I lifted my left arm to protect myself. I mean, I could live without a left arm, but not without a throat. It was then that I had a sudden flashback. I remembered when I was a kid, when I was thin and runty and terrified of dogs. My father had given me a packet of dog treats to take to school, so that if I was threatened by a dog I could offer it something to appease it. “Always remember that, kid. Dogs prefer food to children, every time. Food is easier to eat.”
I reached into the vat behind me and scooped out a huge handful of pink gloop. It felt disgusting … soft and fatty, and it dripped. I held it toward the Presa Canario and said, “Here, Cerberus! You want something to eat? Try some of this!”
The dog stared up at me with those red reflective eyes as if I were mad. Its black lips rolled back and it bared its teeth and snarled like a massed chorus of death-rattles.
I took a step closer, still holding out the heap of gloop, praying that the dog wouldn’t take a bite at it and take off my fingers as well. But the Presa Canario lifted its head and sniffed at the meat with deep suspicion.
“Kill, Cerberus, you stupid mutt!” shouted Mr. Le Renges.
I took another step toward it, and then another. “Here, boy. Supper.”
The dog turned its head away. I pushed the gloop closer and closer but it wouldn’t take it, didn’t even want to sniff it.
I turned to Mr. Le Renges. “There you are … even a dog won’t eat your burgers.”
Mr. Le Renges snatched the dog’s leash from the slaughterman. He went up to the animal and whipped it across the snout, once, twice, three times. “You pathetic disobedient piece of shit!”
Mistake. The dog didn’t want to go near me and my handful of gloop, but it was still an attack dog. It let out a bark that was almost a roar and sprang at Mr. Le Renges in utter fury. It knocked him back onto the floor and sank its teeth into his forehead. He screamed, and tried to beat it off. But it jerked its head furiously from side to side, and with each jerk it pulled more and more skin away.
Right in front of us, with a noise like somebody trying to rip up a pillowcase, the dog tore his face off, exposing his bloodied, wildly-popping eyes, the soggy black cavity of his nostrils, his grinning lipless teeth.
He was still screaming and gargling when three of the slaughter-men pulled the dog away. Strong as they were, even they couldn’t hold it, and it twisted away from them and trotted off to the other side of the killing floor, with Mr. Le Renges’ face dangling from its jaws like a slippery latex mask.
I turned to the slaughtermen. They were too shocked to speak. One of them dropped his knife, and then the others did, too, until they rang like bells.
* * *
I stayed in Calais long enough for Nils to finish fixing my car and to make a statement to the sandy-haired police officer. The weather was beginning to grow colder and I wanted to get back to the warmth of Louisiana, not to mention the rare beef muffelettas with gravy and onion strings.
Velma lent me the money to pay for my auto repairs and the Calais Motor Inn waived all charges because they said I was so public spirited. I was even on the front page of The Quoddy Whirlpool. There was a picture of the mayor whacking me on the back, under the banner headline HAMBURGER HERO.
Velma came out to say goodbye on the morning I left. It was crisp and cold and the leaves were rattling across the parking-lot.
“Maybe I should come with you,” she said.
I shook my head. “You got vision, Velma. You can see the thin man inside me and that’s the man you like. But I’m never going to be thin, ever. The poboys call and my stomach always listens.”
The last I saw of her, she was shading her eyes against the sun, and I have to admit that I was sorry to leave her behind. I’ve never been back to Calais since and I doubt if I ever will. I don’t even know if Tony’s Gourmet Burgers is still there. If it is, though, and you’re tempted to stop in and order one, remember there’s always a risk that any burger you buy from Tony Le Renges is people.
Ecstasy
Nancy Kilpatrick
“Ecstasy” was first published in Master/Slave, edited by Thomas Roche and published by Venus Books in 2004.
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Award-winning author Nancy Kilpatrick writes and edits in the horror, dark fantasy, mystery and erotica genres. She has published 18 novels, including the popular 4-book Power of the Blood vampire series. A unique reprinting (in slipcase) of her seven novel erotic horror series The Darker Passions (writing as Amarantha Knight) is available from MHB Press.
Some of her roughly 200 published short stories have worked their way into 5 short story collections. You can read a few of her recent pieces in Blood Lite, Blood Lite 2—Overbite (both Pocket Books), Hellbound Hearts (Pocket Books), The Bleeding Edge (Dark Discoveries), The Living Dead and By Blood We Live (both Night Shade Books), Don Juan and Men (MLR Press), Vampires: Dracula and the Undead Legions (Moonstone Books), The Bitten Word (Newcon Press), Campus Chills (Stark Publishing), Darkness on the Edge (PS Publishing), Vampires: The Recent Undead (Prime Books), Best New Vampire Tales #1 and Best New Zombie Tales #3 (both from Books of the Dead Press). Upcoming stories will appear in The Moonstone Book of Zombies and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women.
She has also written one non-fiction book The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined (St. Martin’s Press), and has edited ten anthologies, the latest (from Edge SF&F Publishing) being a horror/dark fantasy anthology Tesseracts Thirteen (co-edited with David Morrell, 2009), Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead (www.vampires-evolve.com , 2010), Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (August 2011). A new anthology is in the works.
For Brainstorm Comics, she scripted three of her short stories in VampErotica #5, 6, and 13 and these comics and stories combine with interviews to create the graphic novel Nancy Kilpatrick’s Vampyre Theater, out in 2011. You can find out the latest about Nancy on her webpage www.nancykilpatrick.com and follow her on facebook.
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Ecstasy came out of my perception of how far some people will go to be loved.
The world, it seems, is bound for hell. You grip the hand basket tighter, holding onto your life.
This is the first time you have come for him, and that unnerves you. With luck you will find him. With more luck, you won’t. Either way, intuition implies you are not in a good position, despite what you now believe.
Everywhere you turn, white light assaults your eyes as if it were the white-light tunnel of death instead of moonlight glinting knife blade sharp off snow. Harsh air forces you to pull inward, shrinking back to yourself, shriveling, becoming smaller to hide from the cold. Nowhere you have been was the environment this inhospitable to human survival, although you realize other places on the planet are worse. Still, you haven’t been there and, in the midst of this trauma your cells suffer in anticipation of freezing to death, speculation seems pointless.