Mae

Blue Moon:

Chances, opportunities like these, came once in a blue moon for a loner like him. It was close, clammy, hot, humid, airless on the train. The hottest night of the year. A storm was brewing outside. Inside his mind. He struggled to control his breathing, overwhelmed by the sight of her asleep in the opposite seat. Other than mice, feeding on scraps, foraging beneath their seats, they were alone. On the last train home.

One of her slim hands was gripping an empty plastic water bottle. She slumped into her seat. Her dimpled chin fell onto her chest. The shiny beige satin blouse she barely wore was unbuttoned as far as her midriff. Her fair bare legs were exposed by a fluid blue ditsy miniskirt, a pair of scuffed cognac slingback sandals.

Blue moon. A creature of the night. Paleskin dreams. The girl on everyone’s lips. His lips,

‘Mae.’

Baby blonde hair. She had baby blonde hair, neatly parted down the middle, swept behind her ear, one side hanging loose, the other draped, touching her chest. Darkening her face. He studied her closely. Her nose was broken at the bridge, an obscene bulge, her glans, swelled the tip. Her lips appeared to be synthetic, bloated pink rubber bands, split in the middle. He wondered if they were injected with Botox, needle-probes, to prise them apart. Her mouth opened. The gaps in her crooked teeth were unnaturally large, dark, spaces. In her mouth she hid her tongue. Her pencil thin brows rose, one her sleepy eyelid opened, revealing a glassy grey eye. She had a tiny caramel mole on her throat. It moved whenever she smiled. She grinned, stretching her elasticated lips, exposing a mouthful of teeth. Not her tongue. Mae didn’t show her tongue to anyone, until it was too late.

He regarded her fingers. She wore no gold, silver, platinum. There could never be a ring,

‘Mae,’ he said, leaning forward brazenly in his seat. She watched him open his legs.

Cocky. He’s so cocky. How is it, my young prey are so cocky? So easy for me. Easy meat.

‘Mae.’

She unfolded her legs, uncrossing them so that he could get a good butchers of her thighs. His eyes widened. She wasn’t wearing any panties tonight. Mae must have slipped them off in the stultifying heat. He sweated profusely, his charcoal grey-mottled shirt buttoned right up to his thick swarthy neck, arms buttoned down to his wrists, the chunky gold watch sticking to him, coated with intimate moisture. She held her tongue, primed, ready to strike, pressing hard against the backs of her teeth, bursting to get out. He had wiry chestnut hair, balding at the temples, thin and patchy on top, glistening with his man-dew.

That’ll have to go, the head. His head’s no good to me. I could always bury it in the yard.

The buttons on his shirt were white. On the tapered chest he wore a breast pocket. Home, she saw, to a rectangular shape. Debit card? Season ticket?

Cut it into slithers! Melt the watch. Burn his shirt on a bonfire in my yard. And his jeans.

Jeans! In this heat? The fool-on-the-hill. He lived on Pouting Hill, she recalled. Attractive wife: brunette, fleshy, succulent, chewy, doughy, tough, sinewy Sal. Two kids. Fat, porky, Justin: roast him in the oven on a bed of roots till nicely browned, serve with apple sauce? Mindy: chicken’s legs, de-skin, bone her thighs, shallow fry in clarified butter, serve them with a tart red wine sauce? Mae’s disruptive mind returned to her willing prey. He was craving her. Stupidly, he leaned forward, his thick cotton shirt stuck to his back, left hand at rest on his knee, flashing his huge Swiss watch at Mae, failing, entirely, to impress her.

His jeans were tight. She made him bulge. Couldn’t speak. Could never speak. Mute. She scratched the insect bite above her right breast, raking at her itchy, pallid skin. He watched her slim digits scratch herself, feverish, animalistic, above her breast. Mae eyed his tanned hand, resting calmly, patiently, on his kneecap. The young prey had stubby fingers, short, clean nails, bitten to the quick. She smiled, mute, her teeth clenched, holding back, just about controlling her pushy, probing tongue.

At least, he’s got clean hands.

He made his move. An elbow bent at the joint, pulling at the sleeve, forcing his hand into a neat fist, exposing the slick matt of soaking wet hair coating his forearm. The prey had a hound dog smirk on its face, underneath the light brown beard, scrawny moustache. He propped his chin with a fist, gazing at Mae from under his bushy brows, hooded eyelids, using his piercing nut-brown eyes to consume her attention. His eyes, circled with brown: tiredness, stress, sex, self-gratification?

