his body.
There wasn’t much left.
She sang. Looked at me. Continued singing as she smiled, then carved out a piece of the man’s thigh. She scooped it up with one of her knives and handed it to the person closest to her. It was passed from hand to hand until it reached me. I held it, the hunk the size of a coin purse, and felt it throb against my palm. I looked at the woman. She nodded. Beautiful words flowed from her lips. Beautiful intoxication.
I lifted the flesh to my lips and ate.
The circle closed around me. Hands slapped and patted me on the back. Teeth. So many teeth. Lips pulled back in crimson smiles of rapture. Why wasn’t I revolted? Why didn’t I run screaming at what I had done?
The singing continued. The knives kept moving within the robes of the dead priest. The circle reformed and resumed their bloody communion. The drumming started.
The drumming of the dead.
It was the same pounding I’d heard the last time in the church when I thought my bones would shatter. It came from within the stone tombs, the former bishops and priests of the church playing a tribal rhythm of unholy joy. What had aroused them? What caused them to celebrate along with the living?
And this time…
The drumming…
The beat coursed through my bones, my blood, took over the beating of my heart. I felt myself as one with everyone in the catacombs, living and dead alike.
I’d never felt such pure joy.
I stayed until there was nothing left of the desecrated priest. I stayed, hoping someone else would be brought fresh to the table. When the singing stopped, when the percussion of the dead stopped, the circle broke.
I found myself alone in an alley.
Hungry and alone.
My stomach growled. I wondered if the old man with the darting eye had passed out on the gazebo. I stumbled toward the zocalo. If anyone saw me, they would’ve judged me drunk.
The old man lay on his side on the gazebo steps, groaning in his sleep, his snores wet and throaty. I hovered over him. Reached down to touch him. Ran my fingers over his cheek. His eyes opened slowly. Bloodshot eyes. Eyes that held no fear. He smiled.
Tiny silver crosses were jammed haphazardly into his gums. When he laughed, blood trickled out. He babbled incoherently, the words crucified on the bramble of metal in his mouth.
I turned and ran as fast as I could, trying to outrun the hunger, the anticipation of flesh squishing warmly in my mouth. I flew blindly into the hotel, burst into my room and collapsed on the bed.
Time passed. Two hours? Three? My hands became numb from gripping the sheets. I sat up. Looked across the room in the mirror. Dried blood decorated my chin. I looked at my hands. Had I run across town with these gore-soaked claws? Oh God, oh God…
How dare I cry to God? Why should He help me?
I crept to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. Grabbed my bottom lip between thumb and forefinger and yanked down. I stared at my teeth. My stomach growled. I wanted more.
More.
I wanted to sink my teeth into flesh, wanted to tear skin from bone, savor the flavor, the texture on my pulsing tongue.
- god oh god oh god
I stood there panting like a starving dog.
Tomorrow. I had to leave tomorrow. I had to fly home. What would I do when I saw my family again? Pink drool rained from my lips. I thought of my daughter, my Peanut.
How good she would taste. The feel…
Oh god oh god
No god NO!
I struck the mirror hard with my fist. It exploded in a crash of sparkling shards. Blood gushed from my knuckles. I looked at them, considered stripping the raw flesh from my fingers with my teeth.
I grabbed a piece of glass from the sink, the edge slicing into my palm. I opened my mouth.
I lifted the shard of glass. It gleamed like a dagger in the bathroom lights. I jabbed it into my gums. Dug into the soft pink flesh. Popped out a glistening tooth with a flick of my wrist.
I decided to cure this craving one tooth at a time.
I never boarded the plane.
My mouth still bleeds, especially when the craving is at its worst. There are times when I see the others — the little girl, the old man from the gazebo, the man from the alley. We gather at the steps of the monstrously beautiful church, longing to go inside. But our mouths are useless now. We are unable to gnash and tear, unable to satisfy our need, our primal need, to feel the warmth of flesh squish between our teeth.
We are unable to satiate the craving we share.
More have joined us. Those who believed they could remove the craving by simply removing their teeth. We laugh and cry at our stupidity. So we do what we can.
We look upon the doors of the church, strain to hear the primal rhythms of the dead, and imagine.
We imagine.
It is all we have.
Seller’s Market
This is our house. A modest three-bedroom rambler painted light blue. The backyard fences in a deck and a beautiful red maple. An ancient oak stands out front. Boxes full of petunias grace the windows like mascara, and there are several large bleeding hearts on either side of the front steps.
It’s a pleasant neighborhood. Quiet for the most part. Not a lot of kids. I mow the lawn, take out the garbage. Do the dishes, the cleaning. There’s a lot of work to be done to make this house presentable. A lot of sacrifices.
We’d been living in a one-bedroom apartment for our first two years of marriage. When Ellen learned she was pregnant, the urge to buy a house suitable for raising a family came upon her like an unstoppable freight train.
“I can’t stand it here anymore. It’s so cramped. This is no place to raise a family.” She pats her stomach, which barely shows at this point. “I want a yard. A garden.”
I look up from the evening news.
“I’m suffocating,” she says.
Saturday morning she’s up at the crack of dawn. She scrambles eggs for breakfast, brews coffee, butters toast. The real estate section from the morning newspaper lays spread out on the kitchen table. Thick red marker circles the properties she wants to see.
It’s insane. Every house we look at is sold within an hour of our arrival. Twice we find houses we’re excited about, and twice they’re bought out from under us before we even have a chance to check out the basement.
It’s like that on Sunday, too.
I suggest we wait until the market cools off.
“Are you kidding me?” Ellen snaps. “Every night I can hear the couple next door coughing and snoring, and
