Strange is the Flock

Her thumbs taste sweet, after several days eating from whatever remained of the poor, emaciated fawns in Somalia. I take my time and savour the soda pop sweetness of the muscle, which I pry fastidiously from her thin bones. I turn the rubbery gristle over on my dry tongue, finding it nearly unpalatable. With the Somalians, you were forced to dig around to find the delicacies, where this woman had them in abundance.1

I am a connoisseur. And being a connoisseur, I have my favorites. The adductor pollicis - tangy, but tough, and stubborn on the bone. The flexor carpi radialis was always a favorite as well. 2

A lot of people have hypothesized about what human flesh tastes like. “It must taste like chicken!” they say, “Everything tastes like chicken!” or “I heard from a guy that you can’t actually taste it.”3

They are dead wrong. 4

Human flesh tastes like glory. It tastes like victory. I consider it a sacrifice.5

The sirens begin to blare from the end of the street, and I know that judgment has hastened to me. They pretend to be able to catch me; they want to lock me up. But my work is outside their most abstruse imaginings. There is no way they could comprehend the importance of what I do.6

With practiced proficiency, I remove her milky-white hands at the wrist. A slow trickle of dying blood seeps pathetically onto the asphalt. She will survive, though, if they reach her in time. They’re no good if they don’t survive. I stow her hands in my back pocket and latch onto a downspout, shimmying adeptly upwards and onto the shellacked rooftops.7

Uncertainly, I pull myself to the roof above - my bloodied fingers dig into the wet shingles. A tile slides off and plummets to the ground below. It clatters like the drumbeats in my mind. From below I hear the drama:8

“Jesus… Mike. Take a look at this.”9

“What’s goin’…. Oh, holy shit. Get her... ah, get her...”10

A radio hisses in the cruiser: "Two-niner, what's the status at cordon?"11

An officer leans in and picks up the radio handset, "Dispatch, perp has exited the area."12

"Roger. Sending cruisers out on all the main thoroughfares. Casualty report?"13

"One. Breathing and beating, signs of life, but unconscious. Hands have been... severed at the wrist."14

"Ooh." says the deadpan voice on the other end, "Ambulances en route."15

There is a brief period of silence. The din of quiet.
“Whaddya want us t’do, Cap?”16

“Got a pulse?”17

“Yeah, I got a pulse.” 18

“Don't wake her up. Just don't wake her up.” He says, shaking his head. The older ones have seen my work before. "Put her in the van. Get her to a hospital."19

“This guy’s a pro. The cut is so .... so neat.”20

I grin as they admire my handiwork. It is truly an art.21

Dashing across the rooftops in the pounding rain, leaping periodically, I arrive at the roof of my apartment building. I swing in through the window. My task is complete.22

The votive candles at my shrine are already burning, the light from the candle-flame licks the praying hands arrayed on the velvet like the golden grace of God. And indeed, it is. I gradually impale each of her hands on the spikes I have arranged, and cause them to embrace each other in a gesture of prayer.23

I have fifteen pairs of hands. I have white hands, and I have black hands. Wrinkled hands, and the supple hands of children with their hairless skin. I have fifteen pairs, and they all pray to me. Portrait me. God me.24

I can feel the worship.25

My obsidian knife glints darkly as I heat it in the golden flames. I touch a scarred finger to the blade. It is hot; my skin begins to hiss and bubble, raising in tiny, painless blisters. It is ready.26

I gingerly run the heated instrument down the palm of my hands. Though the wound nearly cauterizes upon penetration, a slow trickle of black blood begins drip from the cut. I wiggle my fingers and smile as the flow picks up.27

I do the same operation to every praying hand – I lay them flat, and I open them up. It is not the eyes that are the windows to the soul; it is the hands – for how can you know a man until you know his actions? I expose their souls. And then I touch their souls with mine.28

My blood enters their empty veins like a creeping tide, washing clean their mortal sin. Perhaps some where in the world they are glad: they have been graced by my divine goodness, and I have made them clean. They complain because their God is not close enough, because grace has not entered their lives when they have prayed for it – they must be ignorant, for I attend to them all in turn. The sins lie in the hands, and I take the hands.29

