Ante Mortem

A LITTLE HELP IN THE KITCHEN Jeff Parish

Charlie dug through the closet by the front door yet again. None of his previous—and very thorough—searches had borne any fruit, but tonight was bowling night and he knew this was where he’d put his ball after last week’s match. Might have to use one of the lane’s balls tonight. He shuddered at the thought.

“Vera!” he shouted. Charlie scratched his head, careful not to disturb the few tendrils of gray hair he’d coaxed across his bald scalp. He could hear pots and pans rattling in the kitchen, but she didn’t answer. “Hey, Vera!”

Still no answer, although a sudden clatter said the clumsy cow had dropped something. As much as I’ve spent on her stuff in the kitchen, you’d think she’d take better care of it. He scowled and slapped his round gut in agitation. “VERA!”

She finally appeared around the corner, wiping greasy hands on the apron cinched tight around her waist. A few strands of black hair had escaped her bun and patches of flour dotted her forehead and nose.

“What?” his wife said with an exasperated sigh. Dark circles discolored the skin under her eyes; she hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. Serves her right. She should have gotten started sooner.

“Don’t take that tone with me, woman.” He hitched his pants up. “Where’s my bowling ball?”

“Did you look in the closet?”

“Of course I looked in the closet. You think I’m some kind of moron?”

“I’m sorry, dear. I really don’t know where it is.” She flapped her hands toward the kitchen. “Don’t you think you should stay home, anyway? They’re going to be here tomorrow, and we’ve still got a lot to do to get ready.”

“You’ve got a lot to do, you mean. I’ve got a bowling team counting on me tonight.”

“Come on, Charlie. This is your family we’re talking about. This house is going to be packed. I could use a little help in the kitchen if we’re going to get this turkey done on time.”

Charlie shook his head. “We’ve been over this before, Vera. The kitchen’s your responsibility. I don’t know the first thing about the stuff you do in there. I’ve dropped a lot of bread for appliances and whatnot over the years, how about you show some appreciation and use it?”

Some brief emotion flared across her face. On anyone else, he might have called it rage or even hatred. She’s probably just tired. Then it was gone, swallowed in weariness so quickly he wondered if he’d seen it all. “Alright,” she said and sighed.

Turning back to the closet, Charlie scratched his head again. Where is that thing?

“I think I found your ball,” Vera said behind him.

“Well, let me have it!” He turned just in time to catch a rolling pin between the eyes.

Groaning, Charlie woke to a massive headache and the sound of metal rasping against metal. Every scrape sent another bolt of pain through his head. Even the light filtering through his eyelids hurt. “Vera,” he whispered. “Whatever you’re doing, quit it.” He tried to rub his head, but couldn’t move his arm. He tried wiggling; he couldn’t move anything but his head. Something held him immobilized against a hard surface. He opened his eyes. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Vera swam into view. She held a large knife in one hand and a sharpener in the other. She gave the blade a few more licks, set both on the counter and smiled. “I’ve been thinking. It’s all my fault you don’t know how to help out in here. You’ve bought me all these wonderful tools for my kitchen.” She gestured behind her. Charlie tilted his head, but couldn’t see past his gut. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, I really do, but I guess I’ve never really told you. Time to make that up to you!”

As she talked, Charlie twisted his head. A glance at the windows showed night had fallen. He lay on the dining room table; boards bolted to the sides held his arms out, secured with belts and rope. He figured his legs had been tied down in the same fashion. What is that woman up to? A stinging slap brought his attention back to that woman.

“You’re not listening, Charlie. That is quite rude.” She scowled down at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, tugging at the restraints. They refused to budge.

“Quite alright.” The bright smile returned. “I was just saying that I thought the best way for me to show my appreciation was to teach you how all these things work. How does that sound to you?”

“Great, great.” He pulled his right leg. Did it give a little?

“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands and walked out of his field of vision. Something slid off a countertop, and she returned carrying what looked like a long metal stem holding a round dial. “This is a meat thermometer. You use it to check the internal temperature of your meat so you can tell if it’s done all the way through.” She smiled at him. “I believe you bought this… three years ago. Thank you!”

Vera jabbed the pointed end deep in his left thigh until it dug into his femur. Charlie screamed and arched his back off the table, he could see the dial wobbling back and forth as he thrashed. Her hand chased it for a moment before catching hold of the stem and yanking it free. Blood dripped from the end. “Clumsy me. I am so sorry about that.”

“What is wrong with you?” Charlie fell back against the table, panting.

“I honestly don’t know. I guess I just got in a rush.” She stabbed his other thigh, and he shrieked. “There. That’s better. You’re not supposed to let it hit bone. You can’t get an accurate reading that way.”

Eyes bulging, he watched his wife lean over and study the dial. “Around ninety-nine degrees. Well, you’re not exactly a pot roast, but at least we know you’re healthy!”

She reached over and grabbed the large knife she’d been sharpening earlier. Charlie tried to shrink back into the table. “A butcher knife? W… wha… what are you going to do…” He cut off, trembling and sweating.

