Part of the Deal

There was a pause. "My goodness," muttered Vivian, looking down at her dress. "I'll have to change…"

Sunday dinner was a sumptious affair. A few delicacies, artichoke hearts and shiitake mushrooms, would grace the Club's plates…but Melanie was the main course. Her headless body was roasted to a deep sepia hue; long legs and arms curled beneath her, knobbed, charred bones protruding where her hands and feet had been severed, she was still steaming as she was served on a colorful bed of red cabbage and shaved carrots. As the chef plunged his serving fork through the girl's crisp, brown skin, fat ran in rivulets down her broad, meaty back, and from the tops of her plump buttocks to her thick haunches. He carved slabs from the girl's loin and thighs and passed them around the huge oaken table; the wives dove in with gusto…their husbands, less so.

"Why, George," said his wife, a forkful of Melanie's meat poised between plate and mouth, "You've barely touched your steak. You love tenderloin."

"Eat up, old man," Phil Pendleton said around a mouthful of rich flesh. "No doggie bags around here!"

A laugh echoed around the table…the prosperous and their wives, a laugh at the expense of the luckless young woman they were devouring because it had been her turn to die. George had been thinking about the apartment; he picked up his knife and fork, sawed off a slice of his girlfriend. "Seen that waitress at the Café Del Rosa yet, Phil?" he asked, popping the savory morsel in his mouth.

"Already working on the next one," scolded Mabel Craddock. "Shame on you, George Wilkinson; enjoy the one you've got in front of you, first." She washed down some of Melanie's fatty buttock with the '67 champagne. "And besides," she continued, "if you keep bringing them in like this," gesturing to the carved-up carcass gracing the center of the table, "I'll have to go on a diet!"