Last Supper

Jay woke up and found that he could not move: his arms tied to chair arms; his legs tied to chair legs. The chair: bolted to the floor. He blinked, his eyes sticky with deep sleep, and unable to wipe them clean, Jay stared groggily for a moment at the complex knots that bound him.

“Hey there, sleepyhead! Finally awake?” Wendy’s cheery voice ripped through his skull; words like high-pitched nails pierced his brain, drilling deep, deep, drilling painfully deep. He felt groggy, drunk, and her nasally whine didn’t help the dull throbbing in his temples. It felt like a little man trapped in his skull kept rap-rap-rapping against it, begging to be let out.

Wendy sat with a Cosmo in her lap, her legs casually crossed, the magazine opened to one of those relationship quizzes they seemed to have every month. She sat up and stretched like she had been sitting for some time, a patient whose name had just been called in a doctor’s waiting room.

“What… what…” Jay stammered. His thoughts were lightening bugs, lighting up and then darkening before he could catch one.

Wendy placed her magazine on the coffee table next to her chair and smiled at him.

“Do you remember, Jay?” she asked. Her smile seemed painted, fake, and behind her face, behind that cheery demeanor, something black and horrible lurked, waiting to come out and spit death and fire. Jay could see it moving under her skin. Or maybe it was just an effect of whatever she had slipped into his drink.

“Do you remember?” Wendy repeated.

“Re… remember?” Jay said.

“Do you remember what you said?”

“Wendy… I… I don’t know what you want me to…”

“You said you loved me.”

“Yes…”

“You said you’d love me FOREVER,” she said, cutting him off. And then she pulled something off the coffee table, something that gleamed in her hand, and Jay tried not to scream when he saw it was a butcher knife.


Some time earlier…

Jay stood outside the apartment door, wondering what he was thinking. He shouldn’t be here. It was stupid. The last thing he needed was a situation where it was just him and Wendy and who knew what might happen. He couldn’t give her an excuse to hold on to “them”: Jay and Wendy, the idea of them being together. They were over. They both just needed… what?

One word kept coming to mind: closure. Such a thing was a myth in relationships, he knew, especially with a woman he would see at the hospital every day until one of them moved on, but it was a concept that everyone leaving a relationship seemed to want, to need. Like a period at the end of a sentence. Once you put that final dot on the end, you could move on to whatever came next.

He was here, at Wendy’s apartment, for the period at the end of the Jay and Wendy sentence. Then he could begin the Jay and Megan sentence. A sentence that he hoped would prove to be much happier and more pleasant than the previous one.

The butterflies in his stomach did not seem to agree with all this grammatical nonsense, and they continued to mount and flutter against his ribcage, seeking escape. Jay gulped, breathed deeply and raised his hand to knock on Wendy’s door, room 373. This was his last chance to turn around, walk away and leave it the way he had left it two days before, Wendy’s red-brimmed and tear-streaked eyes leaking into her caramel cappuccino among a dozen onlookers.

Always break up in a public place: the best advice a man can ever give another man. Thanks, Pete! Of course, he wouldn’t be able to walk into that particular Starbucks for some time, not without thinking everyone was staring and whispering behind cupped hands.

Against his better judgment, Jay knocked on the door, his heart thundering in his ears.

It opened at once, only a second or two after his knuckles first touched wood as if Wendy had been directly on the other side, waiting. He thought of her, standing and waiting and staring at the blank brown wood of the door. How long had she been there? Jay didn’t think about it, didn’t worry about it; Wendy was no longer his problem, not anymore.

Her short red hair hung just below her ears, neatly brushed, not a hair out of place. Her bright green eyes shimmered underneath a pair of stylish black-framed eyeglasses. Her lips were red, and she had on the short plaid skirt that Jay always told her he loved. The sweet smell of perfume permeated the air. He had to admit, she looked hot.

“Jay? I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” she said.

Yeah, right.

Jay bit his tongue before uttering the words.

“You look nice,” he said instead.

“Thank you,” she said. “Come on in.”

Jay stepped inside her apartment. He would have to keep his wits and not allow himself to do anything stupid.

Mind over matter, he thought. There’s nothing she can do that will win you back, man. Just remember that.

