Posted by Sawney Beane on August 26, 2007 at 12:44:56:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #139
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
by Sawney Beane
13 February 2007
1,424 words
DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and DISCLAIMER: Sawney Beane requests that any distribution of this work of fiction remain within the realm of social responsibility. This story is suitable neither for minors nor for the seeming majority of adults who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. It is pure fantasy, which means that, for whatever reason, someone has found it interesting to think about the events depicted herein. It does not in any way mean that the author would like to see this fantasy become reality, so if you are the type of person who might be swayed into doing something irrational by reading a work of fiction, the author respectfully requests that you decline to read further.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sawney Beane, originally a native of Edinburgh, lived for twenty-five years in a cave on the coast of County Galloway, subsisting on the flesh of unfortunate travellers, roughly a thousand of them all told. He and his wife raised a large family of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. Eventually, the family was captured, and the whole lot was brutally and unjustifiably tortured and executed without trial. Since his death in the early 17th century, Beane has reformed his ways and now confines his atrocities to his literary endeavours.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of cannibalistic shopping concerning the remains of a consenting female meal. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Weird but I liked the concept.
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I never like to look in the aisle where they keep the heads. Something just gets to me about the rows and rows of glassy-eyed craniums lining the aisle, female on the left and male on the right. It just isn't my thing.
In fact, I'm not entirely comfortable with either the breast case or with the hand and foot bin. The genital display is entirely beyond my capacity. It isn't that I don't enjoy a good cannibal meal. I like a good thigh steak or a spare rib as much as the next guy, but I like my meals slightly less recognizable.
It's a matter of taste. Some people really enjoy the idea of munching on something that looks like a tasty member of the opposite sex. And many a man craves breast meat despite its questionable culinary quality. But some, like me, prefer not to be reminded of the former humanity of my dinner. Human flesh tastes tender and delicate and sublime above all other meats, but it need not flaunt its humanity.
That is just the way I feel. Which made my reaction last Sunday all the more shocking. I was innocently minding my own business and picking my way through rack of rump roasts. Rump meat is pushing the edges of my tolerance, but the meat quality is very good, and once I carve off a nice steak and pop it into the oven, it doesn't look all that much like a person anymore, so I get by.
Anyway, I was searching through the stack when I found a piece of meat with my name on it...literally. There it was before my shocked eyes. Smack on the middle of the hemispheric rump roast was a tattoo. A very familiar looking tattoo with a red cartoon heart wrapped in ribbons, one of which announced in gothic lettering that Melissa loved Mark forever, or sentiments to that effect.
Now I have seen tattooed meat before, and I never really found it an attractive feature. In the past I have passed up even a very succulent morsel because of offensive decoration. But in this case, it was different. You see, it so happens that I am Mark, and I happened to remember the moment in time when my ex-girlfriend Melissa, in a burst of misguided exuberance had her eternal passion for me inscribed on her posterior.
At the time I was hoping she would indeed love me forever because she was both shockingly beautiful and a very caring lover. And my sentiments were still on the rise when she changed her mind about the whole thing and moved out. Perhaps she should have inscribed her love in a place where she could read it more readily and remind herself of her professed eternal love. In any case, she changed her mind as women are wont to do, and I was out in the cold. Alone again, reheating leftover tenderloins to eat in depressed solitude.
All of that was two or three years ago, and I have since recovered from my malaise and moved on. That's not to say I wouldn't welcome her back if she wished to return to my arms, but, alas, this week I learned once and for all that our love was not to be. Not in the normal sense anyhow.
Now it surprised me to see my ex's arse in this place in this state. She had never shown any suicidal tendencies nor any of the all too common romance of the flesh that leads otherwise sane men and women to turn their bodies in to be made into food and sold to the general public in meat markets such as this. I never imagined that she would end up here, but the tattoo was almost indubitable proof. Almost.
To eliminate any doubts, I had to violate my long-standing taboo. I picked up the Melissa roast and put it in my cart, checking the serial number. Then I set out for the head aisle. I dreaded it both generally and specifically. I dreaded the endless rows and I dreaded finding my lost love even more. And yet, I wanted to find her. I would have felt empty had I not.
As luck would have it, that was an emotion I was not called upon to face. There she was, between the golden-haired vacant staring skull on one side and the vacantly staring redhead on the other. I saw my raven-haired beauty, and her somehow still lifelike gaze captivated me. I pulled the box off the shelf and found my dear Melissa's severed head staring back at me, begging me to take her home one last time. I could not disobey.
Nor could I stop there. I compared the serial numbers of the head and arse and found that the first ten digits, the so-called carcass code, matched. I knew I had to find as much of her as possible. And so I began a systematic search of the store. Aisle after aisle, I had to find all of my love. The breasts I remembered on sight and needed only a cursory serial number check to know I had found her man-magnetic charms. The less recognizable, my preferred cuts, took more effort as I had to examine the serial number of every cut in the case to find those belonging to my love.
When I had half a cart full of Melissa parts, I enlisted the help of the store employees who found more for me, some of Melissa's missing parts they found in the back room. I even located most of her organs and viscera. I had to beg an old lady to surrender Melissa's left hand in favour of a similar morsel belonging to someone else.
Of course, flesh as desirable as Melissa's does not stay on the shelf for long, so I was unable to locate all of her. Part of the right arm, and the left foot were long gone. A few of her ribs and at least three thigh steaks were missing. But all in all, I recovered most of my lost love. I was not sure what to do about the omissions, but I was by this time so full of enthusiasm that I sought out similarly sized replacements so that I could have a whole woman when I was done. I don't know what was going through that mind at that moment. I may have had bizarre Frankenstein reanimation fantasies in the back of my head, but of course the only use I would have for my prizes was ultimately culinary.
Buying all of the parts of a woman in a human meat market is not an inexpensive exercise, and I am by no means rich. Getting Melissa back was a significant strain on my finances, and any rational approach to the matter would have had me abandoning all but the key parts of her. But I was not rational at that moment. I had to have Melissa, all of her as my own. And so I did. The store staff found it quite amusing and tried playfully to reassemble some parts of her. It was painful to watch.
And yet, once I got her home, I unwrapped everything and put her together on my kitchen counter. She was as beautiful as I remembered her. Perhaps not as responsive, but I still had feelings for her. But the butcher's knives had ruthlessly changed her, and I was no more able to reassemble her than I was to bring her back to life and love. She was ultimately a pile of cuts of meat. And no matter how much I desired otherwise, I could not make her be anything else.
And so in the end I wrapped most of her back up and stored her in my refrigerator and freezer. I selected a particularly thick thigh steak and prepared it for the oven. An hour later I was tasting my Melissa medium rare. She did not disappoint. She was as tender as meat as she had been as a lover.
And so it goes. I will be occupied with her for many weeks to come. I may never go back to that store after this. What could I buy that would top the experience Melissa is giving me now? I still don't know why she abandoned her life to become filet mignon, but I am very happy that fate allowed me to find her in the meat market. I love every bite of her.