‘Mae,’ he said, gently, ‘I’m Nick. I keep a discreet pied-a-terre, a secret, by the common. Will you come there with me, please?’

She shook her head, reached across the divide, and held his hand to her bared right breast.

‘Mae?’

She shook her head sadly, running her fingers over her stretched pink lips, couldn’t speak.

‘Mae?’

She nodded, smiled, held her tongue, bit her tongue. Her smile told Nick, all he needed,

I have a better idea.

The train stopped. The doors slid open, gushing out hot air. They stood in silence, holding each other. Mae smiled.

Time to get off, with Nick.

Hot Tarmac:

Surfers. Late night Surfers. Surfing the net, the web, the line. Caught up in a spider’s web of deceit. Desire. Lust. Prey for the predator. Breaking taboos. Crossing blurred lines of acceptability. Crossing lines.

Nick got off after Mae, crossing the yellow safety line, his safety line. The doors slid shut. The train moved off. They stood in silence on the empty platform. Him behind her. Safe distance: social distance: metre. Mae smiled for the camera, candid camera, then mooned. Keeping her slender thighs and calves straight, knees in, legs closed, she bent, at the hips, reaching forward until she touched the tarmac. The tarmac felt hot to touch, tacky on her fingertips. She exhaled through her nose, holding her tongue in place behind her clamped teeth, stretching her pink, rubbery lips, smiling expectantly,

Soiled pants on my fire. Bloody rare rump, his rump, on my plate. Warm sauce Bearnaise.

He shiver-breathed at the sight of her, skirt hitched high, mooning for him. Her taut, pale buttocks shone under the station lights. Drool fodder for the boys in the Incident Room. Up the junction. Christ! He could make out blue veins running up the backs of her knees, the tendons, straining in her calves and thighs. The sheer effort of her impressed him,

The abs she must have. The strength in those abs.

Mae messaged him. Advertising her body subliminally. Indecently exposing herself. His mind made itself up,

She fancies me, her place, not mine.

Then she was straightening at the hip, softening at the knee, standing upright. Mae stepped into the gates of delirium, extracting the railcard from a slit in her miniskirt, wiping it on the reader. She swished her skirt, Monroe. Her prey tried to look away. Couldn’t. A hard lump formed in his throat:

I’ve an attractive wife: brunette, fleshy, succulent, chewy, doughy Sal, kids: Justin Mindy.

Nick stamped his feet in frustration. He’d left his jacket on the train: comb, wallet, keys, hope, love, loyalty.

Now what’ll I do?

Secrets, dirty secrets. One-way-tickets to lust. Portals, openings, apertures. Gates, to Mae.

She turned to face him, across her divide, their causeway. His bleary eyes fell to her chest. The shiny beige satin blouse she barely wore was open. Mae let a breast hang out for him.

Coming out to play with me tonight?

Angry with himself, yet captive, her prey swiped his debit card, passing through her gates, and – with that – obliterating all hope of going home.

Dark Recess:

Acquaintances, casual acquaintances. Vermin. Sniffing each other out. Her body sheened, glossy with perspiration. His torso, fresh meat, basted, dripping, in stinking, stale sweat. Searching for intimacy, satiation, gratification, repletion, then rest, in the stultifying heat,

‘Mae.’

She stood, quiescent, by the self-serve ticket machine, staring at the screen: single, return? Her mouth quinsy, tonsils inflamed, her oral tissue, buccal lining in her cheeks, sored by a septic abscess from the graft of holding her virulent tongue behind her teeth. The gastric acid juice from her upset tummy etched her throat as she contemplated her nocturnal feast. Turret. Mae would tease, taste, taunt him, turn in for the night, then take him. In the turret. Her dark recess. Her funereal, four-tier facility. Her tummy rumbled, starved of his flesh, craving his fresh carcass: sex n supper in her carnal house: summerhouse: slaughterhouse: charnel house. Momentarily exhausted by her sensual contemplation, she fell on the gates,

My stomach’s telling my mouth it’s time to eat. What’ll it be, Mae? Roast leg, mint sauce, redcurrant jelly. His sausage fried. Shave him till he’s bald and hairless. Bit in his mouth.

Her prey feasted his eyes on her, slumped all over the ticket barrier, desperate to find her a secluded place, a fag-strewn urinal or littered alcove where the filthy reprobate could grope and kiss his bimbo. Nick casually shuffled up to her side, a clown without a circus,

‘Mae, take my arm.’

