Who’s Eating Rich? (An experiment in writing cannibalism.)

We start in an air-conditioned bathroom, with a cleaned body hung above the tub.

Bleeding out, dark black to ruddy brown.

This man was killed a little while before, but that doesn’t matter right now. She was hungry, and he was not to be eaten by her.

It was onerous work, but someone had to do it.

‘What brings you low will make you divine.’ This is what Damasis was told. When she was young, and worlds away, it was all that they could believe to stay in place. Ever tame.

When the world was old, and she was new.

And these things were much simpler then there steps. There were many reasons to kill a man, but those didn’t matter either.

Because, to spite the small space of the apartment in which he died, no one knows that it happened. Accept maybe his butcher.

She was his butcher.

One could confer with the thoughts of this woman, the body present as a victim to her blade.

Did she know him?

Or was he simply seduced?

Damasis wasn’t one to say how far she went, but he was still hers to do away with. Skillfully also. At least she was thought to be.

Not by any such corrective agencies, but amongst her own she was a proud specimen. A good worker. Willing and pliant.

Being a minimalist, she collected what worthy vessels he possessed, bowls, pots, pitchers, and any number of other things she could find in his kitchen. As was necessary to do, collecting the blood was much needed, and so it was, and into a pot on his burner.

Damasis poured the blood into his largest pot, slowly boiling it, stirring regularly until it was even more of a congealed mess, level in the pot. Until she parted the sludge into plastic containers, those she’d brought herself, which she put away in the fridge after it’d cooled on the counter.

This amongst other things meant emptying the fridge, as while the man had once been one of certain means it didn’t make him an over clean sort. It was nothing for her to do.

A dead man’s dishes, how domestic. Still, it was nice of him to buy her dinner, even if he could never have meant to.

All so she could mark out what could be of use. So she wouldn’t waste her product.

To fill the time she’d given herself with an over-cold bathroom. Wearing a dead man’s clothes just for the convenience of it.

She neglects what had already rotted out, for only the same reasons.

Blood dries as the body cools, but the flesh is ultimately as drained as was ordered. Though as such, the parting of his torso, and the release of the abdominal cavity was if anything very simple. She was careful, but it was nothing like the fine work of even the most botched of surgeries.

The bladder and bowels collected quickly and thankfully unruptured, carved out like everything else would be, into a bucket that had once been used for his blood.

Soon, she cuts into the connective tissues of his more well protected organs, the ones safely ensconced in his ribcage, the harder organs, his liver, kidneys, and there is nothing left of his insides uncollected, the organ meats can be kept frozen, Damasis knew that there was a certain preference to warmer drier preservations of such organs, but she knew also that this was more convenient in a less enclosed and over-populated area.

She wasn’t about to do more than was necessary, she may have been pliant, but she wouldn’t do more than she was asked.

Either way his clothes were made a mess on her, and her hands were made dirty.

With this she turns on the shower, cleaning both her hands and the inside of the body with bright cold water, which was at least a little uncomfortable in the bathroom as insolated and cold as it was.

With things now in order, she went back out to the kitchen to find what was sharp of the things he owned. Most weren’t, but it was good to warm up after all that. To be something other than cold with the body.

So instead she took her own tools and went back to deconstruct the body farther. Simple still, the memory of it.

Damasis had done this for most of her life, and she couldn’t really be picky about her.

About her bodies.

Off with the arms and legs, the flesh of the shoulder and rear, deboned and minimized as was needed for the still too small space of his fridge.

She touched the hands, a spare thought to this body that will feed them, before kissing his knuckles, they were some of the few parts of his body that beheld no chance of simple use. Likely to be processed much farther than she could achieve in his home.

She takes up his pieces simply and wraps them away into his freezer.

Soon she is done preparing her body, cleaning him, the bulk of his bones are cleaned of flesh, & she stops for a time.

She waits for someone, as she cleans everything up, his bathroom, his floors, his kitchen to a degree. Most of what had been used, though some of it was as unsalvageable as his clothing.

She washes herself also, the bath again quickly with a shock of bleach.

And soon she is dressed to presentation, ready for the courier, who separate from her would transport the product, with ample time for her own disappearance.

…

Covered head to toe in her least conspicuous clothes, Damasis went about actually getting paid. She was using an assumed identity with an associated pin; it was more or less unrelated to her work. At least directly.

It was like any other institution; it was simply harder than most to track.

Given her contribution as of this last job she wasn’t expecting much. Enough to leave town, nothing more. But as she looked at the ATM screen, at her balance, she was quietly confused.

It was more than necessary. Much more than necessary.

And here she’d thought he’d snubbed her. Maybe the Courier did his due diligence, but she couldn’t be too grateful.

She could never be too sure after all.

Still, she removed her money with little fanfare, folded it up in her wallet, only to leave right after.

With the body gone there was little concern, and protected by the network for her service, she was under little risk.

But there was still the price of doing business, and she could never be too sure. ‘She wondered, was she to be pulled lower for this acknowledgement?’

Damasis supposed that it didn’t matter. The how, the why. It was her work after all. And she would be good at what she was for.