The grinding was the hard part.
Fool, fool, double the fool that she was, Sharon had gone into this thinking that the toughest work would be with the cleaver – the swing and the thunk and the thud into bone. Nah. Not once she got the hang of it.
But there wasn’t much to get the hang of with the grinder. Just the endless shoving and pushing and cranking and turning and god if she got carpal tunnel from this…
…well, it’d still be worth it. But it’d be a real son of a bitch, that’s all.
Thank god she wouldn’t need as many sausages as she’d thought she would. The central column was nearly complete, and she was just about to finish up the weaving when the phone rang.
Sharon sighed extremely loudly and lengthily, but in the end the phone kept ringing and she had no choice but to go hunting for it, finding it at last underneath a heap of chitlins.
“Hey.”
“Hi uh Sharon is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Well uh listen this is um Marie and Ieeuuuuhh just wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings. Um. About the cake. Ah. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Because it wasn’t your ah fault and nobody uh thinks any umm any thing ahh bad of you. Err.”
“Right.”
“So…… see you at the barbeque?”
“Right.”
“Ah. Great.”
“Right.”
“Okay?”
“Right.”
“Okay I’ve got to uhh go now bye thanks.”
“Ri
*click*
ght.”
Sharon looked at the phone as if it were feces, dropped it as if it were venomous, and ignored it as if it were a needy child.
She still had a lot to do.
***
The next day she visited the supermarket. Despite all her planning and calculations, the limbs had run her out of supplies. Her head ached with the conjoined pains of interrupted workflow, early morning fog, and simmering hatred.
“What can I do for ya?” asked the butcher, an unreasonably young, slender, and cheerful man. Butchers should be middle-aged and shaped like walruses and under no circumstances whistle as they worked.
“Steak,” said Sharon.
“Okay. Cut and weight?”
“Start and I’ll tell you when to stop.”
His eyebrows did a little dance but to his credit he didn’t ask any more questions.
But he whistled as he worked, and for that he earned her eternal hatred nonetheless.
***
The limbs were complete. The central column was complete. The skull was intact and she was working on coating it when her three-times-fucked-over-death-be-upon-it phone rang once more.
She’d learned from her mistakes. This time it was on the bench next to the carving knives.
“Hey.”
“Hello honey.”
She sighed, made no effort to hide it, enunciated it carefully into the receiver. “Hi mom.”
“I know what you’re doing, honey.”
“I know, mom.”
“You know that’s not what nice girls do.”
“I know, mom.”
“Your aunt Emily got into that kind of thing, you know?”
“I know, mom.”
“And you know what happened to her, don’t you?”
“No, mom.”
“That’s right. Nobody does.”
“I know, mom.”
“Vanished clean off the face of this good green earth.”
It’s mostly blue, actually. “I know, mom.”
“Well, so long as you know, then that’s all right.”
“I know, mom.”
“Just be careful.”
“I will, mom.”
“And wash your damned hands.”
“Yes, mom.”
“Talk to you later, sweetie. Love you.”
“You too, mom.”
*click*
Sharon picked up the roast in one hand and the chainsaw in the other and began to work out some pent up emotions.
***
Saturday tolled.
Her alarm went off with its typical chirping charms, but it tolled nonetheless. Sharon celebrated by making some waffles.
There was one last thing. It was complete in every way, the formula had been followed exactly, but there was one last thing.
Just one little unnameable thing. There always was, in this kind of recipe.
Sharon opened the fridge to put away the milk and saw it sitting right next to the eggs.
Ah. Perfect.
***
It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood as all the birds flew out of every tree screaming their heads off.
Thud.
The sky was crisp and blue like hardened mould on a fine cheese. The clouds were so fluffy you could have spun them onto a wooden stick and sold them at a fairground. Every dog on the street was screaming its head off.
Thud.
And of all the fine formless houses with complex roofs and large garages, Frank and Marie’s was by far the most formless, with the most complex roof and the largest garage, and therefore the finest. It even shone brightly through the bloody light that oozed across it like a poisoned floodlight.
Thud.
Cars were lined up all over it, pouring out of the driveway and onto both sides of the street. A little bit of relatives and a large bunch of neighbours. On the other side of the city every single child aged three to seven awoke from a screaming night terror.
Thud.
The big broad backyard was crammed full of laughing happy faces and greasing shaking palms and casual professional deals and open-mouthed horror. Frank’s tongs fell from his limp fingers; Marie’s hair bleached whiter than the wine in her palm, and Sharon’s teeth were showing, every single one, in a grin that was definitely closer in appearance and meaning to a chimpanzee’s than a human’s.
Thud. Lurch. Halt.
It was a beautiful day for revenge. Sharon’s creation stood sixteen feet tall fully uncoiled from its sausage-draped central column, had four steak-like legs and four beefy arms and two brutal bratwurst gripping tentacles, and its skull was a monumental roast that shed bloody tears.
Atop its hideous head a simple crown of packaged hot dogs rested, and it shone with evil glory.
“Say it,” said Sharon in a profoundly and thoroughly quiet moment.
Marie’s mouth opened but didn’t seem to be able to do anything.
“Say it,” said Sharon. She’d never felt quite this tranquil before.
This time Marie managed a little whistle.
“Say it,” said Sharon, who was undecided on whether she could do this all day or just once more.
“Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
“Say it,” said Sharon. “Say it say it say it.”
“…sorry?”
“Say it.”
“Sorry…for…the thing with the cake. Um.”
“THANK you.”
***
The rest of the barbeque went smoothly until Frank opened his big fat mouth and started the whole thing all over again.