“Meat Eater”

We didn't even know where to begin when we started cleaning up the crime scene. So vast, so bloody, and for some, so personal was this murder that for a moment it seemed as though we were frozen in place, but eventually, we began to divide ourselves into groups and proceeded to conduct one of the more unpleasant parts of our job description. I remember feeling as though my mind was lost within a dense fog as we transported her various pieces to where we'd found her head earlier that morning. Nothing about that day seemed real. What we were doing felt more like a lucid nightmare than it did reality, but the reality of the situation was inescapable each time I would take a piece of her into my mouth and be assaulted by the foul stench of death in my nose and the taste of rotten blood upon my tongue, by the incessant buzz of the flies which skittered back and forth between the dead flesh between my teeth and my face, and by the sinking feeling that plagued my stomach as the gravity of the situation began to press down upon me.

Finally, after what felt like ages, we finished collecting her body and prepared to take it to the coroner, but we found ourselves once again frozen in place as we collectively stared down upon her severed head.

"Well... you know one of us is gonna have to carry it back," I said finally as I watched the ants and maggots crawl into and out of her eyes, "so who's it gonna be?"

All eyes around me averted themselves away and a silence fell. I couldn't say I blamed them. The same apprehensions which held them in place had arrested my body and mind long ago, but one way or another, the job had to be done.

"Okay," I said through a sigh, "there's really only one fair way to do this."

I turned to the small male to my right.

"Candu, go and get me some short twigs."

The male nodded and then began to scour the area for twigs, and then once he returned, he set them at my paws.

"Okay," I began as I took the twigs into my paws and then mixed them up, "you all know the drill."

With only the tops of the twigs showing, I raised my paw and then one by one, each alpha pulled a twig from my grasp until only one remained.

"Alright," I sighed, hesitantly, "show 'em."

With great suspense, we each held out the twigs we'd selected, and when I realized that I had drawn the short stick, my stomach sank.

"Fuck..." I said, numbly.

"Sorry, Kate," Hutch muttered softly.

"It's okay," I replied, though inside I was not sure if I possessed the strength to do what I knew I had to do, "fair's fair."

Slowly I turned and set my eyes upon her head once more, but fear and disgust briefly held me in place.

"It's okay, Kate," Scar suddenly chimed as I felt a paw fall upon my shoulder, "I can carry it if-"

"No, it's okay," I interrupted, "I drew the short stick. So I carry the head. Those are the rules."

Scar nodded and stepped back as I drew in a collective breath then stepped toward her head.

"Okay," I said at the bottom of a breath, "let's do this."

I tried not to think about it as I lowered my mouth toward her head and opened my jaws, but that was easier said than done as the stench of death invaded my nostrils. I paused for the briefest moment as my mouth drew near to one of her ears, and then, quickly, I latched upon it and lifted her head from the ground, but as I raised her head higher, something suddenly fell from her neck to the ground. Startled, I instinctively dropped her head and retreated a few steps back, but it wasn't long before I realized that it was only her tongue.

"Oh, goody," I said, disgusted and exhausted, "another piece to carry."

With a roll of my eyes, I approached her tongue and prepared to pick it up with my paw, but when my eyes fell upon the message which had been carved into it, my blood turned to ice.

"Have we got your attention now?"

An excerpt from my story: The End.