Masters of Taboo Presents: Cannibalism, Digesting The Human Condition (Limited Edition) Read online

  Over the next few days, Jane was becoming more animalistic. Her breasts had almost disappeared as the rest of her abdomen had inflated, balloon-like, tight and solid. As I worked in the restaurant’s kitchen on orders, I wracked my brain as to what to do next and tried to control my emotions. I’d ruled out medical intervention, I didn’t want to admit to being a wife beater and I have a deep distrust of quacks. I loved her deeply but keeping her as a household pet was not an option either. I’ve never been into animals, not even fish, they involve far too much maintenance and I’ve never really been into looking after dependents.

  There was only really one option open to me and it was a decision I did not make lightly. Before I closed up, I gathered up the equipment I’d need, placing it in my rucksack, and grabbed a bag of food scraps. I felt a sense of exhilaration as I walked across the now empty car park as I was a man on a mission.

  Returning to my garage, the Jane thing stared at me blankly as I unpacked the contents of my rucksack onto the concrete floor, there was no trace of recognition in her eyes. I’d brought a meat cleaver, a set of kitchen knives and my trusty blowtorch. A blowtorch is an absolute must for any serious chef. I have an excellent quality, heavy duty Hotery torch that I’d invested in several years ago and it was a genuine pleasure to use. An old washed-out terry cloth acted as a makeshift tourniquet around Jane’s arm before I proceeded to sever the trotter (I’d stopped thinking of the extremity as a hand a long time ago). My actions were swift and unexpected and I guess she had perceived me as a master not a butcher. She squealed; anger and pain emitting from her mutated vocal chords, as the sharp cleaver cut through the bone and tissue, the body no match for stainless steel. She tried pulling away but I held her arm tightly whilst I worked.

  The improvised tourniquet worked like a dream, there was little blood loss and I sealed the bloody wrist stump with the blowtorch’s blue flame, the wrist soon becoming blackened with the heat. I tried to ignore the rich coppery smell that assaulted my senses and hardly noticed she’d passed out with the pain. Burning flesh has a unique smell. Actually, stench would be a better word. I felt a little nauseas and I remembered the motorway pileup I’d witnessed three years ago; a man being trapped in his burning car, the raging fire enveloping him, his frantic attempts to escape through the side window failing, the glass finally melting from the intense heat and melding with his body. And that smell, that terrible charcoal assault on my nose that had stayed with me for days despite every attempt to scrub it from my body. It had clung to me like a second skin.

  Taking the trotter to the kitchen, carrying it like a priceless artifact, I thoroughly cleaned it in the sink. I resorted to shaving the skin in places with an old Bic razor as I’d noticed a few hairs had started to grow on the surface and couldn’t have this ruining the experience. Once thoroughly cleaned, the trotter-hand looked absolutely fantastic. I lowered Jane’s hand into the Pro-Cook Gourmet pot that was sitting simmering on my cooker on a low heat. I’d already prepared the large pot with a combination of beer, cider vinegar and assorted seasoning. I then sat down to catch up on some mindless television for an hour, returning occasionally to stir the contents and check on the level of beer, making sure it didn’t run dry.

  Once an hour had passed, I removed the hand-thing and placed it on a baking tray in my pre-heated oven, set at a high heat for basting. Once the meat was tender, its surface crisp and inviting, I removed it and prepared to eat. I’ve always been a fan of pigs’ feet but Jane took the experience to a whole new level. Her flesh was both tender and sweet; every bite was a little slice of heaven to my eager taste buds. The fat, often unpalatable, was a thing of wonderment. This was the best finger food I’d ever had, I thought, as I sucked the juice from my fingers. Pork super-double-deluxe!

  As I loaded the dishwasher after the meal, I was already craving my next intimate dinner with Jane. But I had other needs to satisfy first. In good times and bad, in sickness and in health, Jane had vowed to honor me. Over dinner, she’d honored me with the taste of her succulent flesh, now the time had come for her to satisfy my baser needs.

