Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (latest ebook reader .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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Jake opened his eyes in the sudden blinding light and worked his mouth behind the duct tape, squinting like a woman readying herself for a beating. As his mother had. As perhaps Hannah had. But there would be nothing so trite as punching happening here tonight.
With latex-covered fingers, he reached for the small instruments he’d lined up on the floor. Scissors, chest clamps, nails, scalpel. Scalpel. No, stopwatch. How could he forget? He reached for it and pushed start, betting on fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds with a forty-five second margin of error before Jake stopped screaming. Only once had he miscalculated, but that had been enough.
He grabbed the scalpel and held it up. Jake’s eyes bulged. Behind the tape, his captive leaked a whining screech, the squall of a bird seized by feline jaws.
He moved the scalpel to Jake’s clavicle and slowly, slowly, sliced rib cage to sternum. A bright red line appeared and swelled to a garish stream that gushed down Jake’s sides and formed slick puddles on the plastic tarp. Grunting and huffing, now fully alert to the precariousness of his situation, Jake strained against the cuffs—arms, then legs, then both in a helpless dance.
He peered into Jake’s eyes. The expression was familiar, and he stopped mid-cut, the scalpel buried in hair below Jake’s belly button. They all made that same face at the end. Fear? Anger? Maybe the look of recognition when someone realizes they are about to die. Desperation, perhaps.
Desperation would not save him, though. Nothing would.
He returned to his task, cutting the thin skin of the abdomen and cleaving slowly through flesh and fat and down to the muscle. The struggling man shivered as the muscles split under the blade. He set the scalpel aside. Jake’s muffled howling disintegrated into thin yelps and squeals.
It won’t be long now.
He peeled the layers of skin back and secured them in place with hardware nails, then pressed his fingers into the cave of Jake’s belly, prying the ruptured muscle back to expose the cache of organs beneath. He wrapped his fingers in a coil of intestine and pulled.
Jake panted through his nostrils. His eyes rolled back in his head, his breath erratic and fast.
No more screaming. Satisfied, he dropped the spiral of intestine and pushed the stop button on the watch, leaving a bloody fingerprint on its face. Thirteen minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Still within the margin. He smiled and picked up the scalpel.
Drawing his attention back to the tangle of organs that had once been a man, he picked up a length of intestine and sliced it open, watching the yellowed, pus-like contents drip into the open abdominal cavity. The scalpel slid smooth as silk—not the slightest hesitation in the tissue as if it wanted nothing more than to give up its treasures.
But no insect.
This time he had waited several hours after forcing the roach down his victim’s gullet, so perhaps it had already made it through the small intestine. He should at least be able to spot the legs and shell; roach exoskeletons were admirable in their ability to remain at least partially intact through the duration of the digestive process. He remembered that well enough from his childhood, along with the way they smelled: that oily, musky odor that set his mouth watering even now.
It was an amazing thing, how a human being could survive and function on so little nourishment. How a handful of cockroaches every day and the occasional loaf of bread could sustain a child for years at a time.
Simply incredible.
He ran a finger over the soft, slippery tube of intestine as if it were Hannah’s cheek, envisioning her face when she heard the news: her eyes getting hazy, then overflowing, her arms reaching for him.
She might cry out of genuine sadness.
He dismissed that possibility, giving it twelve-to-one odds in favor of tears of relief—if she cried at all.
Jake was a waste of a human. It made no logical sense for anyone to miss him.
Dawn’s light shone sickly and dim against the windowpane. I dressed and applied makeup over the deep purple bruise that stained my temple. Then I went through the house and filled a box with Jake’s things—so he would have no reason to go through the rest of the place—and left the box in front of the door where he’d trip right over it. If he came back at all.
I can’t turn into one of those women.
News flash: you already have.
Decisive actions, but everything was foggy, confusing. I blinked back tears all the way to work. At the office, my fingers sat leaden on the keyboard until I forced movement, and even then, it was slow. Each file I entered brought me another minute closer to the end of the day and an empty apartment.
“Hey, girl!” Noelle was smiling when she poked her head into my cubicle, but her eyes widened when she saw me. “What the hell happened to you?”
I looked away, the explanation catching in my throat, blocked by shame. A tear escaped from under one lid. I swiped at it with my sleeve.
Then Noelle was there beside me, her hand on my shoulder.
“It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “Come with me.”
I stood unsteadily and followed her from the room.
We sat at the picnic table near the lake. The sun had been swallowed by deep clouds. Frosty air blew off the ice that was creeping along the edges of the water. I shivered. “He’s…cheating on me. I found a note.”
“That’s why he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“But this wasn’t the first time?”
“No,” I whispered.
“When did it start?”
“He never did it until after I moved in with him.” He used to be so supportive, so kind. What had happened to that guy?
“Why didn’t you just leave the first time it happened?”
“I don’t know. I should have. I know I should have.”
“Oh, no, it’s not your fault, Hannah.”
But it was. “I just kept pushing, and I knew better. I tried not to say anything about the note, but he knew something was wrong and I just—”
“Jesus, Hannah, would you fucking listen to yourself?”
What’s wrong with you, Hannah?
You’re an idiot, Hannah.
Angry bees swarmed my stomach and stung my heart. I hung my head.
“Aw hell, Hannah, I’m not trying to get on you. You just shouldn’t blame yourself. You need to leave him.”
“I think he’s gone for good. He said he’s done with…me.” My tears were hot in the icy breeze. He’d never said anything so terrible, even during our worst fights. But there hadn’t been another woman before either.
That I know of.
Oh god, that’s probably where he stayed last night.
“I put his stuff by the door so he could grab it and take it over to her place,” I said. My rib cage felt constricted. I pulled frigid air through my nose. “I don’t want to be there when he comes back.”
Noelle walked around the table and wrapped me in a bear hug. It felt good, safe, even though bears were more known for their mauling than their hugging.
“Hannah, I am so sorry.” Noelle had tears in her eyes. “You don’t need that worthless asshole.”
If he’s worthless, what does that make me if I can’t even hang on to him? Noelle’s sympathy made it clear that she was oblivious to this point, which only made me feel worse.
She held my hand. “Come out with me tonight. I was going to meet Thomas and Jim downtown at The Mill at six. There’s an art show down the road. Jim was going to bring someone, but she canceled.”
My mouth dropped open, and I tasted lake air on my dry tongue, metal, and mud. “I…I can’t just go out—”
“What are you going to do? Sit at home alone and wait for him to come back all pissed off? Be out of the house. You can even sleep at my place if you want. If he’s really leaving, he should be back to get his things while you’re gone. And if not, the extra day will give him more time to cool off.”
We’d broken up less than twelve hours ago, and all I wanted was to curl up in my bed and cry. But as Noelle watched me, the throbbing of the bruise on my cheek was slowly awakening something else: rage. I could feel it bubbling under the fear and the loneliness. And I didn’t want to be alone in that apartment. I found myself nodding. What kind of a person does that? Maybe I was destined to be a tramp.
Noelle beamed. “I’ll get you some makeup before
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