Ante Mortem (24 page)

“
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.

* * * *

Contributor Biographies

Aaron Polson
currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit. To pay the bills, Aaron attempts to teach high school students the difference between irony and coincidence while cultivating a healthy relationship with the works of William Shakespeare. His stories appear in
Necrotic Tissue
,
Albedo One
,
Space and Time
, and other venues, and have featured magic
goldfish, monstrous beetles, and a book of lullabies for baby vampires. You can visit Aaron on the web at
aaronpolson.blogspot.com.

Natalie L. Sin
is a horror writer living in the Midwest. Her stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications. When not writing Sin enjoys B-horror movies, abusing Youtube, and large amounts of coffee.

Gina Ranalli
is a
New Englander by birth, and currently resides in the emerald green heart of
 
Washington
 
State, where she enjoys consuming copious amounts of caffeine, playing with her animals and generally acting like a hyper seven-year-old.

David Dunwoody
is the author of
Empire
as well as the collections
Unbound & Other Tales
and
Dark Entities
. His zombie tale
Nevermore
appears alongside Kim Paffenroth’s
Orpheus and the Pearl
in Belfire’s first “Duel” Novella. Dave currently lives in Utah and can be visited on the Web at daviddunwoody.com.

Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s
fiction has appeared in Doorways Magazine, Dark Recesses, FearZone, and others. His dark fantasy novel Black & Orange was released on Halloween 2010 and has gotten an excellent reception. Ben lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter, both adorable and both worthy of better. When he isn’t writing, reading, video-gaming, he’s defending California’s waterways and sewers from industrial waste... and Nightlids.

K.V. Taylor
hails from the foothills of West Virginia, but currently lives in the DC Metro area with her husband and mutant cat. Her short fiction can be found at kvtaylor.com, and her first novel,
Scripped
, is forthcoming from Belfire Press in June 2011. She edits for Morrigan Books and collects
The Red Penny Papers
in her dining room.

Myrrym Davies
is an up-and-coming horror author from northwest Georgia, and serves as the senior editor for Graveside Tales Publishing. Her short fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including
Necrotic Tissue, Best New Zombie Tales vol. 2
from Books of the Dead Press,
Horrorology
from Library of Horror, and
Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror, 2010
from Sonar 4. For more information, please visit her website: www.myrrymdavies.com.

David Chrisom
never missed Creature Features as a child–even when the Mushroom People or the Giant Leeches attacked. Collecting ghost stories and living in a haunted castle one day are his greatest passions. He is thrilled to be a part of this anthology. He has also written stories about vampires, fetches, banshees and zombies. The first of these, titled
So Fair and Foul a Day
was published in the 2009 anthology
Northern Haunts
. He blames the Bigfoot episodes of
The Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman
for his fear today of the legendary beast.

John Grover
is a dark fiction author residing in Massachusetts. He completed a creative writing course at Boston’s Fisher College and is a member of the New England Horror Writers, a chapter of the Horror Writers Association. He is the author of several collections, including the recently released
Feminine Wiles, Sixteen Tales of Wicked Women
as well as various chapbooks, anthologies, and more. Please visit his website www.shadowtales.com for more information.

Kelly M. Hudson
was born in Kentucky and currently resides in California. He loves horror and has over two dozen stories published in various anthologies, as well as a novel called The Turning published by Living Dead Press. If you wish to know more about Kelly, please visit his website www.kellymhudson.com for links to other stories and news.

Jeff Parish
is a 30-something native Texan. He and his wife have a girl and two boys. He started writing in middle school, where he concentrated mostly on (bad) fantasy tales and (even worse) poetry. His writing skills developed over time, much to his delight and the relief of everyone he forced to read his work, and he gravitated to prose over poetry.

Jodi Lee
is an editor and occasional writer living in her own creation, New Bedlam. She’s often found slicing and dicing prose in her editorial work, or mucking about with book covers, graphics and websites in her design freelancing. She’s currently editor in chief/publisher of Belfire Press, and an associate editor with Necrotic Tissue.