Jodi Lee - Ante Mortem

She walked around to the other end of the table, dragged a chair over and sat down in front of his feet. Her breath tickled his toes as she pulled off his right sock and shoe. He craned his neck, trying to figure out what she was up to, but all he could see was her hair peeking over the swell of his belly. He forgot all about trying to watch at the first prick in the sole of his foot.

A burning line ripped down the middle from the ball of his foot to the backside of his heel, painful even in comparison with the agony throbbing in both hands. Vera’s studious face came into view as she made another cut, this one around the foot just beneath his toes. Tears streaming, he tried to yell through the gag, to beg her to stop. Another slice around his ankle, and then a slit up the top side of his foot. Surely she wouldn’t… Thought fled as he felt fingers hook into the cut in the arch of his foot, ripping skin free with a yank. She peeled his foot like a grape, using the paring knife to separate skin from muscle when it wouldn’t pull off.

Pressure suddenly left the lower half of his legs, and it took Charlie several seconds to realize Vera had untied his shins. He relaxed on the table, weeping, his breath whistling through his nostrils. Thank God it’s over. It had to be. What more could she possibly do to him? Why hasn’t she untied the rest? He heard a slapping sound and craned his neck to look at his wife.

Vera stood by his left knee. She held steel mallet with a spiked head, smacking it into her palm. He recognized that one. What does she want with a meat tenderizer?

“I know you like to think you know how to grill outside, honey, but I’ve got to tell you, you really haven’t been doing a very good job of it. You need to use this thing more often, like this.” She swung the tenderizer like a carpenter driving a nail. Pain bloomed in his knee with the first blow. At the fourth, he felt the joint give way. The other knee only took three strikes to break. Then she disappeared.

Charlie held his breath, afraid to see what she might bring back this time. He started to laugh hysterically with relief at the sight of the small metal tray she carried by its handles. Is she going to bake cookies? His hysteric mirth withered as she angled the tray. The bottom contained a series of scooped holes. A cheese grater, not a tray. She set it on the table and yanked his pants leg up past the knee. He groaned at the pressure in the injured joint. When she placed the grater on his shin, he shook his head side to side.

“Oh, come now, Charlie. In thirty years, I’ve never seen you use one of these things. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t show you how?”

Leaning on his leg, she ran the utensil down his shin like a plane. He screamed around the rag in his mouth. He could feel blood running down his leg with every pass. Occasionally, the cheese grater would bind and she would yank it out of his leg and tap it on the side of the table. She worked every side of his leg until the gouges scored along bone. Once she was done, she grabbed the cooking torch and sealed off the edges of the wound.

Charlie couldn’t scream anymore; his voice had long since failed. But he cried when Vera wrenched the leg up and showed him the twin bones gleaming wetly in the kitchen light, the white darkened to black at the ends where she’d cauterized what remained of his leg.

Holding the ankle with one hand, she reached into her apron and pulled out what looked like the world’s biggest, most evil set of nutcrackers. She threaded one of the jaws between the bones in his leg and closed it gently around the smaller of the pair. She looked up at him and giggled.

“I have to be honest — I’ve never used these before. Just haven’t had a chance.” She sighed. “Remember when you gave me these shell crackers? It was what, five years ago, for our anniversary? You promised lobster that night and every night for a week after. I always wondered why you never actually bought any. Oh, well. At least I finally found a use for them.”

She gripped the jaws in both hands and twisted. Charlie watched as the bone bent then splintered with a sound like a green tree branch snapping. Vera wrapped the shell cracker around the other bone. It took more effort. She wrenched it back and forth and leaned on his foot before it crunched. As his shoe-clad foot hit the floor, Charlie found he could scream after all.

He kept right on screaming until he passed out.

Charlie woke up still screaming, the feel of cold steel punching into his gut. Eyes flying open, he found a two-prong carving fork stabbed into his bellybutton. Vera tapped the handle with a carving knife, sending painful shivers into his abdomen.

“I think our lesson’s nearly over, dear. I just wanted to show you a couple more things. First, we’re going to discuss proper carving. If you’re going to assume the job of cutting up the turkey at holidays, you really need to learn how to do it right. The way you’ve been hacking at it is quite embarrassing.”

She laid the knife’s slightly curved edge next to the fork. Blood welled as she made a wide, shallow cut that followed the contours of his stomach. The world went gray once more, but the pain of her carving kept him alert. He watched in horror as she made a ring of slices around the fork. She carefully lay each flap of skin and muscle back before moving on to the next cut.

When she finished and walked off, Charlie found himself staring at loop after loop of exposed intestine. The smell made him gag, but he couldn’t turn away or stop his eyes from following the labyrinth of grayish-pink coils.

Huffing with exertion, Vera returned and dropped something heavy on the table. He yelled in pain as his guts jiggled in response. She wedged something cold under his back that pressed against his side just below the ribcage. Charlie turned his head and found himself looking at a mixer she’d begged him to let her buy last year. A sort of angular hook protruded from the head, which had been tilted back just far enough that it barely missed his intestines.

Vera popped back into view, beaming at him. “You’ve been an excellent student, Charlie. I think you’re ready to learn how to use a mixer.” She tapped the hook. “This is called a dough hook. You use it for making bread. You put all the stuff in a bowl, then lower the head and turn it on.”

The dough hook punched through his guts as she dropped the mixer down, and Charlie writhed in pain. She flipped a switch, and the hook whipped into action, spinning in an elliptical pattern, coiling intestine around itself, then tearing it out. Digested food and flesh flung out of the hole in his belly, spattering everywhere, including over Charlie and Vera.

“The mixer has ten speed settings, but I don’t have time to show you how they all work,” she yelled over the humming mixer and her screaming husband. “Your family’s coming tomorrow, and I’ve still got a lot to do. I’m just going to have to show you the high setting.” She turned to go, then paused and spun back.

“Silly me! I nearly forgot. I found your ball. Turns out it was right here in the kitchen.” She dropped his red monogrammed bowling bag on the table between his legs. Humming to herself, patting a few stray hairs back into their bun, Vera disappeared from Charlie’s sight.

Aaron Polsoncurrently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit. To pay the bills, Aaron attempts to teach high school students the difference between irony and coincidence while cultivating a healthy relationship with the works of William Shakespeare. His stories appear in Necrotic Tissue , Albedo One , Space and Time , and other venues, and have featured magic goldfish, monstrous beetles, and a book of lullabies for baby vampires. You can visit Aaron on the web at aaronpolson.blogspot.com.