I was always a carnivore, a steak lover. Most steaks, I’ve learned, are cut perpendicular to the muscle fibers, so there is tenderness to the meat.
I remember her nails, they were badly done. The color reminded of blotches of spilled blood. I remember her raking it across the tanned chest of my best friend like a cat. I imagine myself striding across the apartment me and Jake (my buddy ) shared.
I imagine myself crossing the kitchen and fingering the meat cleaver lovingly like a beloved toy, admiring its sharp edges as it sliced cleanly and professionally.
While the noises of his snoring and that of my fiancée filtered through the thin walls, I can imagine myself creeping across the floors silently like a flickering shadow, a maniac face, armed with my meat cleaver.
Yesterday I stopped imagining.
It was harder than I thought, the cleaving.
I struck when they were sleeping; creeping like a festering sore. I struck his neck first.
The blade felt like it was stuck into a thick piece of resisting, stringy, hard, meat. He attempted to strangle me. He was only good as charred meat, tough scraps that were good for feeding to dogs.
I thought I might pay a little visit to the pound later. What a treat it would be, to those poor dogs.
On the floor she screamed like a banshee.
Her head sailed cleanly from her thin, pale neck; the blood on her was like the blotches of her cheap nail polish. It was a cut that would make any butcher proud.
I carefully cut perpendicularly into her tender hips, milk white hips that would often rise to Jake’s relentless rhythm.
She was, just as I imagined, like sirloin steak.
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© 2010 Francesca Angelique Carrillo
