Supper

“Don’t you remember?!” 

She took some potatoes out the bag and slowly started cutting them into thin slices. “I told you to be home by five so you can help me make supper!” 

“Sorry mom” I walked in the kitchen and placed the jar of goblin eyes on the table. “I went to get snacks with my friends afterschool and lost track of time.”

“Never mind - at least you’re home now. Go downstairs and get the human from the dungeon so we can cook it.” 

“Ok, I’ll be right back.” I popped one more goblin eye into my mouth before leaving the kitchen. 

The wooden stairs creaked loudly beneath my feet. Dad keeps saying he’ll replace the raggedy steps with new ones but he never does. Hopefully he’ll do it today when he gets home from work. 

Once I got downstairs I flipped on the light switch. The dungeon was mostly dark except for the middle of the floor where the light bulb hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth. 

“GET AWAY FROM ME YOU UGLY BEAST!!”

“Well that wasn’t very nice.” Jeez I know us ogres aren’t the most beautiful creatures in the world but we have feelings too. 

I walked across the room to the human’s cage. His face was still bloody and bruised from when my Dad beat him with a club last night. We don’t usually like to hit our food but the human was trying to escape and we couldn’t just let him run away. 

“HELP!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!! I’M DOWN HERE!!”

“Stop yelling, no one is coming to help you. The only beings who live in this village are ogres and they all eat humans too.” 

It was easy carrying the human upstairs to the kitchen. We’ve had humans in the past who were a little more heavy but this one was very slim and didn’t weigh as much as the other ones. Me and Dad tried to find a plumper human when we went hunting yesterday but it was getting late and this was the only one that we could find in town. The rest of them fled weeks ago to avoid getting eaten by any more ogres. Silly humans, when will they learn that no matter how hard they run we will always find them? There are no lengths an ogre wouldn’t go through in order to find food.

The human wiggled in my arms and tried to hit me but his hands and feet were tied. I chuckled, he couldn’t possibly think that those skinny arms of his would be strong enough to harm me. 

I tramped into the kitchen and placed him on the wooden table. Mom glared at me “What are you doing?! Get it off of the table he’s dirty!”  She took two whiffs of the human, who was now trying to break the ropes around his hands, and then her face turned sour. “Ugh and he smells.”

“Of course he does, they all do.” 

Humans have an infamous reputation in the ogre world for having bad hygiene. They use dry tissue to wipe after pooping which basically just spreads the poop around instead of cleaning it off. They have all types of illnesses and diseases AND some of them only shower once a day! Good thing they’re delicious or else we wouldn’t eat them. 

“Whatever, just get the cleaver out of the drawer and start chopping him up. I’ll start boiling the vegetables.”

The human immediately started to panic. He tried to release his hands from the ropes and when that didn’t work he wiggled and struggled so hard that he accidentally fell off of the table.

“HELP!! SOMEBODY HELP!! ANYBODY PLEASE!!”

Mom looked down at him with annoyance. She then walked out of the kitchen and came back with my Dad’s club. “Here take this club and beat him until he’s unconscious. I can’t focus on cooking if he’s going to be yelling and screaming like that.”

“IF YOU COME ANY CLOSER WITH THAT CLUB I’LL KILL YOU, YOU UGLY PIECE OF–- ”

I pounded his head with the club multiple times before placing him back on the table. After he was unconscious I got the cleaver out of the drawer and began chopping.

Human meat is hard to cut through because they have a lot of bones. You need a really big cleaver in order to properly chop through them. I chopped off the limbs, cut the meat off the bones, and then I took the organs out and put them in the freezer for tomorrow’s dinner. Mom took the chunks of meat I cut and put them into the boiling pot with the vegetables and began adding seasonings. The aroma of the stew filled the kitchen and my mouth watered at the thought of eating it.

I heard the front door open. It was my Dad coming home from work. He trudged into the kitchen and plopped down into the chair. “Hey everyone, what’s for dinner?” 

My mom stopped stirring the pot and faced my Dad. She put her hands on her hips and said “Stew. When are you going to fix those creaky stairs in the dungeon?” Dad let out a long sigh and rubbed his eyes, exhaustion was written all over his face “Stop nagging me I’ll get to it when I can.”

I was practically drooling when mom placed the steaming hot bowls of stew in front of us. She sat down and we all joined hands, Dad said grace and then we began eating. Me and Dad devoured the stew within one minute. Mom had to get up and refill our bowls. Dad talked about the long day he had at work and I raved about how many animal skulls I smashed in the bone crusher tournament at school today. 

I slurped up the last of my food and licked my lips. Mom has made stew in the past but it was never this delicious so I asked her “Mom this stew is so tasty what did you put in it?”

She looked at me and smiled, “Thanks, I used a little bit more garlic this time.”