by Metehan
We were speeding along the open countryside. The trees were flashing by. It was a glorious autumn day and everything seemed gilded in the sunlight. Ana was driving and I was sitting daydreaming, as the wind swept me by. The car turned off the main road and she was telling me about her dad's farm and how beautiful it was, the wide open fields, the little stream that flowed behind it... I wasn't listening to her, not really. All I could do was look at the ethereal glow she emanated and just bathe in its light...
I turned on my side. I was on my back. There was a vague throbbing of an ache somewhere in my body. What was the time? I groped around for my phone and accidentally knocked it to the ground. Picking it up, I saw that it was eleven in the morning. Something in me said that I should have woken up much, much earlier. My body on the other hand insisted that it was tired and that it wanted more sleep. I fell down on my back and started to stare at the ceiling. I felt so weary... Why was I so exhausted?
As I lay wondering, I sensed a very familiar aroma. It crept into me and for a moment I was completely entranced. It was like the scent of night flowers and the bed was redolent with it. And in a flash, it all came back to me... It was her perfume! No wonder I felt so drained! We had spent the whole night together, neither of us had wanted to stop or sleep... My dear, sweet Ana! The thought of her consumed me...
But it was already late in the day and there was a lot of work to be done for the evening's banquet. I got out of bed and pulled on the first clothes I could get out of the pile in the cupboard. Stepping out of the room I could hear loud voices and guffaws from the corridor that led to the basement. The rest of the house, with its lights turned off and gratifying silence, seemed a welcome companion to my bittersweet emotions.
I crept past the dark shadows along the corridor and opened the door that led to the basement. There was Ana.
Her face just as spell binding as it had been in my gilded dream. Her sabre-like nose flanked by those almond shaped eyes. Her tender lips that tasted of ambrosia. The high cheekbones and discreet chin framed by her endearingly untidy hair. Oh how I adored her. There she was,on the floor, lying on her right cheek, her hair bordering a pool of blood. The rest of her was on a table where I could hear the noise of the butcher's blade meeting the wood of the the table.
I went ahead and picked her up. Cradling her head, I gazed into her eyes, now so distant and vacant. I carried it with me to the table where her body was laid out, spreadeagled. Carl, the butcher was fairly skilled in his craft and he had neatly made a cut in her carcass from the neck to the hipbone. The viscera had all been cleanly removed and the blood and grime washed off. His assistant, a boy in his late teens, had taken off her left arm and was busy reducing it into equal sized circlets.
This was all very strange for me. I wondered if I was still dreaming. There was something quite not right about this, quite not real. I couldn't believe that this was my Ana. Rather, I did not want to believe it. But there was no mistaking her. There was the beauty mark below her fulsome left breast. And I could not forget the way her gently expanded to cradle her hips, the way her skin below the navel gently sloped down towards her cunt, the way those velvet folds melted into one another...
I was broken out of my reverie by the sound of hushed snickering. I turned to see that Carl, out of some misguided attempt to unburden the gravity of the moment, had picked up Ana's lungs and was blowing into them, pretending he was playing a bandpipe. A blistering bile of anger surged through me and it was a miracle that I did not choke the man to death on the spot. My rage robbed me of my words and I merely shot him a look that conveyed everything. He promptly put the organs down and put on a sombre expression. I stood there glaring at him for a moment. He did not have the nerve to look up at me. I walked away.
In the corner of the room a young woman, ample hips with perky dark brown nipples was tied to a pipe. She stared unblinkingly at the butcher and his bloodied blade. Likely the poor thing was in shock. On a chair next to her were a pile of clothes. They were Ana's. I did not have to look at them to tell, they were redolent of her perfume and transformed the smell of blood in the room to something fragile-ly beautiful. I picked up her shirt as one holds a plucked flower, to intoxicate myself on the fragrance while it lasted. The shirt was still warm. It was in that moment that I began to miss her. But it was only a vague inkling of a feeling. It would come with full force once this whole damned business of the banquet was done and over with. I had told her last night, amidst our many kisses, to wait for me. I had been tempted to tell her that I had changed my mind. That I was going to phone my boss and tell him where to shove his offer of promotion. Perhaps she could sense that I did... Still, she should have waited for me, I mused, I would have liked to say goodbye to her again.
Full-throated screams broke into my world. The butcher's assistant was trying to drag the woman towards the butcher's table. He had curled her hair around his fist and was pushing with all his might, but the poor thing was almost too strong for him. I sighed and walked over to them. Knocking the boy roughly away, I put my hands around the young woman's shoulders as gently as I could. We stood like this for a few moments. She had seemed to calm down soon enough. It was not like anyone was forcing her to do this. She and her family had chosen this, when we had offered them the money in exchange. Perhaps, the actual violence of the act had unnerved her.