I would rather take your leg. Pot roast you, then slice off all your tender, succulent meat.

Mae wrapped her long, slim, bony, fingers round his right elbow, and they left the station. For the first time that night, she felt his intimacy, saturated, matted, hair wetting her hand as she gripped his forearm. Mae couldn’t wait to peel his wet shirt off! Comforted by his manliness, she smiled up at him affectionately, squeezing his flesh, making him feel good.

Where’re we going, darlin?

Mae’s message, her slick massage, seeped into Nick’s sweating pores, her animal musk probing, permeating his skin, a jus, an intoxicating sexual marinade for her willing victim.

‘Thought we’d find ourselves a recess,’ he said aloud.

She shrugged, grinned, baring her teeth, thrilled by the prospect of shattering his defences,

Want my breasts to be love-putty in your rough hands. To feel your nails, scratch my bum.

Her thoughts stuck, sticky-cell platelets to his surrendering mind. Struggling to retain any self-cohesion, Nick led Mae outside onto the new tarmac forecourt. His favourite recess was seconds away, past the blooming buddleia bushes crawling out of cracks in the crazy pavement, past the closed Caff Hut, Balti Hut, Bull & Gate. Save for a clapped-out BMW, locked with a yellow clamp, the car park was empty. They heard an empty train shunt in a siding. Mae’s subliminal expletives callously slaying her flailing prey’s subconscious,

Shunt me! Find a dark recess, then shunt me. Hurry, darlin’. Baby wants to eat you all!

Weakening by the moment, her intended prey tugged Mae round the nearest street corner, The Huts: blacked-out by vandal-smashed streetlights. The Bull & Gate: twinkling fairy lights, violets, pinks, rubies, mauve, illuminated ivy creeping up its façade, a hand-scribed A-stand by the heavy, oaken, front door which read:

Glad to have you back – Bette n Alfie

They reached the recess. There was a gas lamp fitted with a (Nick estimated) LED Classic BC warm white 806 lumen 9-watt equivalent to 60-watt electric light bulb that used 80% less energy. Relieved to see the stark light it cast on her portal Mae let prey lead predator into the dark shadows. They halted just outside. Movement. There was movement, inside the recess. Nick was first to speak, as Mae was tongue-tied,

‘How long are you going to be?’

A puffing, panting, foreign, far eastern sound emanated from deep within, ‘Just finished!’

The Balti phased himself out of the gloom confronting them. He wore a smart black shirt buttoned into his neck, sleeves, neatly folded as far as the elbows, a swarth of furry black hair on his arms. Pressed black trousers. Shiny black shoes. Greasy black hair, dandruff, tied off the face in a ponytail. A pronounced widow’s peak. Flappy ears. Hooter of a nose. And ridged, cocoa brown, shag circles, puffing round his eye sockets. Mae, who had never seen someone so tired, considered breakfast.

He ogled her. Her satin blouse had come unbuttoned. One of her breasts was hanging out.

Blue moon. Creature of the night. Paleskin, dreams. The girl on everyone’s lips. His lips,

‘Mae.’

Baby hair. She had baby hair, hanging loose, draped, touching her breast. Her nose was broken at the bridge, swollen at the tip. Her lips were bloated, pink, split down the middle. Her mouth opened. Gaps in her teeth, unnatural, large gaps. Mae had a tiny caramel mole on her throat. It moved, every time she smiled at him, grinning, stretching, her elastic lips.

‘Very nice,’ he remarked, opening his legs.

She gloated at him, openly taunting him,

You’re next mutton chops.

Realizing what Mae was doing, Nick intervened, shoving the beguiled, flatulent, Balti in the chest, leaving him breathless, out of puff, wind-free, deflated, flat, compressed, in the recess,

‘Take your eyes off of my broad!’ he shouted.

Stunned by the adulterer’s archaic description, The Balti backed off, disappearing in the night’s gloom. Mae smiled smugly to herself, tucking her breast snugly, inside her blouse,

Your broad? You should be so lucky.

Together, they entered the dark recess.

Tight Fit:

Parasites, symbiotic parasites. Dependents. Succulents. Tantalising. Entities. Silhouettes. Coupled, entwined, clamped to each other in an excruciating, cramped recess: a tight fit!

