LEORA KELLY
1. Docking:
Every morning Chris cut off his tail with a kitchen knife. As far as he knew, no one else had tails. No one had bared themselves enough for him to ever really know. By teatime, the tail would grow back: woolly and oblong and a little smelly.
Prep was important. A half hour before, with coffee (instant, black, a little sugar), he would scull two Panadol and two Nurofen. All four, at once. Then he would rinse the knife’s edge with vodka (and occasionally his mouth too), then lower the tail onto the chopping board, which he had screwed to the linoleum, and duct-taped it in place. Multiple strips, lined atop one another until he went numb. He’d Sharpie a jagged line across the spongy base, not before kneading his fingers between the osteal grooves, settling on the fattest, most succulent gully. Then he would clutch a wooden spoon between his teeth, his jaw tensing as the blade slid into his skin. It reminded him of primary school, stabbing his rubber with a balled pen point. They had the same buoyant resistance. Required the same pressure, same muscle flex, like sinking into gravity. And of course, red would bloom, petalling out across the corrugated plastic, and the once white board would blush and burn.
He had become quite efficient at mopping up the mess. Paper towels simply didn’t cut it. Like trying to absorb the tears of a hungry baby. The wound would just cry and weep, insatiably feasting on the pulpy sheet. Chux didn’t work either. The blood and the blue would stitch into a purplish gingham, before it all fused, marooned. Towels worked. Quite well. From Kmart. Not the softest, but necessarily robust. Heavy duty. He had a collection on rotation at different stations. One for mopping, one recovering, drowning in cloudy ammonia (girls on Reddit use it to lift period stains), and one drying, crinkling in the sun.
As soon as he’d untethered, he would lay the towel over the fountaining pond, like a tarp at a crime scene, then squeeze some Betadine over his back, the auburn beads racing down the slope like dewdrops on a car window. He quickly learnt that swaddling gauze against his ass best settled the flow, like a cork. He often reconciled this ritual with periods, actually. The pain, the blood, the clots, the cleanup, the nappy to cover it all up, like it hadn’t happened. But he would never admit this out loud.
After, he would dunk the tail in water, teasing it with a comb, scratching it clean. Its teeth nibbled, detangled, so that the hair puckered and puffed, curling into a cloud. Then he’d wrap it in foil, the sateen silver shrivelling against the shaft like an emaciated toothpaste tube. And finally, he’d package it, sealing it in a ziplocked bag, labelled with the precise decimal weight, then sanctioned to the freezer, to be cradled in frost, nestled between the week’s previously docked tails.
2. Passover:
Every Monday, Chris sold his tails to the local butcher. Mr Shepherd. He was a stout, bulky man, no head hair, lots on the chin, with the occasional droppings of something senile and chartreuse caught against the cobwebbed ends.
It wasn’t good money. But it was money. And pimping out his tails made it so that he didn’t have to eat them for dinner. He had tried this once. Out of necessity, not craving. It was ripe, supple and smoky, like marrow and ribs and all things tender of the flesh. He vomited immediately. He had actually stopped eating meat altogether. It felt more than just carnivorous. It was cannibalistic. The stringy sinew tugging between his teeth, the waxy clouds of fat erupting on his tongue, the meat juice slobbering his jaw. It felt too personal. Incestual. Intimate. He opted for baked beans instead.
Today was a particularly warm autumn day. Pinned against a bleaching sky, the sun roared, extending its paws to scratch the forearms and cheeks and backs of necks of anyone within arm’s reach. Chris was thankful for his cap. He’d picked it up from a lost property bin. He couldn’t remember where. It was good for hiding.
Weekend BBQ Pack – Save $13!
Includes 4 Ribeye Steaks, 6 Beef Sausages, and 1kg Marinated Chicken Wings
$69.00/pack (Was $82.00)
Each week a new special was chalked on the shop window. Bright, neon and pink, with bulging letters.
Inside, fat, pink appendages sagged from the ceiling, like drool, or sinking balloons suspended on glossy blue twine. Behind invisible glass, racks and heads and hooves and bellies laid bare. Autopsied carcasses, pink and flushed, plum and plump, frosted with blubber and silver skin. It smelt like metal. Tinny, tangy, tart. Chris swallowed back bile.
Shepherd was working on the prep bench, back turned, head down, his neck creased into two flabby cheeks. He didn’t look up when the door’s ding donged, nor when the esky caplonked on the bench.
‘How many have you got for me today?’
Seven. It was always seven. One for each day. Each cut.
‘Same as last week.’
Shepherd’s head moved up and down, his neck crack still intact. He didn’t turn around.
‘Leave ‘em there. Take what you need from the tin.’
Chris deposited the tails on the bench, then peeled the cash tin open, like it were a spell book, its contents threatening to blind him with its fantastic glow. He fingered a couple notes into his palm, peeked at Shepherd flaying a droopy hen, back still turned, neck still plied, so he rustled a couple extra into his pocket. He would never do this so regularly that Shepherd would notice, and never in excess, but he figured he should be rewarded for his penance.
‘Thanks, mate.’
Chris turned to leave, hand in pocket, skirting the corners of the polymer between the quicks of his fingers, counting them like a kid counts sheep. One. Two. Three…
‘No problem, kid.’
Four. Five. Six
3. Cuttings:
Every day, Shepherd would rewrite the shop’s special on the front window with pink, liquid chalk. Big, bulging letters.
Grassfed Cuts
Porterhouse Steak ~ Was $45.00/kg, Now $39.00/kg
Get them Fresh Today!