I called her by her name, "Sarah ? Sarah, are you alright ?"
She looked up at me and said nothing. Finally, she nodded as if her head was moving against her will.
"Are you scared ?" I asked.
She looked me in the eyes, but there was no will in them. I could see her desperately trying to marshal her dignity. She had sold her body to us after all, not her spirit. "I.... No. No..... "
I gazed at her, letting a pregnant silence hang between us.
"I.. I don't want to die. I thought I was prepared. I'm not. Oh god. I don't... It'll hurt so much..", she whimpered.
I let her lean into me as I cooed, "Don't worry dear. It'll be nothing. See ? Ana did it. She didn't want to die either. I didn't want her to. But life forces these cards into our hands and we just have to be brave with them. It'll be over before you know it. Just one quick cut and it'll be like falling asleep. Isn't that right Carl ?"
"Oh yea! Just one swoop. No pain, nothing." Carl nodded emphatically in agreement.
I clasped Sarah's hands and put the other arm gently around her shoulder. "Come now, dear. The cook is waiting for the meat. The quicker we get this over with, the better it'll be for everyone." I said in the most reassuring voice I could muster. Thankfully, she started to walk with me over to the butcher's work station. He had brought a small log of wood with him and it was stationed near the drain in the floor. I helped Sarah get down on her knees and kneal over the log as Carl fetched his axe. I took Sarah's hands and pulled them firmly behind her back with one hand and held her still with the other. "That's it. We're almost done. Almost over" I told her, as she lay down her neck on the block.
Carl raised his axe. Sarah shivered. I brushed her hair off her neck. The axe caming crashing down. Her head rolled off to one side and her body fell convulsing to the other.
My clothes and my hands were covered in splatters of blood. I cleaned the latter on Carl's apron. Meanwhile, Sarah had almost hemorrhage out and the butcher's assistant was carrying the decapitated body as one would a bride over the threshhold. He dumped her body on the table with a loud fleshy thump.
I shook my head and remarked to Carl, "You've got your work cut out with that boy." He gave me a resigned grin as an answer. I sighed before continuing, "Well, my clothes are soiled. You cut this one up into standard cuts. Oh and mince her organs and carve out her tongue and cheeks. Cut her breasts into strips and her rump into slices. Make sure the cook gets all of the meat in a couple of hours, alright?"
He nodded and plopped off to the butchering table.
I stepped up the corridor, intending to go straight to my room and just lock myself in for a couple of hours. But the light in the kitchen was on. A lively, golden light in the darkened corridor and from thence arose the enchanting aroma of cooking. It compelled me to follow it.
On a marble countertop inside the kitchen, was Ana. Her legs had been raised above her torso and tied up. Her abdomen had been sewn shut. The old woman, our cook, looked up and gave me a cursory nod as she kneaded in a syrup-like liquid into Ana's breasts. The fleshy mounds danced as the golden brown liquid glided off them. I walked up to the counter and picked up a strawberry. I dipped it into Ana's cunt and brought it close to my lips. I kissed it before I nibhemorrhage it down. I couldn't tell if it tasted sweeter.
Only a flourescent lamp lay lit on one of the sidetables of our bed. I sat cross legged with a plate in front of me and a photo album to the side. The banquet had come and passed. As they entered a few of my colleagues told me that they were surprised that I had been brave enough to rise to the challenge. The bastards. There had been the usual inane conversations and questions and I had tried to avoid them as skillfully as he could. I had watched as Mr. Wallenstein's eyes lit up when I presented him with dark nipples that he was so partial to. There was a palatable tension in the air when the main course had been rolled in. But Ana had been a wild success, a fact that I had never doubted. I was the first to carve her, holding her breast with a fork and slowly slicing it off. The meat had cut like butter, as the juice poured out of the cut and pooled on the plate. An ambrosia-like aroma had spread through the room and enshrouded the whole thing in the same hue of golden that had tinted my dream. At that moment, all I had wanted to do, was to kiss her. By the end, everyone had gotten a little drunk. Mr. Wallenstein publicly promised that after my remarkable contribution the coveted promotion was as good as mine. Livia told me how she had had an eye on Ana ever since she had seen her and it was a shame that I hadn't just sold her to her when she had asked. Despite being intoxicted on alcohol and Ana's meat, I noted with satisfaction that my new position in the company would give me complete authority over Livia.
So here it was. A week after I had first suggested the whole proposition to Ana, I had gotten everything I had wanted. Life was full of hard choices and I had made my decisions on what my prirorities were. On the plate in front of me, cradled in a bath of meat juice was Ana's cunt. I decided to forego the formalities of fork and spoon and scooped it up and took a bite of the tender, velvet flesh. Had it all been worth it ?