Mae’s hole stank! Her hole was alive! Crawling, with centipedes, lice, flies, spiders, mice, rats, less savoury inhabitants: phylum Mollusca secreting their slimy excrements over the pebble-dash walls. Nick, who was claustrophobic, diabetic, and suffered chilopodophobia poured with sweat, struggled to breathe, craved liquid, crushing creepy-crawlies with his head, shoulders, back, posterior and legs. Mae soothed his fraught mind, rubbing his torso, fluffing his thin hair, cradling his head in her hands, making the man feel loved – needed. She found a kind of love for him, call it a selfish affection, love that dispelled discomfort.

His shirt was first to go – carefully unbuttoned from neck to waist, Mae gently tugging at his tails, opening out the cuffs, airing, freeing him, before peeling off the sodden chemise, like smelly cellophane off a ripe camembert. She pecked at his nipples with her pursed lips, smothering Nick’s hairy chest, the rippled folds of flab sheathing his gross abdomen, with soft kisses.

Hearing the man gasp for her, Mae knelt on the dusty concrete floor and pulled off his sweaty, smelly, brogues, the cheap socks from the local minimarket: olive green with red dragon emblazons. Fond memories of her lost youth in Pwllheli. Halcyon holidays at Butlins. Eating her mum and dad, the winners of beauty contests: young men, women, all captivated by her disarming smile, captured, dismembered, barbecued on the family patio, served with shoestring fries, catsup, tossed tomato, raw onion salad, to discerning friends with an appetite for human flesh. The missing persons list grew, suspicions were aroused. Ann had simply changed her name, identity, cultivated a new personality, new look, gone into hiding, then resurfaced as Mae: at night, on rainy days, in dark recesses, black turrets, grey cells, summerhouses, charnel houses, carnal houses. She heard her fresh carrion cry,

‘I love you, Mae. Your my world.’

Touched by her prey’s kindness, his loving words for her, she set about preparing him for the slaughterhouse. There were real tears in her eyes when Mae unbuckled his belt, pulled down his trousers, and freed him. Choking with emotion, gagging on her pent-up tongue, she held the naked man in her arms, held him close, his body pressed against hers, opened her mouth, and kissed him. They kissed invasively, like symbiotic parasites, drinking each other’s saliva. Mae’s tongue swelled inside her prey’s mouth, filling his throat, secreting her digestive enzyme. Stunned, incapacitated, he became her dependent, her succulent, tantalising entity. Silhouettes, coupled, entwined, clamped to each other, they fell thru her psychotic abyss, spiralling ever downwards into a narrowing recess – ending in a pinprick.

Mae plunged her prey into a sea of light, discarding him, spent, and wasted, on her grey cell floor. His meat: stress-free, cells: free of lactic acid, since her tender caress, his mind: neutralized by the vixen’s toxic kiss.

Nick lay twitching in spasm, mute, unable to scream. 

Grey Cell:

Paraplegic, Jelly Baby. Violated. Soft-centred. Imploding. Mae’s Jelly Baby. Jelly Man. Nick had never felt so tired. He’d endured the worst of Covid, long Covid, SARS, man-flu, the common cold. Nothing as debilitating as this. Mae’s kiss literally drained all the life out of him. His arms lay loose at his sides, his dead legs cocked at angles: flimsy, scarecrow’s legs. Useless. There were no sensations left in the prey’s skin, nose, tongue, nose, eyes, ears – genitals for that matter. The voyeur’s once-proud tool hung like a pork 8 freshly extruded from a sausage-making machine, resting, inert, on its numb bed of testicles. He was no longer of any physical or emotional benefit to Mae, in that respect.

Nick felt a muscle pull in his chest, a sharp, stabbing pain: his heart succumbing to her poison. He was out of shape, the facilities manager. Too many late nights in the office, planning, scheduling, organising, and coordinating furniture moves, minor refurbishment, managing the contractors, checking out the reports. Alone with his thoughts, a cold coffee, double cheeseburger, chips, fried apple pie, a one-pound bar of fruit n nut, the inevitable grab bag of cheese and onion crisps. Sometimes, he saved the treats till later, scoffed the sweet and savoury feast on the train home, brushing mess from his groin and thighs in full view of his travelling companion. Of Mae. She looked away when he cleaned off the food scraps, until he’d finished, until he was ready to concentrate on her.