But Wendy was a master of manipulation, part of the reason that Jay was so keen to break up with her. Megan had showed him the light, the error of Wendy’s ways, and she opened his eyes to the enslavement of a relationship he and Wendy shared. Megan also suggested that she made a much more appropriate match for him, and Jay didn’t disagree. He didn’t disagree while making out in the club, in the car, in Megan’s apartment…

“I’m glad you came,” Wendy said, interrupting his thoughts. Jay looked at her and felt nothing. That was good. Wendy’s eyes glanced down, embarrassed by his gaze. She didn’t know what to say, and neither did Jay. The situation was awkward at best.

“I am, too. I didn’t like how we left things, Wendy. I think we just need…” Jay searched for the word.

“Closure,” Wendy said. Jay’s face lit up.

“That’s it! That’s it exactly.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her smile faltered, and her eyes gleamed with fat tears. Jay tried to find something to say, something comforting that wouldn’t lead to him consoling her and hugging and then perhaps a little touching and who knew what else, but a place that Jay did not want to go, not with Wendy.

“Let’s just sit down, eat something and talk. We’ll feel better after we talk,” Jay said. He gave her an encouraging smile. He’d have to be the bigger person tonight, steer the conversation from them getting back together to moving on to a better life. He’d say the obligatory things about staying friends, meaning none of it but knowing that he was helping Wendy through the transition of their break-up.

This will turn out to have been a good idea. He tried to convince himself.

“Good idea. Want something to drink?” Wendy said. She dabbed the corner of her eyes with her sleeve.

“Sure,” said Jay with a warm smile. “How ‘bout a Coke?”

“Beer,” Wendy sniffed. “We’re going to need some alcohol to get through tonight, I think.”

“Ok, beer it is,” Jay said. She was right; a nice buzz might make the proceedings more palatable.

“I’ll get it,” Wendy said. She swiveled on her heels and disappeared into the kitchen.

Heels? Jay sighed and ran a hand through his bushy head of hair. Wendy only wore heels on special occasions. He might be in deeper tonight that he expected. He licked his lips. He’d have to keep Megan at the forefront of his mind.

Don’t let Wendy get you caught up in all of her tricks.

Something nudged his arm, and Jay turned to find Wendy holding a glass of beer in her hand for him. Jay took it with a smile, and she returned it weakly.

“To us,” she said and tipped her glass to her lips. Jay hesitated and followed suit.

“To us,” he repeated and drank. Wendy finished off her beer in seconds, and Jay figured why not and downed his as if putting out a fire in his stomach. He smacked, tasting something odd in his mouth. The beer was more than slightly skunky; Wendy was not much of a drinker so there was no telling how long it had sat in her fridge. Jay tried to keep it well stocked, but her fridge was always a veritable disaster of condiments, cans and old sandwich meat.

“You know, it’s funny,” Wendy said. Jay turned to look at her, feeling slightly dizzy. The beer might have been skunky, but it was also potent. He hadn’t had a beer effect him so quickly since the first time he’d ever snuck one of his pop’s Budweisers.

“What’s funny?” he said. He steadied himself with one hand and took a seat into the nearest chair. He felt good: weird but good, slightly tired but not drunk.

“It’s funny how you can be a part of something and never really know it. I mean, never really see it for what it is, objectively. Not until it’s over, and you look in from the outside, you know?” Wendy replied, her eyes boring into his. Jay laughed. The beer was already affecting her, too.

“Like how?” he said, drawing his laughter to a close. He shook his head, warding off the dizziness and another fit of giggles.

“Like how you can date someone for two long years and never know what a cheating jerk he is until it’s too late,” Wendy said. Her cheeks glistened with wet tears. Jay frowned.

“What are you talking about?” he said, but then Wendy smashed her beer glass over his head and the world went dark.


Back to the present…

The butcher knife waved and sliced the air with brutal slashes.

“Do you know what this is?” Wendy howled, her words cutting accusations at him. Jay gulped. His mouth felt dry.

“A knife?” he said.

“No! Not that. This!” Wendy growled and swung her other hand in his direction. In it, she held a familiar black book. Jay felt his stomach sink.

