Alive by Jake Walters

So what do you think? Shall we eat out or dine in? The city is a huge sphere of blue and orange lights glowing against the night sky; under that sky are hundreds of homeless people for whom every instant must be terrifying. Where will they eat? What? With whom? And we are here, safe and warm enough. I suppose we will eat right here at home, you and I, and I will prepare the food while you bathe. There is nothing wrong with my cooking; you will wash your face and I will slice off the useless, once beautiful skin there; you will rub the soap along your thighs and I will carve those slabs of meat away until I see nothing but hard, white bone, greasy with blood. No screams, no sounds. I can carry the meat from a thousand bodies and boil it up, the steam rising toward the ceiling, condensing on the light bulb. The smell, oh god, the smell, wafting through the entire apartment and then into the hallway, where people will wonder what we are celebrating inside. Well, tell them, my dear. We are celebrating life. We are happy to be alive.

© 2013 Jake Walters

Jake Walters has been published in numerous journals, including Fractured West, 34th Parallel, Corvus Review, Allegory, the horror anthology America the Horrific, and many others.  He currently lives in Transylvania, a place of the world with which he is intimately familiar, after serving three and a half years there as a Peace Corps volunteer.

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