Mentally, Nick kicked himself. He should have known, her teases, her erotic overtures to him were all traps, premeditated charms, to capture his imagination, to take him into this hellhole, their recess. What was that all about? He tried to rationalize Mae, the temptation of her, his full, bodily surrender to her on their last train, at the gates, the shady alcove by the Balti Hut which led him here. But he couldn’t, he failed, miserably. Reflecting on his insignificant life, Nick wondered why she chose him. He was hardly the most handsome, dashing, sexy commuter on the line. Why did she select him? How did she find him? Was their encounter really a chance meeting? He recalled Mae, sitting in the end coach, when he boarded at Bank. There was an empty seat opposite her. He’d seized the opportunity and watched her. This was all his fault.

He lay flat on his back on the stone floor staring up at the whorls in the ceiling, wondering if he was going to die, coming to the inescapable conclusion,

I will die if I don’t have my insulin injection. Come off it, Nick! Mae’s about to kill you. Why would she do that? To what end?

A bizarre thought flashed through his mind: the white inscription on the red mug that Sal gave him for his birthday:

Keep Calm You’re Only 48

Keep Calm?

Nick’s jaw flapped open, giving up the ghost. He tried to move his head. Couldn’t. His heavy eyelids fell, like broken blinds, over his weary eyes. The ache returned in his heart. He felt stomach cramps. An agonizing piercing pain, corkscrewing, twisting the inside of his prostate, his bladder – swelling, a caustic burning sensation in his urethra: Mae’s curse. Nick wet himself. The forcibly spurted release of hot urine over his thighs eased the pain. Anaesthetized by the woman’s deadly kiss, he fell into a satisfying sleep, and dreamed of life.

By now, her poison had etched its way into his viscera, penetrating the lining of Nick’s stomach, duodenum, jejunum, and rectum, entering the bloodstream, then spreading, her contagion, her mutated spiral helix virus, rapidly to the kidneys, liver, lungs, and bladder. It was only a matter of seconds before Mae’s pungent, acrid-smelling saliva dissipated in mauve plumes of plasma, congealing into luminescent cerise orbs, her killer cells, kiss-phage’s that digested the vulnerable tissue of the prey’s organs. He felt the orbs eat into his brain, and the marvellous memories: of Sal’s water births, holding his bloodied babies, patting sandcastles with Justin and Mindy on Clacton Sands, picnics on the stained tartan rug in the woods, picking blackberries, magic mushrooms, with his family. The family he neglected, in favour of his workaholic tendencies, his adulterous obsession, with Mae.

Riddled from crown to heel with the curse she carried in her sputum, Nick felt his body tense, conceding to her as the final vestiges of energy, his cellular barriers of resistance, were broken down by her cell’s gnawing secretions, exposing the prey’s DNA strands to mutation.

Mae put him out of his misery, squatting comfortably on his stomach, leaning forward to insert the full distended length of her abhorrent tongue down his throat, swell-suffocating him, killing him softly, with her to-u-u-u-u-u-ungue. She sang her favourite love song in her mind, extracting her whiplash, ciliated langue from his oesophagus, coating herself in his slime as she slithered out of him.

He’s dead, she considered, strumming his face with her fingers, Supper’s nearly ready.

There was a yucca tree in the grey cell housed in a bright red recycled Christmas tree pot. Her double bed sat beside the shrub: a mess of soiled, crumpled sheets, squashed pillows, covered with an interwoven ash grey quilt, a grey, tartan throw. No headboard. Mae never slept with heads. She stood over her prey, looking down on him, despising him for treating her like a whore, his so-called broad. She removed her blouse and miniskirt, crouched on the bed, and waited, naked, starving for human flesh.

The Balti appeared, a genie out of her lamp, at the end of her bed, dressed in only an iron mask, thick black rubber apron, and surgical wellingtons. Carrying: a butcher’s meat saw. He admired Mae: her baby blonde hair slopped over one side of her face, her rubbery lips, her soft, doughy breasts n puffy nipples, her perfectly formed abs, taut stomach muscles, the knotted blue veins, standing out of her sinewy arms, as she fisted the springy mattress,

‘Nice,’ he said, so wishing he had a bunch of roses to present to her, his beautiful heroine.

Mae smiled at him appreciatively, nodding towards the carcass lying prostate on the floor,

With that, the butcher grabbed hold of one of the prey’s swollen ankles and dragged him out of sight.