“Your journal?”

“Yes!” she cried, drove the butcher knife into the wood of the coffee table and flipped the book open; she leafed through the pages, finally stopping upon one. She cleared her throat like a teacher preparing to give a long lecture.

“September 9th, walked along the beach. So romantic that I could have died and gone to heaven right then and there. Everything was perfect. Stars. The moon. Jay! Oh, Jay. He told me he loved me. Said he’d always love me. Forever!” Wendy read and snapped the book closed.

“Does that ring any bells, Mr. Not-so-Perfect?” she said. Jay tried to not look at the butcher knife jutting erect from the coffee table, so close to Wendy’s hands.

“Yes,” he said. His throat felt stuffed with cotton. The world, the painful truth of reality and his surroundings were suddenly so clear to him that it seemed surreal.

“Are you a liar, Jay?” Wendy said.

“No.”

“But you said forever,” she responded. She peered into the journal as though proving her point because there it was, his words inked in pen by her jittery, willowy handwriting.

“Wendy, sometimes feelings change,” he said.

“SCREW THAT!” Wendy bellowed and ripped out the knife, slivers of wood flying out of the table’s artificial wound. Jay went numb. He had never seen her like this before, and he was suddenly afraid for his life, really afraid for the first time since waking up and discovering that he had been tied to a chair.

“You’re a liar! That’s all there is to it. You said forever, and you lied. Feelings don’t just change. If you love someone, you love someone. That doesn’t just die overnight,” Wendy said, her lips trembling, her eyes red with threatening tears.

“But people do.”

“What are you going to do with that knife, Wendy?” Jay said. Wendy walked towards him and slipped into his lap and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Jay felt the end of the knife jutting against the back of his head, where the neck met the skull, brushing up against him like the beak of a small bird. She wrapped her legs around the chair, straddling him, her face mere inches from his own. Her bottom felt snug on Jay’s lap.

“We used to have such wonderful conversations, Jay. Didn’t we?” she said.

The point of the knife pricked him and drew blood. Jay yelped and went rigid in the chair, struggling against his bonds but to no avail. He knew it wasn’t deep, just enough to hurt and surprise him. Wendy laughed.

“Remember how I told you my dad was a butcher? How I helped him in his shop? That’s why I knew I’d be perfect in the medical field. I have no aversion to blood or guts, you know. And a basic working knowledge of anatomy,” she said. She dabbed a finger at the back of Jay’s head and brought it back smeared with fresh blood. She closed her eyes and licked the blood off her finger, a look of sheer delight on her face, and ran her tongue lustily along her lips as if she didn’t want to miss a drop.

She opened her eyes to gauge Jay’s reaction. He grimaced.

“Not to mention spending summers on my grandpa’s farm. He showed me how to kill a pig when I got old enough. Slit their throats and all, you know. Something like that would probably scar most girls my age then, but it didn’t bother me at all. Liked to help gut them, too. Oh! And chickens. Popped off my fair share of chicken heads as well,” Wendy continued.

“Wendy, this isn’t funny.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Wendy paused, considering him. She pulled away and stood over him and tapped the tip of the knife thoughtfully against her chin like an old man mulling over a difficult Sunday crossword puzzle.

“The toes. I think we’ll start with your toes,” she said. She knelt in front of him, smoothing her skirt with her hands. Jay’s skin went cold. He couldn’t see her hands below his knees, couldn’t tell what she was doing. All he could see was her head between his legs, her tongue flicking between her lips, a look of concentration on her face.

“What are you doing?” he gasped.

“Saving us,” Wendy said, and then the knife cut through his flesh.


When Jay regained consciousness, the first thing he tried to do was wiggle his toes.

The ends of his feet felt tingly, but he couldn’t get a clear sign of the damage. Tears dripped from the corner of his eyes, and scattered questions hurdled through his mind: Where was she keeping him? Why hadn’t anyone come for him? Had no one heard his screams?

The air reeked of stale blood. Another smell drifted through the room, this one vaguely familiar. It reminded him of greasy truck stops and fried chicken. Having a mind of its own, his stomach gurgled with hunger, and Jay thought he might be sick. He didn’t want to think about the smell and what it might mean, but irregardless, it made him hungry.

