Amelia Gray: Museum of the Weird

When he was young, one of his teachers in grade school showed the class a video of a slaughterhouse. It began slowly, the picture grainy and unclear, the storyline featuring frowning men in white lab coats and packages of meat on a store shelf, but a brief segment at the middle of the video showed the actual process of the killing; the animals screaming and bleeding between metal railings, their heads swinging.

Roger couldn’t remember what type of animal was featured. He was in the fourth grade, and one of the girls in the class threw up in a trashcan next to the teacher’s desk. Roger watched her. He took a pencil out of his plastic pencil case and drove it slowly into his hand. The graphite left a black mark on his palm, ringed with purple. The teacher was fired later that month.

As he ate his lunch, Roger decided that the pig never turned into pork. The pig was always pork, from the moment it was born into the world.

* * *

The hot water ran out at home that evening and Roger shivered as he rinsed his hair. He dressed and knocked on Olive’s door. She was wearing her hospital gown and had a towel wrapped around her head.

“So that’s where the hot water went,” she said, tousling his wet hair.

“The pig was always pork,” said Roger.

Olive thought about it. “I want to show you something,” she said. “But you can’t tell anyone. And you have to wait while I change.”

“Okay,” he said.

She was still wearing the hospital gown when she opened the door again to invite him in. The gown was cinched with a silver belt. She was holding a shoebox.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “This is illegal.” She opened the box. Inside was a clear plastic bag, with a small brown object that looked like a dried mushroom. Olive shook the box gently, as if it might come alive.

“Tongue,” she said. “An actual tongue, from a person.”

Roger touched the edge of the shoebox, and then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Really,” he said.

“The real deal,” she said. “Cost me a fortune. It’s from this freaked-out monastery where the monks cut out their own tongues to get closer to God. They dehydrate them and sell them for two thousand per. Luckily, I know a guy. I’ve been saving all year to get one. Apparently they’re like pâté.”

Roger bit his own tongue, gently, at the thought.

Olive took the box into the kitchen and set it on the counter, next to a white bowl filled with a white liquid. “Buttermilk with a dash of vinegar,” she said. She opened the bag and dropped the tongue into the bowl without ceremony. “Takes the bitterness out of game. Just a little dunk before the flour. I’m not sure we’re gamey but I thought I’d give it a shot.” She set a pan to heat on the range and dropped two pats of butter into the pan. “I believe I shall sauté,” she said.

Roger looked around Olive’s apartment. There were roach motels lining their shared wall, an old city map covering a foundation crack next to her bedroom door.

“Did you hear about the Japanese cannibal they caught?” Roger asked. “He told the court what people taste like.”

Olive turned and leaned on the counter.

“Sushi,” he said.

She picked three bowls out of the dishwasher. She cracked eggs into one bowl, poured flour into another, and bread crumbs into a third. She sliced a clove of garlic and dropped the slices into the pan.

“Tuna,” Roger said.

“You should stay for dinner.” She poured him a glass of wine. “This is a really special night,” she said, pouring her own glass. “I’m glad to share it with someone.”

“I’m glad to be here,” Roger said. He sat down on the floor, holding his glass with both hands.

“Don’t be nervous,” Olive said. “You can have a little bite, and if you don’t like it, I’ll eat the rest. Culinary adventure.” She fished around in the buttermilk for the tongue, and dropped it first in the flour, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs.

“I’ve never had pâté,” Roger said.

“Liverwurst?”

He shook his head.

“You should try it,” she said. “Hell of a meat. You’re eating the energy of an animal. It used to be this strong, busy liver. All that energy is contained in a tiny thing.”

“The tongue is a busy organ.”

In the ensuing silence, Roger drank half his wine.

“That’s the idea behind it,” Olive said, washing her hands in the sink.

The garlic grew fragrant in the butter. Olive dried her hands and used a fork to drop the tongues into the pan.

“I feel like I should cross myself,” she said.

Roger was still thinking about Olive’s tongue.

When the tongue was done, she plated it simply, between lines of wasabi and chili sauces. “A little spice,” she said. They shared the plate together on the floor. Her knives were sharp. Olive declared the meat to be closer to liverwurst than pâté. Roger chewed thoughtfully. His own tongue touched the tongue he was eating. He felt strange.

“A strong meat,” she said, finishing the last bite.

“I was thinking we could go out to eat sometime,” Roger said. “Somewhere nice.”

She looked at his plate. “You didn’t finish your half,” she said. “It was okay. Do you want it?”

“Two thousand dollars,” she said, spearing his half. “A rare treat.” Roger put both palms on the ground and pushed himself up. “Thank you for dinner,” he said.

The light was brighter on his side. He smelled the roach motels, the mold in the walls, and the dust in his carpet.

“We’ll work on you,” she said, through the closed door.

“I appreciate that,” he said quietly, because he wasn’t sure she was talking to him. She didn’t respond. He turned off all the lights and did not turn them on again for three days.

The sanitizing facility where Roger collected trash could process five million pounds of waste a year. After sanitation, the waste was taken by another set of trucks to the landfill, eight tons at a time, then sanitized and shredded, then dumped and compacted and picked through by seagulls.

The rusty barrels were almost too warm to touch by sunset. He loaded each onto the dolly, wheeled the dolly to the hydraulic lift, pressed the button that lifted them into the truck, and rolled them from the lift to the truck bed. He found it difficult to work without thinking about the contents of the drums. The needles, the gauze, the hot, moving mass of lipids and grafts, of broken or rejected skin, punctuated by shards of bone. The bone was like raisins in a cake.

On the way home, he bought a roll of liverwurst and a bouquet of flowers. He wasn’t sure which color Olive would like and picked white lilies because they looked the freshest. It had been a long time since Roger brought anyone flowers. The cashier covered her mouth when he passed through her line, and Roger remembered after that he must have smelled terrible.

After his shower, he put the liverwurst in the refrigerator, picked a wilted petal off the lilies, and knocked on the connecting door. At first, there was no response. He held his ear to the door and didn’t hear anything. The door smelled like rot and wood and paint. He knocked again.

“Roger,” she said, from the other side. “Come in.”

Olive’s silver belt made her look segmented. Her white legs stretched out like a child’s and she was leaning against the far wall, underneath the old map of a city Roger didn’t recognize. The crack in the wall, the one the map only partly covered, stretched down to her head, making it look like she was attached. Her left foot was bleeding through a wide swath of bandages onto the tarp it was resting on. The bowl next to her was full of blood.

Olive looked a little pale. “I don’t think I should move,” she said. “What are you doing?” Roger shut the door behind him and stood with his back to it.