  Hastily throwing my clothes in a heap on the garage floor (for once neglecting my folding ritual), my dick was erect with anticipation, I rolled Jane onto her back. Her taut skin was hot; it was if she had a raging fever. There was no resistance; she was either resigned to what was going to happen next or past caring. I’d like to think she was welcoming my manhood as I entered her sweating plump body, that on some primal level, she was ready and willing to satisfy my every desire. It didn’t take long, her heat and moistness embraced me, teasing my shaft with invisible fingers of fire. The anticipation, the feeling of doing something illicit, I was on a sexual high as I pumped into her firm body. Her animalistic grunts goaded me on, taking me to a new height of ecstasy before my shuddering release.

  As I lay on the floor next to her, I knew that I couldn’t rush this opportunity I’d been given. I had to make it last as long as possible.

  I ate Jane slowly, a bit at a time, savoring this sensuous experience. Her second hand provided me with a delightful Crubeens dinner. I’d prepared her with onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns and parsley, going easy on the salt so as not to overdo it. The result was extraordinary and I was taken aback this simple Irish recipe. It was heartwarming fare and a meal to remember forever. After the food, we fucked again, the experience as sweet as before, the climax as intense as any I’d had since we’d married.

  Her right foot was used for Zimne Nogi, otherwise known as cold legs, a Polish meal that I’d read about but never indulged in until now. In the dim and distant past, this jellied pigs’ feet dish was eaten by peasants with ideas above their station. By eating this hearty dinner, they were aspiring to the grand dishes and lifestyles enjoyed by the aristocratic ranks. After I scraped my plate clean, all I can say is that the peasants were very fortunate to be able to enjoy such tastes. It was a dish fit for kings.

  I felt more than a little sad as I hacked through Jane’s left ankle, severing the foot with two swift chops from the cleaver, meeting little resistance from the bone and ligaments within. As I cauterized the stump, I wrinkled my nose at that acrid smell of burning skin and wiped my brow with a bloodstained hand. For future meals, I’d have to work upwards and there would be greater risk of trauma and death through blood loss and shock. This last foot became the main ingredient in a meal that was a twist on the Italian dish of Zambon. This boned out trotter meal took a while to prepare but was my favorite so far, the breadcrumbs contrasting wonderfully with the juicy meat beneath. I ate every last bit of her on my plate, savoring the very taste of her.

  A few days later, I went to Jane to claim my next share of her generously giving body. As I bent down to remove my boning knife from its sheaf, I glimpsed swift movement on the edge of my range of sight. I was struck hard by the full weight of her body and I was sent sprawling, the knife falling out of reach of my outstretched arms. She was on top of me before I’d regained my senses, pinning my arms and legs with her unfinished appendages, her slathering jaws snapping desperately at my face and neck as her disfigured head came closer to me with every passing second.

  That nose, that fucking silly snout that started all this, was inches from my face when I jerked my head towards it. I bit deeply into the fatty meat where the nostrils flared angrily, my teeth sinking into the salty flesh, a hard inhuman shriek emitting from Jane’s thick pig lips. She pulled her head from me in panic, the weight on my arms and legs shifting, permitting me to roll free. I spat out a mouthful of nose and frantically dived for the boning knife, rolling onto my back as she came for me again. Driving the knife upwards in a smooth arc, it plunged into the soft skin below her chin, blood spurting from this fresh insult to her body. I pulled it out and struck again, the knife sinking deeper on its second strike, more blood splashed down my outstretched arm, turning my sleeve red.

  Jane emitted a high pitched bestial scream as she tore away from me. I stumbled to my feet as fast
as my dazed senses would permit me, dropping the knife and grabbing the solid cleaver that lay close by.

  “C’mon you fucking sow!” I screamed with white hot rage as she circled me, as intent on ending my life as I was hers. I brought the cleaver down squarely on her stupid thick head as she came into reach, feeling the steel penetrate her skull and reaching the soft brain matter beneath. Again and again, I struck her, each strike producing a satisfactory sound of pain and terror, the adrenalin coursing through me, giving me strength and reinforcing my will to survive this ordeal. The sensation of piercing flesh made my pulse race even harder.