In the center of the room, a table had been set. The table was small, covered with a white cloth, and had only a single setting. A tall white candle illuminated the scene. A bottle of wine waited to be opened, sitting in a pail of ice next to a gleaming and spotless wine glass. Jay recognized the bottle; it was an expensive brand. He had bought it for Wendy not long ago on a romantic whim, and she had told him that she would save it for a special occasion. Probably, she had planned on saving it for their engagement.

Whoops, Jay thought.

At the far end of the room, a rickety wooden staircase led up to a steel door. The door swung open with a bang, startling Jay, and Wendy stood at the top of the stairs, an apron stating “Kiss the Cook!” strung precariously about the front of her. As she started down, a gleam of light reflected off the covered platter in her hand; and thinking about what the platter might contain, Jay felt like he might vomit. His insides threatened to betray him in a steaming twisted mass, but he choked it down, refusing to give Wendy the satisfaction.

“Ding, ding! Dinner’s served!” Wendy said in a falsetto voice. She tapped a fork against the covered platter as she stepped off the final step and onto the floor. The smell of whatever Wendy had on the platter hit him like an unexpected wave at the beach, the kind that comes out of nowhere and leaves you spitting salt water and your nose burning with the sting of its intrusion.

Jay felt his head swirl; the line between reality and nightmare seemed dangerously thin.

Wendy sat down and lifted the cover off the platter. Her Cheshire smile spread from ear to ear, teeth glistening in the candle’s soft flickering glow. Resting on a bed of crisp green lettuce, steaming and seasoned, sat Jay’s severed foot.

Vomit erupted from Jay’s throat and out his mouth in a copious spray, splattering the front of his shirt and dribbling down his chin. The world seemed to whirl around him, sanity straining pregnantly at the seams. The worst part was the sensation, those unnerving tickly tingles, coming from where his foot was supposed to be; he could still feel it down there, the part of him that now sat on Wendy’s grotesque platter like a serving of roast duck.

Wendy took her place at the small table and tucked her napkin into the neck of her blouse.

“It’s so nice, just the two of us. Candles, wine,” she paused, fought off a strained giggle, and continued, “I should have you for dinner more often.”

“I hope you choke,” Jay said.

“And I hope you appreciate I’m doing this for us,” she said. Then she stabbed the tender meat with her fork and popped a healthy portion into her mouth.

Jay screamed at her, screamed until his voice gave out: curses and cries of frustration, rage and desperation until blood dotted the ends of all his sentences. Finally spent, his vocal chords ragged, his throat cracked and torn, Jay could only watch silently while Wendy finished her meal, blew out the candle, dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin and left, switching off the basement light behind her.

Alone, in the darkness, uneasy sleep eventually found him.


Four months ago…

“Ever take Anthropology?” Wendy asked, closing her textbook, a slender finger held between pages to keep her place.

“What?” Jay said. His eyes were focused on the flashing images on the television screen, his hands manipulating the videogame controller held before him. Jay pumped his free fist as a computerized opponent collapsed in a pool of virtual blood.

“Anthropology. We’re examining different cultures right now, and I was wondering if you ever looked into cannibalism, you know, since you love those zombie movies so much.”

Wendy slipped off her glasses and set them aside.

“No,” Jay said. He cursed and mashed buttons, his fingers working furiously as if each had an individual mind of its own. Jay eyes remained fixed, following the proceedings on the screen with intense concentration.

“Well, it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. And many of these groups believe that when you eat a person, you consume their powers, their essence, right? They become a part of you and make you stronger.”

“Like on Highlander,” Jay said. He grunted and gnashed his teeth.

“Uh, right. Christianity has ritualized cannibalism in the form of communion, the idea of consuming Christ and both being cleansed and unified in him,” Wendy said.

“Mmm,” Jay murmured in an indifferent tone. Buttons clicked under his fingers. He didn’t see where she was going with this and honestly didn’t care.

“If we’re ever stranded on a deserted island, you should let me eat you.”

“What?”

“That way at least one of us would survive, and we’d be together in essence. We’d be like one person, our unification stronger and longer lasting than marriage.”

