Cannibals are us

They liked pretty things, him and her. That is why she worked in a slaughter house and he in a morgue. She preferred animals, you see. At the end of a hard week, the two would meet up, ecstatic about owning the night to follow. They would shake hands, winking at each other, partners in crime.

‘Ready, Ash?’ he would ask, knowing the answer before she even began to say it. It was always the same, every week.
‘Darn right I am! It’s been too long,’ she would reply, giving him her hand to hold on to.
‘So it has,’ he would agree, taking her little clawed hand into his. The nails would dig into his palm’ let me show you’

And she would step where his feet had been a nanosecond before, breathing in his neck in the stinking alleyways. Their senses; his better than hers, for her had realised his talent and joy on his tenth birthday; would lead them to the most delicious scents. They liked to stand outside the containers of the odours, before entering. There was something for them in just standing there, inhaling. And when it got too much, she would run into the scents, and now he would be banging into her back in want, which he found too close to agony for his liking.

She liked the eyes, because they were perfectly round, she said. And his pet love was the spine, once he managed to break it away from all of the ribs, muscles and tendons, that it. He liked everything that there was to like about a fresh spine of a young female – how it clicked up and down, its colour, slightly red with perfect white of bone showing through, and its taste, tangy and raw.

However, both him and her, hated teeth. The whores that they bought with their weekly pay had horrid teeth in their majority. Yellow and black, they were, wobbly and often a few were missing and broken. Bits of food often showed and they found it all a personal insult. Ash and Rob, with their well-trained fangs and strong canines, which they cleaned at least five times a day to keep them clean and white as queen lilies mixed with a bridesmaid’s dress, simply couldn’t understand how one could let their teeth fall to such a condition.

So they kicked them out, or Ash did, in any case. She took pride in her high kicks but he preferred punching. He experienced satisfaction surge through him, as his steel fist came into contact with the cheek. But he liked it even more, if the cheek bruised and he liked watching the facial expression of a victim, which they didn’t consider to be that.  

She liked it far more if, as the female, upon being hit straight in the mouth with a steel cap of a boot, opened her mouth in complete and utter shock. Then Ash could see the crumbling bits of her teeth and the blood pouring over them. The red made the teeth what teeth ought to be, in their opinion, white and clean. She often ripped the mouth apart and then held it open for ages, feeling contentment only when blood began to drip out onto the moth-eaten carpet, since the girl’s mouth was too full of it.

And both of them liked it, when they died. She giggled like a schoolgirl, that she had never been, covering her desirable mouth with her hands. He just smirked his best, as the girl, lead to prostitution by the government chocked on her own blood on the floor. She lay face down, until she fell silent and stiff.

As fun as they found it, all fun has to end sometime. They ended theirs between four and five after midnight, when the night decides that it must become the day. They escaped through the spat-on window, leaving the pimps under the impression that the whore under question had done a good job that night.

They would walk, hiding their traces. She would deflate, just like a popped balloon, she got worn out. She would hold on to him and repeat murmured variations of ‘I’m sorry Steve… I didn’t mean to do it’. At times like this he fancied that she resembled a broken tape player.

He knew that Steve had been her first boyfriend and simultaneously her first human. He didn’t know the exact details of what had happened and knew better than to ask. There were rumours that she had done it in self-defence, on pure instinct. But he was aware of the fact that rumours lie and supported her with his soft hand.  He tucked her in bed, and promised that everything would be better, if she just went to sleep now. He himself napped on the floor, for about an hour, and then left.

He had early morning errands to attend to and so he concentrated on them, and didn’t think back to his Friday night adventures until the next Friday came. It was easier to go ahead with life that way.

******

That Thursday morning did not come in focus smoothly, not for him. The first thing he felt was the brackish taste of decaying blood in his otherwise clean mouth, and then, as the rest  of his senses came to life, Rob could unmistakably recognise the odours that a vagina gives out during the menstrual cycle. Next, he felt something cold and wet by his cheek.

He opened his languid eyes carefully, as his breath fell stale in his minute room. They operated well enough. Then he tried moving his fingers, and as he found them in fine condition, he finally dared to move wholly, sitting up on the old mattress, that acted as his bed until he would get enough money to afford a proper bed, like the ones they had at home, when he was a little boy. For now, he pretended to feel the softness of duck feather pillows as he fell asleep in the late evenings.

He stood up briskly, pulling his black t-shirt over his head, and throwing it behind him, as he made his way to the bathroom. It fell on the floor with a flapping sound. He didn’t bother closing the door of the bathroom with green and blue, he knew full well that he was alone in his flat. Thankfully.

He observed himself in the mirror, with a pained expression mixed with that of mild disgust. There was reason to that, too. He sported a large black eye, the colour of which reminded him of blots of ink on paper. His cheek was also heavily bruised, and had been bleeding previously. He figured that that would be why he felt blood on the inside of his mouth, when he swallowed.

He opened his mouth in a wide grimace of ache. His teeth were intact but very sore, as was all of his left cheek. He turned out his cheek for a better look at the damage caused by an unruly fist, flinching like mad. Simply speaking, it killed. The soft reddish skin on the inside of his cheek had healed over night, leaving a surface of prickly brown.

Robert left the side of his mouth alone, and switched on the cold water tap with some effort. It was a forever stuck tap. He didn’t know the reason that heaven and hell gave for this malfunction, and it didn’t help, especially as his hand felt uncomfortably rigid because he’d slept on it.