Night rises on the city once more, and the bustling people endeavour to romance, and to sin once again. The Siegmund Club is a busy place. The lights parade in the shadow of the disco. I let it pound on my closed eyelids. Pulsing flowers in the infrablack. 30

A girl approaches me. She may be no older than twenty-five. She is underweight and malnourished, but this is the modern world, in which that type of mutilation is tolerable. Her green eyes swim lazily in her face. She makes expressions that can be born only of the worst inebriation. She drinks a White Russian, and very obviously: drops of it are dripping down a mottled base-tan. She feigns sobriety, if only for a second.31

“Hey, stranger,” she says.32

I blink, but I do not make eye contact with her, preferring instead to watch the gamboling flock that people the dance floor.33

“Hello,” I respond.34

“Whatcha doing?” she asks.35

“Watching. Observing.”36

“That’s cool,” she says, nodding, “Hey, you wanna dance?”37

I refuse, politely.38

“Oh, c’mon,” she persists, “It’s my favorite song.”39

She seizes me by the hand and drags me from the barstool. Her hands are cold, but they are soft. And they will serve.40

I’ve got you… under my skin, blares the stereo. Frank Sinatra backed by too many poorly-used synthesizers and one clumsy disc jockey.41

Her buttocks feel bony as she presses them against me, pirouetting drunkenly. I am uncomfortable. It is not nobility that bothers me now; it is the lack thereof. I can only picture what I will do to her. I can only imagine the muscles of her hand. She is a perfect stranger. Perfect.42

The night edges onto the towers of the city, an ever-encroaching blanket, she slows the sliding of her narrow hips. She turns to me, her cat-like pupils glinting with an alcoholic euphoria.43

“Hey,” she whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”44

The setup.45

“And go where?” I ask her, smirking.46

“My place. Yours.”47

The pounce.48

They invite me into their lives. My benison is reserved for strangers, for the flock I will dredge from the gutters. But I never seek them out. The flock comes to me, in ones and in twos, in age and in youth. They come to me because they see the future they want reflected in me. 49

The young ones come because they believe that I will give them a life better than the one they ran away from; the older ones come because they see shallow life they want to lead, and in some way believe that I can personify that. The older still come because they see in me the life they had hoped for in their youth, and want their last hours to be in the company of that dream.50

True, I offer them candy and toys. True, I compel them to black their brains with alcohol. True, I shop for their groceries and push their wheelchairs. But that isn’t why they come to me. They come to me because I reflect them, or the self that dwells in dreams. 51

Human flesh tastes like glory. 52

The glory of ambition. The glory of sin. 53

I elect to pay for a taxi cab. My mark and I both stumble in, and greet the driver. She tells him her address. He purses his lips in disdain and, silently, drives onward.54

We arrive at the apartment. My new acolyte gropes inside her purse for her keys, mumbling incoherently. At length, she discovers a keyring heavily laden with door keys, apartment keys, and every other imaginable type of key. The key dives into the lock. She turns it.55

The door opens.56

She seats herself next to me on a ratty sofa, grinning impishly. 57

“So,” says she, “What do you wanna do?”58

“That’s up to you.”59

“It can’t be up to me,” she giggles tipsily, “I don’t know. So it can’t be up to me. You know that.”60

I remain silent, staring at her glassy eyes. Tracing my way down to her hands, clammy and cold.61

Suddenly, she smiles.62

“I’ll be right back,” she announces, beaming.63

She hastens to her bedroom. I wait, inspecting the contents of her purse.64

Bargain-bin tampons, lipstick, a pack of gum, a keyring. Standards.65

A small change purse, and a canvas wallet. A small treasury, if I cared to take it. But as meagre as are my surroundings, I am no thief. I am a god.66

A picture of a man, his face frosted with a million little prickly hairs and his stare lazy and blank. A boyfriend? A husband? 67

She opens the door with a slam. Every yard of her fair, spackled skin is exposed – clad in air and lust. I examine her with anticipation. The skin of her chest - taut over small, flat breasts - hints at a fragile ribcage lying beneath. Her weedy, stem-like legs bend inwards slightly, in a poor pantomime of childhood bowleggedness. 68