Jay frowned. Sometimes Wendy said the strangest things.

“I’ll make you a deal, if we’re ever stranded on a deserted isle whichever one us is more likely to make it gets to eat the other one. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Jay cursed as his screen went red with virtual death.


In the basement…

Jay didn’t refuse the water she offered him. Almost worse than the aching in his gut and the tingling of his removed foot was the dry, parched feeling that caked his lips and throat and made him feel more than a little light-headed.

As he drained the glass, she surprised him by bringing a cleaver down on his right arm.


The steel door ground against the floor, and metal screeched in protest. Jay’s eyes fluttered open, his dark dreams receding to the recesses of his mind, and he looked up towards the sound. The door opened to reveal a black silhouette, the shadowy form of a woman in the rectangle of light behind it.

“The police stopped by the apartment today,” Wendy said. She couldn’t see his reaction, Jay knew, only the black darkness of the room. He didn’t reply but his ragged breaths, nothing more than trembling gasps of air aching through his chest, increased. His entire body throbbed in pain.

“No need to get your hopes up. They think you’ve run away with that little whore, Megan. She’s disappeared, too. The police aren’t too concerned, but they were very sympathetic towards my situation. Everyone thinks you two will show up a few weeks from now with wedding bands and healthy Vegas tans,” Wendy said and paused.

“Somehow, I don’t think they’re right.”

The door slammed shut.


Later…

Wendy pushed back from the table, patted her stomach and barked an un-ladylike belch. The plate in front of her sat bare but for a few gnawed bones, remnants of meat clinging like stringy whiskers, a discarded napkin draped over the bones like a burial shroud.

“Better than sex,” Wendy said, licking her chops. Her eyes glazed over, and she closed them. For a moment, Jay could only hear himself breathing. Wendy’s eyes opened.

“You must be hungry,” she said. She stood up and glided across the room, glanced up at the I.V. she’d hooked into Jay’s remaining arm and ruffled his hair with her fingers. She gave Jay such a look of tender motherly concern, he almost screamed at her, but it wasn’t worth the pain. He couldn’t swallow without flinching.

She checked his tourniquets and said, “Tomorrow, I’ll whip us up something special.”

Done with his bandages, Wendy sat on the ground and pulled a pair of scissors out of her jeans pocket. They were spotted with flaky red rust; Jay tried not to think about them tearing through his skin, not that he’d feel much. Before her meal, Wendy had jabbed a needle into his leg, and it had gone numb. And what did it matter now if he contracted tetanus from the rust? He was a dead man, anyway.

But Wendy didn’t use the scissors on his flesh; instead, she cut a large opening into Jay’s pants, exposing a generous portion of his leg. She placed the scissors on the floor and picked up a long carving knife. Jay watched as she sliced a steak out of his inner thigh.

He didn’t scream.


Jay’s stomach gurgled. It (he) smelled so good, and yet he knew he couldn’t eat, not without getting sick. Then he’d just feel worse. The second place setting on the table, the one with the portion of himself on it, sat there mocking him and getting cold.

But, Jay had to admit, he smelled delicious. Why shouldn’t he give in to the hunger? After all, if someone was going to eat him, he had more of a right…

Is that even a sane thought?

Jay wondered if he was losing it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, sometime before Wendy had kidnapped him and begun her sick, twisted consumption of his livelihood. His stomach burbled its agreement.

“Hungry? But you haven’t touched your food!” Wendy said in a mock-accusing voice from across the table and caw-cawed a high-pitched fit of laughter. Some reddish juice escaped from the corner or her mouth, and she dabbed at it with her napkin.

“Untie my hand, so I can eat then,” Jay replied, his voice a raspy whisper.

“Not quite.”

Wendy slipped out of her chair and made her way to Jay, settling on his lap and picking up his plate with one hand. Closer now, he saw that her lips were still red with juice like a kid who has drunk way too much cherry Kool-Aide. Jay thought better of mentioning it; and a moment later the smell emanating off the plate wiped out all rational thought.

