingertips won’t melt on my tongue. Meat like that would be chewy. Savory. Gamey in a pleasant way.

My tongue thickens, my mouth salivating with desire, my throat finally wet again.

With fingertips like that, you’d have to savor it. Chew it. Let it break down on your tongue.

I can’t throw it away.

“Eat it,” Mona says. “It’s like the menstrual blood, but I did this for you, my love. Just you. Now you have to do this for me.”

Three small pieces of her body. Flesh she doesn’t need.

Fingertips.

It dawns on me that she took pieces of her hands—hands she said she needs to create art—and yet she’s destroyed herself so that I can eat her.

This is what I want. What I’ve dreamed of since my mother died. Men don’t taste right, but women? Women are different. Tender, sweet, and pliable. I’ve waited so long for a woman who would be willing to do this for me, a woman who will give me a piece of her so that there’s no distance between us.

She’ll never be able to truly run away, because I’ll have a piece of her in my body. She’ll never be able to ask for her fingertips back, because they’ll be inside of me.

If you do this, you won’t be able to stop, my brain warns.

I know that. I know that. I fucking know that!

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