She is a fawn, like no other has been.69

I press her firmly against a wall, and she cranes her neck as I seed it with false kisses. I seek out her hands. They are covered in thin sweat, and cold. But I will warm them in my candle-flame. No worry.70

I work my way into her. She wraps her legs about me and quietly pants as I thrust. Her eyes open wide at every stab.71

“C’mon, baby,” I command her, “Bend over.”72

I pull out and allow her to turn her back. Then I coil my hand like the hammer of a pistol. Looking over her shoulder, she notices me and begins to inquire, when I jab outwards and connect with her face, flooring her.73

When she wakes, I have gagged her with paper towel and bound her to the tall desk in her bedroom with nylon rope. Through the cloth, she whimpers urgently, her eyes ablaze with fear.74

“Hush, hush, my lamb,” I murmur. “All will be well.”75

She continues to blubber into the gag. 76

“You should feel blessed,” I assure her, “There are very few in this world that I see fit to anoint. You are one of them. You have been elected to join the flock. Be honored.”77

There are some that just never calm down.78

I stroke her wet forehead, running my fingers through her mossy hair. Her hands are now gray-white and frigid again. The less blood is in them, the less mess is made. It’s the best way to take them.79

“Now sleep,” I soothe. My reddened tongue laps up and down her hands. She passes out.80

I make the first incision at the top of the capitate, beneath the knuckle of the ring finger, and draw the blade along the length of the finger. I wiggle the pointed end of the knife between the arrector pilus muscle and the bone. Using the knife as a lever against the bone, I pry the muscle free of the finger, and strip it down and away. Like a piece of jerky, like the flesh of an animal, I slip it into my waiting mouth and begin to chew.81

She tastes like very little of anything, really, but victory lives in her fiber. The willing conquest, the self-sacrifice, is in her core. When you offer yourself upon the altar of iniquity, you taste of submission.82

My lamb wakes, screaming83

There are those that don’t appreciate divinity. The police, who embody the righteousness I seek to preserve, seem to be one of many who do not. Unusual, as they are one of the few groups I consecrate with my blessing. I don’t know why I do it still.84

But they come for me. It seems to me that their response is getting faster. Perhaps they are tracking me, but they have not found me yet. 85

Angrily, I kick my disciple’s body.86

“Stupid bitch!” I howl at her, my face contorted with rage, “You led them here, didn’t you? You brought the pigs with you!”87

Her eyes expand in terror. Alarmed, she shakes her head from side to side as I rear up to kick her.88

“Shut up, little lamb, shut up.” I tell her, as I began to grind at the bone of her forearm with the serrated teeth of my instrument. “You were supposed to be a good little sheep, and just join the flock. You didn’t have to protest.”89

She starts to cry and choke on the gag. I stare coldly into her watery eyes.90

“Shut up!”91

She continues to cry. I hear a knocking on the door and a loud male voice yells.92

“NYPD! Open up!”93

Panicking, I twist her wrist to one side, snapping through the remainder of the bone. My lamb howls with pain as I rip through skin and flesh in a last desperate attempt.94

“Mrs. Sanders! We’re coming in!”95

I bound up into the chimney just as a foot tears through the door. The hinges break and the door collapses.96

“Police! Get down! Get the fuck down!” the men shout.97

“Uris, Heylon, go check the bedroom. Stephens, Traczyk – behind the couch.”98

My feet slip and I began to slide down the chimney. The brick cracks and crumbles as I dig in to prevent myself from falling.99

“What the fuck was that!? Light up the chimney!”100

Gunshots splinter the brick of the chimney as I hoist myself onto the roof, panting, and dash along the rooftop. The police cars shine spotlights and follow along as I duck and dive into the buildings on the way to my shrine. Eventually, they break away, following phantoms, and I reach my apartment. I perform the ritual on the one lonely new hand, and all the old ones. I prop the new acolyte’s hand up next to a pair of smooth, small ones, that once belonged to a girl with pretty braids in a neighborhood a nation away.101

I have one hand. I have half a worshipper. It will do, for now. And tomorrow is another night, another city, another name, another face. 102

But I’ll see the towering skyscrapers of this city once again, and soon.103

I never leave a job unfinished.104