“You really don’t know anything, do you? This is a chef’s knife.” Shaking her head, Vera tsked and set the blade back on the counter. She disappeared for a moment, then returned with one hand at her side. In the other, she carried what looked like some sort of blowtorch, which she set on the table. “This is a butcher knife.” She lifted something that looked more closely related to a hatchet than a kitchen utensil. “They’re really quite different. This one is all about chopping.”

Charlie couldn’t catch his breath or take his eyes off that rectangular blade glittering in the fluorescent lights.

The butcher knife rose overhead. Its blade cut through the air and buried itself in the board supporting his left hand with a solid thunk. Four fingers bounced off the quivering wood and pattered to the floor. Blood spurted across the blade and Vera’s white apron. Charlie screamed and pulled against his bonds.

“Oops,” Vera said. “Missed one.” She wrenched the blade free and chopped his thumb off with two quick swipes. More blood flowed, making her frown. “That’s a big mess you’re making here, Charlie. Just one more thing for me to clean later, I suppose. But for now…”

Retrieving the blowtorch, she clicked a switch, and blue flames jetted from the tip. “I never had much use for this cooking torch, but I got to tell you, I’ve always had a lot of fun playing with it.”

Charlie whimpered and struggled harder. His head whipped from side to side, and his shrieks renewed, louder than before, as she ran the fire across his maimed hand. He gagged at the smell of roasting meat. He barely heard Vera trying to tell him something, but couldn’t make it out past the sound of his own screams and the agony burning up his arm.

The butcher knife hitting the table by his ear caught his attention.

“You are making entirely too much noise, Charlie. I’m glad we live out in the country — I hate to think what our neighbors would say if they could hear you being such a baby. But I am not going to try to talk over you, either.”

He closed his eyes as Vera walked away from the table, breathing in ragged gasps. They opened when a wet, foul-tasting cloth forced itself into his mouth. He tried to spit the dishrag out and gagged when Vera jabbed it back in. A ripping sound came from somewhere over his head and he caught sight of a flash of dull silver as she slapped duct tape over his mouth.

“There. That ought to do it!” She wiped her hands on her apron and picked up the triangular knife. “Now, as I was saying: This is a chef’s knife. This is the sort of thing you use to cut up vegetables, such as celery or carrots.”

She placed the handle in her palm and gripped the rear part of the blade between her thumb and forefinger. Walking around the table to his right side, she placed the tip of the knife on the board and angled the blade above his index finger. Charlie gave a muffled scream and balled the hand into a fist. Vera sighed, reversed the knife and stabbed it through the back of his hand. Blood welled and spilled around the blade as his fingers splayed out.

“This won’t work if you won’t cooperate.” She studied his hand. “You know, that probably wouldn’t have made a very good demonstration, anyway. Those knives aren’t made to cut through bone.” She tapped her chin with one finger, leaving a bloody smear behind. Then her face brightened. “You know, I’m really jumping ahead of myself right now. You need something a little more basic.”

Jerking the butcher knife free of the tabletop, she lopped off his thumb, index, ring and pinky fingers. Tears leaked from Charlie’s eyes as she cauterized the wounds. He tried to move the hand, but the blade of the cooking knife held it in place. Vera reached into her apron and pulled out what he thought was a small knife at first, then she turned it, and he saw the blade was curved rather than flat, and there was a long slot in the center.

“This is a peeler,” she said, twisting the contraption before his eyes. “You use it to scrape the skin off of carrots and potatoes.” She grabbed his remaining middle finger by the first joint. “You’re lucky this is a new one. They get really dull and hard to work with after a while.”

Holding the peeler horizontally, she made a swipe down the length of his finger toward the wrist. A chunk of flesh flew free and hit his cheek. Charlie yelped, the first in a long string of cries as she worked the peeler. Gobbets of meat and blood spattered the board and his arm, as well as Vera’s hair and face. She peeled the finger until all the skin and muscle was gone. Charlie shivered at the feeling of steel scraping along the white bone protruding from what remained of his right hand.

“There you go! All clean.” She pulled the chef’s knife free, dropped the peeler back in her apron and pulled out a smaller knife. “This is called a paring knife. It’s really useful for more delicate situations where a peeler won’t work.”

She walked around to the other end of the table, dragged a chair over and sat down in front of his feet. Her breath tickled his toes as she pulled off his right sock and shoe. He craned his neck, trying to figure out what she was up to, but all he could see was her hair peeking over the swell of his belly. He forgot all about trying to watch at the first prick in the sole of his foot.

A burning line ripped down the middle from the ball of his foot to the backside of his heel, painful even in comparison with the agony throbbing in both hands. Vera’s studious face came into view as she made another cut, this one around the foot just beneath his toes. Tears streaming, he tried to yell through the gag, to beg her to stop. Another slice around his ankle, and then a slit up the top side of his foot. Surely she wouldn’t… Thought fled as he felt fingers hook into the cut in the arch of his foot, ripping skin free with a yank. She peeled his foot like a grape, using the paring knife to separate skin from muscle when it wouldn’t pull off.