Wet Dream:

She was having that dream again. Her wet dream. The dream where she was spreadeagled on the crumpled sheet, duvet pushed down the damp bed to tilting point by her impatient feet, having her body explored by him. He started with her face, lips, trying to kiss her in the mouth. She tolerated more than enjoyed his intimate intrusion, parting her moist lips, opening her mouth, admitting his tongue. So that he could have his oral way with her. His ‘rinse and spit’, she called it. The kiss where he rinsed her gums, her tongue, the roof of her mouth, her tonsils, back of her throat, with his juice, spitting inside her. This habit, cultivated by him as a necessary prelude to their lovemaking, forced on her as part of their unspoken pact, she accepted, in exchange for her pleasures to come. His kiss gave her a sore throat afterwards; he couldn’t be bothered to floss, inter-dent, sloosh, rinse and spit for her, before he came to bed. He rinsed and spat inside her. His beard hurt her, abrading the thin skin round her lips. She sighed with relief when he moved further down her body, tracing his lick-line over her neck, her chest, kissing her little breasts, sucking her bendy teats until they stood erect,

‘Love it when you’re my baby,’ she moaned, ‘Be my baby.’

He managed a slurping, gurgling noise. She hadn’t managed to breastfeed Justin, Mindy, her breasts were too small, couldn’t make enough milk. For all his weird fetishes her man had his compensations, and this, her adult breastfeeding of him, her baby, was one of his best. She let herself go, intertwining her fingers with his hair, taking his head in her hands, pushing him down, feeling his beard on her tummy. She opened her legs, all tingly inside,

‘Kiss my mouth.’

He licked her with his outstretched tongue, his beard brushing her, mingling with her hair, pausing only to murmur,

‘Lie on your front. Hurry.’

The urgency in his voice excited her. He moved aside, watching her hungrily, as she rolled onto her front. The wet sheet clung to her breasts, her tummy, her groin. She felt his beard brushing, scratching, the soft skin on her slender back, her shoulder blades, the small of her back. Felt his hands grasp her hips, slipping, sliding gently over her perfectly rounded, smooth buttocks, prising her apart. She opened her legs wide for him, held herself open for him, admitting his tongue, so that he could twist and turn inside her, his key, unlocking her sacred vault. She stretched an arm out to his side of the bed gripping the sodden sheet in her tight fist, she ascended, seeing stars, in her own intimate night sky, above her head.

Gradually, she came back down, hyperventilating, her blushing face stuffed in the pillow, letting her dream subside. Twisting her head to one side, she opened her eyes, and stared at the luminous hands on her copper alarm clock: 3am. Her dreams always ended at 3am. She climbed off the bed and padded to the full-length window, pressing her face, breasts, and stomach against the cool pane, steaming the glass. Sal mouthed into her breath’s mist,

‘Come home soon, Nick, I love you.’

Tough Meat:

Depilation. Exfoliation. Hair removal. Shaving. Curing. Tasting. Necrophilia. Cannibal. Nick wasn’t coming home anytime soon to be loved by Sal. His mortality, his tenure of her, the dull employment he undertook to provide for his faithful wife and children, was over, snuffed out by the whore’s tongue.

The Balti dragged his body down the spiralling staircase to the next tier of Mae’s turret, her abattoir, with scant regard for his wellbeing: bruising, contusing, nicking, abrading, battering, his head, limbs, and torso as he bumped Nick down the concrete fire steps into oblivion. Fighting her need to drown her extended tongue in the corpse’s gastric juices, halt The Balti on the semi-circular landing, prise open Nick’s jaws, project her langue in spurious spasmic reflexions down his oesophagus – penetrating his pyloric defences – Mae tagged along, making a mental list of things to do, clutching the butcher’s meat saw,

I’m starving! I hope he’s soft and tender, buttery, not tough and chewy, tasty not bland.

They arrived at the abattoir, which was brightly lit up by spatter-proof fluorescent tubes sealed in the high ceiling. The abattoir, call it Nick’s final destination, consisted of a long hallway with washable impervious walls and padded bathroom flooring, softened, to care for Mae’s bare feet. Along one wall hung all manner of butchery tools, electrical devices, a wash hand basin with hand sanitiser, soap, nailbrush, green paper towels, her Vim, elbow-operated hot and cold taps, a blood-spattered shower cubicle. At the far end of the slaughterhouse, Mae had arranged for the installation of four upright freezers, labelled: legs, torsos, offal, waste. There was another door, a tattered paper sign that read: Kitchen This Way, and, at dead centre, a raised marbled plinth bearing a bloodstained marble slab.