  She collapsed to the floor with a low guttural moan, the pig whore was dead. I spat on the still carcass, bent double and trying to regain breath, thanking my lucky stars I was still in one piece. It had been a close shave, for a second, I thought I was a goner. Once I’d composed myself, I dragged her still-warm carcass to the chest freezer in the corner of the garage but was unable to tip her into its cold embrace, the combination of her size and weight proving just too much after my exertion.

  There was thick excrement smeared on the floor where Jane’s bowels had evacuated at the moment of death so I used a hosepipe to clean the floor of the garage, trying not to gag at the foul stench she had made. Even in death, she sought to frustrate me. I then brought plastic sheeting and large freezer bags and arranged the sheeting in a tidy fashion on the floor.

  I used boiled water to clean her still body, watching her dead skin redden, before shaving her head and body hair, trying not to linger too long around her pubic area but allowing myself to finger her entry delicately for old time’s sake. I felt a sense of justice as I cut through her thick neck, ignoring the copious amount of blood, feeling the sharp knife work through her glands and cartilage, meeting some resistance at the spine where I resorted to the cleaver. With her fat and heavy head separated from the body, I placed it in a plastic bag, removing as much air as possible to avoid ice burn, before putting it carefully in the chest freezer and starting work on the rest of her. I tried to forget the cold look of hatred in those dead black eyes as they disappeared from view. It had probably just been a figment of my fevered imagination.

  I removed her long arms and legs with little difficulty and mess and wrapped them too, in plastic before laying them alongside the head. Then I started on her bloated belly, cutting into the flesh to create a long incision before peeling back her skin. It was through this newly made hole that I penetrated her rib cage, pulling out her unctuous rope of intestines, ignoring the escaping claret blood that ran in a wavering but steady stream to the drain, seeking freedom in the sewer system below. With the slippery, slithering intestines removed and bagged for chitterlings, I could make out the dark red liver amongst the assortment of technicolored guts and other organs. This was my next trophy.

  I kissed the liver ever gently before placing it in a freezer bag, the bloody sweet on my lips. This would make for a deliciously protein rich meal in the very near future. I cut deeper until the abdomen had been split in half and then removed any surplus organs, bladder and spleen, rinsing the meat free of any blood with the hose. I then cut the torso neatly into smaller pieces, separating the shoulders, buttocks and loins. There was an abundance of fat in these areas but this would make tremendous crackling. I would let very little go unused; Jane would have been pleased for she hated waste of any kind.

  I gathered up the remaining sloppy innards and sealed them in a bin bag along with her bones for burial later before hosing down the scene of slaughter and going round the area with a liberal amount of bleach and a mop, eliminating any trace of my project. I’d seen enough CSI to know more than a little about cleaning up the scene of a crime. I spent a while tidying things up, taking time to rinse the blades of my knives and cleaver, ensuring they were cleaned to the highest standard for work. By the end of the evening, the garage was as sterile as my kitchen and I felt satisfied. I stood surveying my handiwork, a happy cannibal.

  She provided a variety of special dinners over the next few months, ranging from good old fashioned ham and sausages to a smooth snout soup and burritos. And with every meal, my appreciation of my wife grew deeper as we became one. I wondered if her early death had contributed to the exquisite and unique taste and tenderness of her flesh.

  Once every last tasty morsel had gone, I felt an emptiness in me that soon became all consuming. The void in my life had struck out my passion and I felt like a robot, going through the motions of a normal person but experiencing no pleasure, no joy. I missed Jane as a wife and as a pastime. The realization that I needed another project could not be ignored for long. It would only be a matter of time before the right opportunity presented itself to me.

  Due to my selection process, my target donor (I hated to think of the contents of my next proper meal as a victim) had to be young, female and clean. The idea of killing a prostitute, only to be infected with god knows what virus was not appetizing in the slightest. I’d ruled out the idea of a male because, if I ever slipped up and was caught, I would hate to be labeled as “the bisexual serial killer” and also the idea of shaving another man just creeped me out too much.