“It would be much more romantic if I fed you,” Wendy said, forking a piece of steak. The same reddish juice that coated her lips dripped off the dangling shred of meat. The meat trembled from the steel prongs of the fork as though a creature alive, mortally wounded but still struggling against the throes of inevitable death.

Jay closed his eyes and opened his mouth to receive his communion. Wendy presented it with a swoop of her arm, vibrating her lips to create an airplane sound familiar to young mothers everywhere.

“We’re coming in; open the hangar!” Wendy said deliriously. Jay closed his lips over the fork, and when Wendy pulled it back, it came out shiny, moist and clean. Jay could taste himself, his own flesh, sitting on his tongue. For a moment, he was too stunned to do anything, either chew or swallow or anything, as a feeling of surprise washed over him like a clear spring rain. He discovered he really tasted quite good.

He spat the mouthful in Wendy’s face. She shrieked; the fork tumbled out of her hand and clattered to the floor. The hunk of un-chewed meat hung for a few seconds before it plopped off her chin and landed dead-center on Wendy’s crisp white blouse, leaving a meaty red blot of a stain that would be a pain to get out in the next wash. Her mouth gaped open: the international expression of shock.

Then she was back, calm, cool and composed. The storm behind her eyes passed, and a withering smile stretched her stained, red lips.

“You know, Jay. At the end of the day, you’re a lucky, lucky boy. Because no matter how much you piss me off, no matter what you might say or do, you’re just so cute, so sweet, that I just want to eat you up!” Wendy said and bit his face. Her teeth ripped off a chunk of his cheek, skin tearing like crepe paper under her cruel incisors.

She slurped blood and flesh as if finishing off a particularly satisfying chocolate shake.


A dream:

Black. Then through it- stars shimmered to life and twinkled overhead- then also below; everywhere. An endless eternity, infinity of stars with no beginning or end, then stars too close and bright to be stars- fireflies- blinked between the world of light and dark and swooped and touched upon a rippling glass surface, the reflective sheen of a lake.

“Beautiful,” Wendy breathed next to him.

“Yes,” Jay agreed and tried to put his arm around her. He couldn’t; he was tied to a chair.

“We should stay here together, forever,” Wendy said, and her words floated on the air like rose petals.

“Too bad we can’t.”

“Can’t we?” Wendy said, and then her tongue flicked out and licked him. Jay flinched, and his chair began to sink into the inky darkness of the lake. He peered down only to see he was up to his ankles, his feet invisible beneath the cold, twinkling surface. Wendy, undisturbed by these events, continued licking his face.

“Tasty! Tasty! Tasty!” Wendy ejaculated after each individual lick. Jay’s cheek burned with an unbearable prickly, tingling/tickling sensation, Wendy’s tongue feeling furry and light, and he began to scream.

Then the lake swallowed them both.


Jay didn’t realize his eyes were open until they began to adjust to the darkness of the room, and he saw a swirling black dot separate itself from the rest of the darkness. Somehow, a fly had managed to make its way into his torture chamber. It flittered to and fro, taking off and landing like a miniature Huey on the bloody battlefield of Jay’s face.

It buzzed to its favorite spot: the raw open wound on Jay’s cheek. The fly washed its legs in Jay’s blood, and it was this sensitive tickling of the fly’s furry legs on the prone nerve endings of Jay’s face that had torn him from his dream. Every movement of the fly vibrated through his body; up his arms, down his spine; Jay could feel the tickly tingling in tips of his remaining toes. This fly, a minor nuisance at any other time, owned and feasted on what as left of him at will, an insectile emperor with unrestrained reign, presiding over the kingdom of Jay’s head.

Jay moaned. In his hands he now held the end of a metaphorical rope. All he had to do was let go, allow it to pull away from him into some vast universal void; and he could swat at this madness, this last straw, this irritation of the fly, and then he could plunge into the numbing comfort of insanity.

So he did. He slapped at the fly, catching it off-guard and crushing its prone body against his cheekbone as it attempted to escape only too late, its fate decided with a clap of thunder. Jay held his free hand in front of his eyes, trying to determine what it was he was really seeing (a splatter of guts in a palm, five trembling fingers), and it took him a moment to comprehend he was, in fact, staring at a free and unbound hand. Sometime, perhaps during the crisis of the face-biting cannibal-witch, the knot had loosened to the notice of neither Jay nor his captor.