Mae left the saw by the slab, went to the basin, and scrubbed her hands. Meanwhile, The Balti dragged Nick’s body onto the plinth, laying him to rest on his back. He stood aside admiring Mae, his love idol, culinary inspiration, celebrity role model, his feisty, feline, gourmet, as she prepared her meat for mealtime. The constant green light told her the electrical device was fully charged, ready to use. Mae removed the body shaver from its wall socket, unclipped the safety guard, switched on her pleasure device and knelt beside her prey, mute and mouthing, inhibited by her tongue, straining violently behind her teeth,

Time you were shorn, baby, bare as you were born.

She began with his head, delicately teasing out his nasal hair, growth in his ears, digging out his brows, shaving off his beard. Mae shaved him bald, sweeping her shaver over his pate: front to back, back to front, side to side, behind the ears, down his nape. She ran her fingers over his shaven cheeks, his chin, kissing him, setting free her tongue, curing his putrefying flesh with her acid saliva,

Mmmn, you’re lovely and soft. You must have been a sexual gorilla for Sal when you were alive, she mused, look at all your body hair! Oh well, I can’t have hair in my food, can I?

‘Nice!’ observed the Balti in the background.

Mae wound back her tongue, her slippery, slithering, oral, eelworm, opened her eyes, and shaved Nick’s chest, armholes, arms, stomach, crotch, legs. The Balti rolled him onto his back for her, sweeping the floor with his broom as his mistress shaved off swathes of her man’s coarse black hair: his back, legs, bum. Rigor mortis set in. Her prey went all stiff. When he was bald, completely hairless, she nodded at her accomplice to flip the corpse on its back. The Balti held the meat saw aloft, brandishing it like a sword, preparing for the final cuts.

She shook her head. He understood. Mae wanted to spend their final moments alone. The Balti left the abattoir. He left her to enjoy his body whole. Left her to pleasure herself. He stood in the doorway, watching as, stark naked, Mae straddled her lover’s belly, and made love to him.

*****

Saturday Night – The Balti Hut

‘You haven’t touched your Curry, darling.’

Ben waved his fork, gesticulating, trying to remove the indigestible meat from his mouth,

‘It tastes funny, Claire,’ he chomped, ‘It doesn’t taste right, even mixed in with chutney.’

Claire, 28, engaged to be married to Ben, 31, reached across the candlelit table with her fork, flashing her diamond ring for all the other diners to see. They were sitting outside, one metre from the next table, holding hands, sipping bubbly, gazing up at the stars, into each other’s eyes, the look of love was in their eyes. Claire had ordered Chicken Tikka Marsala, Vegetable Fried Rice, a Poppadom. The chicken tasted strange, quite unlike any chicken she’d ever tasted before,

‘Here let me try it,’ she helped herself to a mouthful, then immediately spat it out into her napkin, ‘Ugh! It tastes disgusting! You should complain to Mr Balti. Ask for a free meal.’

‘I don’t like to,’ protested Ben, ‘The food here is usually excellent. How’s your chicken?’

‘So-so,’ Claire pushed her food round her plate having lost her appetite, ‘It isn’t chicken.’

‘Not chicken! And this,’ her fiancé shouted, loudly, pointing, for all to hear, ‘Isn’t beef!’

There was uproar on the terrace, a clattering of cutlery on plates as other diners joined in,

‘Mine isn’t lamb!’

‘This isn’t Bombay Duck!’

‘Call this goat?!’

‘Oh my God!’ cried Claire, ‘Do you think it’s, think it’s… dog?’

‘No, it isn’t dog,’ Ben reassured her, ‘I’ve eaten dog in China. I think it might be…’

Mr Balti appeared on the terrace, covered in blood, dressed in an iron mask, rubber apron, surgical wellingtons, carrying a bloody meat saw. He admired Mae, walking towards him, daubed from head to toe in fresh blood, the ‘girl at the high school prom’, dripping scarlet!

‘Nice,’ he said, wishing he had a bunch of red roses to present to her, his beautiful heroine.

Mae smiled at him, appreciatively, morsels of Nick’s raw flesh, hanging from her teeth.

All the diners screamed!

*****

Mae one of 22 stories from predatory, my darkest anthology, out now on amazon:

Predatory: Furl, HJ: 9798302451941: Amazon.com: Books

• Audio Upload: