Holly

July 5, 2021

“I believe you’ll be able to assist me tonight,” Roddy says as he enters the bedroom.

Emily bares her teeth in a pained smile. The hamburger he’s brought her—rare, as she likes it—is still on the night table. She has managed only a single bite. “I don’t think I’ll even be able to get out of bed tonight, let alone assist you. You’ll have to do it yourself. This pain… beyond belief.”

He’s holding a tray with a napkin on it. Now he lifts it, showing her a goblet filled with white, lardlike stuff streaked with red filaments. Beside it is a spoon. “I’ve been saving it.”

This isn’t true. The fact is he forgot all about it. He found it in the freezer while he was rooting around for one of those Stouffer’s entrees he likes for lunch. He heated the suet pudding in the oven, very gently. Microwaving kills most nutrients, it’s a known fact. No wonder so many Americans are so unhealthy; that kind of cooking should be banned by law.

Emily’s sunken eyes brighten with greed. She stretches out a hand. “Give it to me! You should have given it to me yesterday, you cruel man!”

“I didn’t need you yesterday. Tonight I do. Half inside and half outside, Em. You know the drill. Half and half.”

He gives her the goblet and the spoon. Peter Steinman wasn’t a particularly fatty child, but what he did give up when rendered was edible gold. His wife begins to eat quickly—gobbling from the goblet, Roddy thinks. A drool of fat containing a few hairlike strands of tendon rolls down her chin. Roddy scoops it up deftly and tucks it back into her mouth. She sucks his finger, a thing that once upon a time would have turned the noodle in his pants into a railspike, but no more, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. Viagra and the other erectile dysfunction drugs aren’t just bad for the brain; they speed up the clock of the chromosomes. You lose six months of life for every Viagra-assisted act of intercourse. It’s a proven fact, although the drug companies of course suppress it.

He snatches the goblet back from her before she can eat all of it. He almost drops it—what a tragedy that would be—but saves it before it can roll off the bed and shatter on the floor. “Turn over. I’ll raise your nightgown.”

“I can do it.” She does, revealing her wrinkled thighs and scrawny buttocks. He begins smoothing the remains of the fat and tendon on her left cheek and down her inner thigh, where that pesky nerve is sending out its high voltage. She gives a little moan.

“Better?”

“I think… yes, better. Oh God, it is.”

He gets every last bit from the goblet and continues to spread and knead. Soon the shine of the fat is almost gone as it sinks in, soothing that nasty red nerve and putting it back to sleep.

No, not to sleep, he thinks, only a doze. Real relief will begin later, with the girl’s liver. And then nourishing soups, stews, filets, and cutlets.

There are little white crescents of fat under his nails. He licks and gnaws them clean, then pulls her nightgown back down. “Now rest. Sleep, if you can. Get ready for tonight.”

He kisses the sweaty hollow of her temple.

Shortly before eleven that night, Bonnie Dahl wakes to find herself lying naked on a table in a small, brightly lit room. Her wrists and ankles are clamped. Rodney and Emily Harris are watching her. Both are wearing elbow-length gloves and long rubber aprons.

“Peekaboo,” Roddy says, “I see you.”

Bonnie’s head is still muzzy. She could almost believe this is a dream, the worst nightmare ever, but knows it isn’t. She raises her head. It feels as heavy as a concrete block, but she manages. She sees they have drawn on her in Sharpie. It’s like a kind of weird map.

“Are you going to rape me after all?” Her mouth is dry. The words are husky.

“No, dear,” Emily says. Her hair hangs in clumps around a face so pale and hollow-cheeked that it’s little more than a skull. Her eyes glitter. Her mouth is a crimped line of pain. “We’re going to eat you.”

Bonnie begins to scream.