The screeching of the metal door cut off his reverie more effectively than Wendy could ever cut him with her knife, and Jay’s mind snapped to his chance for escape. He prayed it was still there.


Wendy approached him with brown bottle of peroxide in one hand and a roll of gauze in the other and a frown plastered on her face, her lower lip jutting out like that of a pouting two-year-old. She still wore the stained white blouse; a splash of reddish-brown smudged an area of her chest like a dried blood stain.

“I owe you an apology,” she said. She unscrewed the top of the peroxide and placed the cap on the table. She flipped the bottle over, wetting a patch of gauze. Jay watched her patiently, silently. She placed the bottle on the table.

“I admit I got a little carried away. At least I can admit it, right? But you’re just so frustrating. I mean, this is something stronger than sex, more profound than marriage. And it’s like you don’t get it. Or appreciate it. Just like me, never appreciated.”

Come closer, Jay thought.

She rambled on as she walked towards Jay, the peroxide-drenched gauze in one hand.

“You just never got it, Jay. We, the two of us together, we were bigger than the individual and something smaller when we were separate, apart. Together, we were something special, and something worth saving from extinction. I wish you could understand that.”

Closer.

She held the gauze ahead of her, towards Jay’s cheek. His heart thrummed in his ears.

“I love you, Jay. Even now, even after all you’ve put me through. I still love you.”

“I’m sorry, Wendy” Jay said, and he was. He thrust his arm forward, driving the fork into her throat. Wendy had forgotten about this potential weapon, dropping it before she had earlier attacked Jay’s face like a hungry Hannibal Lecter. Of course, she had no way of expecting that Jay would manage to get loose from his bonds and really couldn’t blame anything but dumb luck for this unwelcome surprise. The fork, actual silver, sunk easier than expected, deep into the soft flesh of her neck. Blood welled and spilled from the wound, running down in crimson rivulets.

Wendy gurgled, stumbled backwards two steps and reached for the utensil extending from her throat. Her eyes bulged wide, questioning and unsure that what was happening was actually happening, and Jay nodded, feeling a sympathy he could not explain.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She lost her balance, grabbed at the table only to knock the bottle of peroxide to the floor before tripping over it and falling. She fell, face-first; the floor drove the fork deeper, and Jay thought he would never forget the sound it made as it burst through her windpipe and out the back of her neck.

There, in a growing pool of cooling blood and peroxide, the cute red-haired girl that Jay had promised to love forever died, pieces of Jay still digesting inside of her.


It took him some time, even with a free hand, to untie the knots, pull the I.V. needle out of his arm and crawl out of the chair. Jay’s mutilated body was a mass of aches and muscular spasms. The worst part, after all of it, came when he had to crawl past Wendy’s corpse. He half-expected her to reach out a cold, dead hand and pull him towards her red-stained mouth, her hunger insatiable even after death. He passed the body without incident. Though he thought he heard a single wispy exhale issue from her torn windpipe.

Up the stairs, out the door, to a phone, the rest was a blur. Police, family, and a few friends helped him sort out the rest later. Wendy had kept him in an abandoned building: the butcher shop her father had run many years ago, closed after failing several federal inspections. Megan’s body was found in a meat locker. It had not been eaten; not a single bite was found on it.


Jay attended both funerals, but shock numbed him from feeling any emotion. A few weeks later, Jay shed many tears, but he wasn’t sure exactly for whom. He kept Wendy’s diary hidden under his mattress and read it faithfully every night.

Lately, he had trouble sleeping. He woke up with phantom, half-remembered scents drifting past his nostrils and an unexplainable hunger roaring in his stomach. Nothing seemed to help it, and often in these silent, secret watches of the night, torn from his slumber by this indefinable hunger, Jay stared at his only hand, wiggling his fingers. He could afford to lose a few of them; he seemed to cope fine with only one hand, after all. But he held out because once he started, he didn’t know if he would be able to stop himself. So far, he’d held out.

Still, he knew that one night, inevitably, he would give in, let the hunger overwhelm him; and then he would feast.

Oh, how he would feast.