Inside, on the back bench, with a sensitive hand and a sensible head, he slid his knife into the droopy carcass, teasing it open. He kneaded it, like playdough, then sliced it apart, treating it like art, into delicate cuts. He scooped them up, wrapping them in parchment, delicate and tender like a lonely grandma whose grandchildren only visit on Christmas Eve, folded and crimped just so. He perched it atop the bench, where the cash tin once stood (he had already stowed that away), then leaned against the tiled wall, weaving his fingers round his waist, and waited.
The kid was perfectly on time. Monday. 10 o’clock. Bearing seven greasy tails.
He never said much, quip and curt, avoiding eye contact, hiding ‘neath that cap of his, with its blotchy sallow stains. He was always walking funny too, like he had a stick up his ass. The door rang as he entered and plonked the esky on the bench
‘Seven?’
‘Seven.’
Shepherd unloaded the esky, inspecting the kid’s harvest. He noticed Chris glance at the cash tin. But it wasn’t there. Shepherd felt a gentle tug at his lips.
‘Still just tails?’
Chris nodded, tersely, up and down. Shepherd plucked his tongue against his teeth.
‘Keeping the real meat for yourself, aye?’
Chris folded his lips, his eyes spinning like saucers.
Shepherd paused, his pupils dislodging from their sockets, stretching across the counter, eyeing him. Chris grabbed at his cap, fidgeting with the beak, pulling it lower. He liked hiding, it seemed.
‘No cash today, kid.’
Then, as if on cue, Shepherd cupped the papered cuts in his hands. Palms flat, arms crooked, he presented them to Chris like a romantic gesture.
‘Eye for an eye.’ He winked. ‘It’s grass-fed. High value. To compensate, ya know.’
Chris rudely accepted, his stomach taut, cheeks awash with froth. The paper was cold against his balmy palms, like stepping into a sauna after an ice bath. Shepherd reached for the esky, stretching the lid to reveal its empty belly. He passed it to Chris.
‘You know, we’re not too dissimilar, you and I.’
Chris placed the gift-wrapped meat in the esky, watching it ooze into the hollow.
‘How s-o?’
His voice curdled slightly on the drawl of the ‘so’. Shepherd finally allowed his lips to curl, plying into a crescent.
‘We want the real meat for ourselves.’
As Chris waded through the door’s silicone fringe, Shepherd’s pupils chased him, the dong dinging as he exited.
4. Exodus:
At home, Chris exiled the meat to the bottom of the fridge. He didn’t dare touch it. But with each cut tail, each passing meal, it grew all the more tempting.
At Shepherds, that next Monday, he was confronted with bright, pink bulging letters.
Gone Holidaying
See ya in two weeks.
Inside, no racks nor heads nor hooves nor bellies. The shop was wiped clean, like an undiscovered crime scene, entirely hollowed.
5. Grassfed:
Every day after Shepherd’s disappearance was another day Chris didn’t eat. Before long, he had emptied his pantry. Cans littered the kitchen bench like skeletons. And so, he felt himself decay.
His stomach rippled, an endless ribbit. As if something was inside, feasting, vacuuming his skin. It was ready to hatch.
There is a certain type of hunger. The type one gets when everything – all meat, all flesh, all blood, all bone, even kin – would pass as food. In fact, they become the craving. An insatiable, incestuous, nebulous hunger.
Chris knew it had long rot, its outers already grey, its inners a sea-sick pink. But he unwrapped it anyway. Desperate. Rimming his fingers along its pulpy corpus, he could smell, could taste, it, tinny, tangy, tart, a bloodstained petrichor. It writhed beneath his fingers as he hunted for more. He balled the tissue into a full, slimy fist, then, unhinging his jaw, he shovelled it in, ramming it down his throat, till his cheeks were bloated, heavy with skin.
His stomach full, his hunger fixed, Chris rolled onto the floor. Out the corner of his key-holed eye, he looked out to the rusting sky. It swelled and curled, coiling into a golden fleece. Chris imagined lying upon it, sinking into its cloud, then closed his eyes. And began counting sheep.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Si-
6. Slaughterhouse:
Strawn across the floor, eyes pressed shut, Chris was unmoving.
With a rattle and snare, the front door croaked open. Big feet, heavy shoes, marched over. They paused before him, a meaty mass weighing beside, slithering its arms beneath, like a forklift. It held him, tightly, like a lover, or mother, with her child, then dragged him to the bathroom, burying him in the tub. With a snowcapped fist, it coiled its fingers round his neck, squeezing it, like a stress ball. As easy as unsealing a jar of pickles, it twisted it open, then carried on, opening jam and olives, capos and pesto, round his legs and arms, knees and elbows. Then, blade unsheathed, it slid into the skin, unzipping, stripping, peeling him open, like a flower in bloom. Fuchsia. Bright, and pink. Carving against and with and toward the grain, between the breaks, excavating. Like a butcher does to his meat.
7. Fresh Meat:
On Monday, his shop restocked with racks and heads and hands and bellies, Shepherd wrote on the front window. In neon and pink, bulging letters.
Shepherd’s Special! ~ Fresh Local Lamb
Premium Leg Roast – $45.00/kg
Tender Lamb Cutlets – $39.00/kg
Juicy Lamb Chops – $48.00/kg
And more! ~ While Stocks Last
Perfect with Shepherd’s Mint Sauce and Gravy
When Leora was twelve, she wrote five novels in the back of her parents' Landcruiser while they toured around Australia. When she was twenty, she moved to Paris, writing poetry in a small notebook she picked up in Sacre Coeur. She has since roamed through ghost cities in Cyprus, hitchhiked to the Sahara, and stood on the edge of an exploding volcano in Vanuatu, collecting stories everywhere she went. Now she lives in Sydney, about to complete a degree in Creative Writing and Anthropology, exploring life's colour and carnage through her prose.