Pressure suddenly left the lower half of his legs, and it took Charlie several seconds to realize Vera had untied his shins. He relaxed on the table, weeping, his breath whistling through his nostrils. Thank God it’s over. It had to be. What more could she possibly do to him? Why hasn’t she untied the rest? He heard a slapping sound and craned his neck to look at his wife.

Vera stood by his left knee. She held steel mallet with a spiked head, smacking it into her palm. He recognized that one. What does she want with a meat tenderizer?

“I know you like to think you know how to grill outside, honey, but I’ve got to tell you, you really haven’t been doing a very good job of it. You need to use this thing more often, like this.” She swung the tenderizer like a carpenter driving a nail. Pain bloomed in his knee with the first blow. At the fourth, he felt the joint give way. The other knee only took three strikes to break. Then she disappeared.

Charlie held his breath, afraid to see what she might bring back this time. He started to laugh hysterically with relief at the sight of the small metal tray she carried by its handles. Is she going to bake cookies? His hysteric mirth withered as she angled the tray. The bottom contained a series of scooped holes. A cheese grater, not a tray. She set it on the table and yanked his pants leg up past the knee. He groaned at the pressure in the injured joint. When she placed the grater on his shin, he shook his head side to side.

“Oh, come now, Charlie. In thirty years, I’ve never seen you use one of these things. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t show you how?”

Leaning on his leg, she ran the utensil down his shin like a plane. He screamed around the rag in his mouth. He could feel blood running down his leg with every pass. Occasionally, the cheese grater would bind and she would yank it out of his leg and tap it on the side of the table. She worked every side of his leg until the gouges scored along bone. Once she was done, she grabbed the cooking torch and sealed off the edges of the wound.

Charlie couldn’t scream anymore; his voice had long since failed. But he cried when Vera wrenched the leg up and showed him the twin bones gleaming wetly in the kitchen light, the white darkened to black at the ends where she’d cauterized what remained of his leg.

Holding the ankle with one hand, she reached into her apron and pulled out what looked like the world’s biggest, most evil set of nutcrackers. She threaded one of the jaws between the bones in his leg and closed it gently around the smaller of the pair. She looked up at him and giggled.

“I have to be honest — I’ve never used these before. Just haven’t had a chance.” She sighed. “Remember when you gave me these shell crackers? It was what, five years ago, for our anniversary? You promised lobster that night and every night for a week after. I always wondered why you never actually bought any. Oh, well. At least I finally found a use for them.”

She gripped the jaws in both hands and twisted. Charlie watched as the bone bent then splintered with a sound like a green tree branch snapping. Vera wrapped the shell cracker around the other bone. It took more effort. She wrenched it back and forth and leaned on his foot before it crunched. As his shoe-clad foot hit the floor, Charlie found he could scream after all.

He kept right on screaming until he passed out.

Charlie woke up still screaming, the feel of cold steel punching into his gut. Eyes flying open, he found a two-prong carving fork stabbed into his bellybutton. Vera tapped the handle with a carving knife, sending painful shivers into his abdomen.

“I think our lesson’s nearly over, dear. I just wanted to show you a couple more things. First, we’re going to discuss proper carving. If you’re going to assume the job of cutting up the turkey at holidays, you really need to learn how to do it right. The way you’ve been hacking at it is quite embarrassing.”

She laid the knife’s slightly curved edge next to the fork. Blood welled as she made a wide, shallow cut that followed the contours of his stomach. The world went gray once more, but the pain of her carving kept him alert. He watched in horror as she made a ring of slices around the fork. She carefully lay each flap of skin and muscle back before moving on to the next cut.

When she finished and walked off, Charlie found himself staring at loop after loop of exposed intestine. The smell made him gag, but he couldn’t turn away or stop his eyes from following the labyrinth of grayish-pink coils.

Huffing with exertion, Vera returned and dropped something heavy on the table. He yelled in pain as his guts jiggled in response. She wedged something cold under his back that pressed against his side just below the ribcage. Charlie turned his head and found himself looking at a mixer she’d begged him to let her buy last year. A sort of angular hook protruded from the head, which had been tilted back just far enough that it barely missed his intestines.

Vera popped back into view, beaming at him. “You’ve been an excellent student, Charlie. I think you’re ready to learn how to use a mixer.” She tapped the hook. “This is called a dough hook. You use it for making bread. You put all the stuff in a bowl, then lower the head and turn it on.”

The dough hook punched through his guts as she dropped the mixer down, and Charlie writhed in pain. She flipped a switch, and the hook whipped into action, spinning in an elliptical pattern, coiling intestine around itself, then tearing it out. Digested food and flesh flung out of the hole in his belly, spattering everywhere, including over Charlie and Vera.

“The mixer has ten speed settings, but I don’t have time to show you how they all work,” she yelled over the humming mixer and her screaming husband. “Your family’s coming tomorrow, and I’ve still got a lot to do. I’m just going to have to show you the high setting.” She turned to go, then paused and spun back.

“Silly me! I nearly forgot. I found your ball. Turns out it was right here in the kitchen.” She dropped his red monogrammed bowling bag on the table between his legs. Humming to herself, patting a few stray hairs back into their bun, Vera disappeared from Charlie’s sight.