Alicia winced as the hot water sprayed from the showerhead onto her raw, pinkish skin. It had been months since her ordeal with Joseph Miles and she had only been out of the hospital a week. She was scheduled to see a plastic surgeon at the end of the month to discuss prostheses to replace her stolen mammary glands. She had already gone through six surgeries, painful skin grafts to cover the gaping hole in her chest where her breasts had been. Now they were going to see if they could give her some kind of implants to make her chest look more normal, more like it had looked before her abduction. Alicia scoffed as she watched the water cascade down her smooth, nippleless chest. She had no illusions. She knew she would never look the same.
She stepped out of the shower and appraised her scarred and disfigured torso. Her chest was now little more than a thin veneer of skin stretched over a rib cage. She could almost see her heart beating beneath it. She began to cry. The man she had fallen in love with had done this to her.
‘Why didn’t he just kill me? Why leave me like this?’
They still hadn’t captured Joe, but there had also been no more cannibal killings. He appeared to have just disappeared. Either that or the cure had worked. In a way she hoped that it hadn’t. Every night she prayed that he would return for her. To finish the job he had started.
She heard a noise coming from her bedroom as she gently wiped away the bathwater and tears with her towel. It sounded as if someone had opened her window. Minutes later she heard the unmistakable sound of footfalls.
‘Hello?’
She clutched the bath towel to her vandalized chest and peered into the room. She was not surprised at all to see Joe standing in her bedroom.
‘You got my note? On the message board?’
‘Yes.’ His expression was almost sad.
‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll do what I ask?’
‘Are you sure you want this?’
‘I’m sure. I’ve got a ton of pain pills from the hospital. I’ll take a whole handful. I won’t feel a thing.’
‘I’ve missed you, Alicia.’ A tear drizzled down his cheek.
‘I missed you too.’
‘I even set us a table.’
Joe turned toward the little kitchen, and indeed a large table, way too big for her tiny apartment, stretched from the kitchen into the little dining room nook area and partially into the living room. The table was solid oak and looked expensive. It was set with a silver serving tray, big enough to hold a large pig and one dinner setting at the head of the table. A large carving knife sat on top of the tray.
‘The table’s an antique,’ she said. ‘I bought it just for this occasion. Just in case you came back.’
‘I love you, Alicia.’
‘I know you do. But I can’t live like this,’ she said, gesturing toward her chest.
‘What about plastic surgery?’
‘Look at me.’ Alicia dropped the towel, revealing the hideous scar that transversed her chest. Joseph sucked in a breath, shocked at his own savagery.
‘They can’t fix this.’
‘This may take a while. My appetite isn’t what it used to be.’
Alicia stepped back into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. She had a few Fentanyl patches they had given her at the hospital to replace the morphine drip she’d been hooked up to after her last surgery. She peeled one of them out of the box and stuck it on her neck. There was also nearly a full bottle of Darvocet and a half bottle of Percocet. She scooped them off the shelf and took a whole handful of each and went back into the bedroom. Her legs began to wobble as she turned and staggered into the kitchen. The room spun just before she lay down on the table. The Fentanyl was kicking in.
‘I want you to eat all of me. Don’t leave anything. I want to be a part of you forever.’
The Percocet and Darvocet kicked in now and Alicia could no longer feel her own body. She felt like she was floating. Joe was crying when he raised the knife. He was still crying when he began to cut through her soft plump flesh. And tears still fell as he slid the blood moist meat between his lips and swallowed it down. She tasted just like he remembered.
It took him a couple of days to completely consume her. She was awake for the first few hours, telling him how much she loved him. How happy she was to bring him so much pleasure. How she’d wanted this all along. And, despite himself, Joe did feel those familiar jolts of ecstasy as he chewed and swallowed her soft muscle and fat.
She passed away that same night, yet Joe had continued eating as he had promised. He ate until her entire body had been consumed-skin, muscle, organs, fat, her brain. He even sucked the marrow out of her bones. He could feel her life inside of him as he walked out of the apartment with his stomach distended, fighting back nausea. He could feel her love coursing through him. He barely noticed the police cruiser until it was right on top of him.
‘Freeze! Stop right there! On your knees! Hands behind your head!’
The cop was muscular, middle-aged, and scared. His partner came from the other side of the car looking even older and more scared. Joseph hadn’t showered and was still covered with Alicia’s blood, but that wasn’t the only reason the men were scared. Joe had seen their car across the street three nights ago when he’d first snuck into Alicia’s apartment. They had both been behind the wheel, fast asleep. They had been assigned to protect Alicia and they had failed. Joe didn’t care anymore. He watched with curious detachment as they handcuffed him, cursing and praying at the same time.
‘We fucked up big time!’
‘What did you do to the girl? Go check on her, Nate. I’ve got him. Fuck! Man, we’re going to be crucified when they find out we lost a witness!’
‘At least we caught the bastard. Who knows, they might even call us heroes.’ The middle-aged cop looked at his older partner and shook his head.
‘I doubt that. I seriously doubt that. See all that blood? It ain’t his. And you know what he does to his victims.’
The older man’s eyes went wide. He ran up the walkway and into the apartment. Less than a minute later he was back out on the sidewalk, throwing up into the gutter.
‘Bones! There’s just bones up there! He ate her! He ate all of her.’
Joe watched the man regurgitate and tried to hold his own enormous meal inside of him. He concentrated on digesting his meal. He knew that they would want to pump his stomach and he wanted to keep as much of her inside of him as he could.
They were just putting him in the backseat of the squad car when another car pulled up. A black detective that Joe thought he recognized was behind the wheel, and next to him sat Professors Locke and Douglas. The two professors sprang out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop and ran over to him.
‘Don’t worry, boy. We won’t let anything happen to you. We’re going to help you. We’re going to cure you.’ Professor Locke’s eyes were beaming with joy. It looked like he had just won the lottery.