  My moral fiber prevented me from harming kids so I had to ensure, that the girl would be at least eighteen. Trust me, there were times when I nearly gave up my quest for more food stock, the whole thing demanded a lot of time and effort. I lost count of the number of times that my nerve broke or that the circumstances just weren’t right. Driving around the country lanes at night was a soul destroying experience and it heightened my sense of loneliness. I tried cruising around the university area situated approximately thirty miles from where I lived but I quit after a few hours, it just wasn’t working out. Deep down, I felt I was giving out invisible signals to all and sundry that I was up to no good. My depression deepened and I upped my meds to cope with the daily grind.

  The knock on the front door one evening made me jump. I wasn’t expecting visitors and the nearest neighbor lived nearly half a mile away so I knew it wasn’t somebody asking to borrow some sugar.

  The lady on the doorstep was attractive, I guessed in her mid-to-late twenties. Shoulder length brown hair framed an intelligent and slightly elfin face. She apologized for disturbing my evening and explained she was a journalist, currently engaged in an investigation into suspicious plastic surgery.

  “Could you and your wife spare a few moments of your time?” she asked.

  I welcomed her inside, explaining that my wife was away at the moment but that I’d be glad to help. I glanced at her trim figure and shapely ankles as she passed me to enter the house.

  The lady, Dawn, explained that hundreds of people were experiencing side effects from pioneering plastic surgery carried out overseas. Through contacts and persistence, she had been able to purchase lists of individuals who had visited certain clinics (it sounded like data protection was not embraced in these territories). My wife had appeared on a list and Dawn was interested to see if there had been any negative aspects to the work carried out.

  I drugged Dawn’s tea with some gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (or, as the date-rapists know it, “liquid ecstasy”) that I’d purchased from a hooded dealer on the outskirts of town and watched as she drank it appreciatively, occasionally dipping her digestive biscuit into the cup. The knock-out drug worked perfectly and she was soon out for the proverbial count. She snored lightly as I left the living room, preparing for stage two of my operation.

  I’d spent a lot of time preparing the garage and it now resembled a full-on prison cell. There was a hardly used mattress on the floor that I’d taken from the guest bedroom, on which lay, a sleeping bag that I’d bought for occasional camping weekends. I’d secured welded steel chains to the wall, these ran to adjustable shackles (they could be adjusted for wrist or ankle manacles). I’d tested the chains; they’d restrain a big muscular bloke never mind a lightweight woman. Security was of paramount importance; if someone escaped then I’d be done for.

  Af
ter she’d been firmly secured in her new residence, I drove her rusting estate car until it was almost running on fumes and parked it down a shaded country lane, over sixty miles away from my home. Opening the boot, I slid out my bike and cycled back, stopping off for rest and refreshments at a pub en route. Nobody paid me any attention as I dined and I congratulated myself for my ability to fly under the radar of normal folk. My paranoia about standing out was slowly dissolving and I actually enjoyed the experience of eating fish and chips alone in public.

  Dawn had come around from the effects of the drug when I returned. Confused but calm, she asked me what I was doing in her lovely soft voice. Revealing my story so far, she took it infinitely better than I expected, she seemed to accept that this is where her life’s journey had been leading up to. Looking back, I wonder what religion or belief system she’d embraced, what had kept her calm till the bitter end.

  Her only request of me was that I keep her suffering to a minimum. I promised her I would do my best to make the remaining time in this world as painless as I could but emphasized that I had to carry out my work according to the plans I’d set out in painstaking detail in my notebook.

  I’d heard about Stockholm Syndrome, but Dawn’s reaction to her captivity surprised me. My hostage never tried to escape or resist my actions even after I’d started to dissect her. Perplexed, I placed a small spy camera from work on a shelf in the garage to monitor her whilst I was absent. She made no attempt to free herself from her manacles and showed no outward signs of anguish other than physical pain and discomfort from lack of movement. It was if she was resigned to her fate from the moment she’d awoken to find herself in chains.