…ravenous. A keening wail and ferocious itch woke Percival. He smacked his lips at the pungent taste that filled his mouth. His first muzzy though was Why am I on the floor? After a few moments, his wits returned and he thought I must have fainted from hunger.
And, he realized, he still felt hungry. It was more a hungry-for-dessert than an I-haven’t-eaten-for-days hungry, though. Disturbed by the thought, but unable to figure out why, Percival struggled to stand up. And to figure out what that damned noise was. Looking down, he noticed his arm. He didn’t stifle his scream this time.
His left arm was covered in a huge scab, from wrist to shoulder. It crackled like paper as he moved his arm, and pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Blood and pus oozed and dripped from cracks in the scab. He felt hot lines of infection covering his throat and back.
Percival, horrified, covered his mouth with his right hand at the sight, and the sour, pungent taste flooded his taste buds. He pulled his hand away and saw that it was covered with dried blood and scabrous material. It was caked in his fingernails; he must have been clawing at the scab while he was unconscious.
Percival grabbed the sink counter and hauled himself up. When he looked in the mirror, he saw his mouth was a fright-show of clotted blood and dried pus. He realized he hadn’t just been scratching in his sleep. Now he knew why he hadn’t felt as hungry when he woke up. Percival waited a few moments, but there wasn’t even a tremor of nausea. His stomach seemed to no longer have any qualms with his disgusting repast. It was this thought of…food…that finally gave Percival’s mind the context it needed to understand the shrieking noise that he had been hearing since he woke up. It was the fire alarm. His dinner was burning.
Percival ran out the bathroom, bellowing, “Jocelyn! Goddamn it, no!”
As he entered the hall, he knew it was too late. Acrid smoke filled the house. He coughed and waved his hand in front of his face, trying to ward off the smell of burnt meat. He made it into the kitchen, where he turned on the exhaust fan and opened the oven door. A tremendous cloud of smoke billowed out, making his eyes water and starting his coughing again. He grabbed hot pads, yanked the pan out of the oven and set it on the stove, waving away smoke so he could see if there was any hope of saving the dish.
One look and it was obvious the dish was beyond repair. All the basting liquid had cooked away, and the meat was a charred and dried-out mass of inedible protein. It had been reduced to a blackened and shrunken caricature of the beautifully curved calf muscle that it had started as. Jocelyn’s perfect calf. Ruined now.
He threw the hot pads on the counter, and turned away from the stove. The fire alarm was still blaring, but it would quit in a few minutes once the oven’s industrial vents sucked out enough smoke. Or it wouldn’t. Percival couldn’t find it in himself to care.
He trudged slowly into the dining room and sat heavily in the chair at his place setting. He scratched absently at the scab covering his arm. He was unsurprised to find his hunger was growing steadily. In fact, Percival had a suspicion that even if Jocelyn had been cooked properly, the meal wouldn’t have satisfied him anymore. It seemed there was only one thing that might feed his craving. For a little while, anyway.
Decided, he stopped scratching his scab, and started pulling at it instead. He caught an edge of the scab at his shoulder, and started working it loose, slowly and carefully. After a few minutes, he was able to lift nearly the entire scab off his arm. It came loose with a wet slurping sound that only served to stoke his hunger. As the scab peeled off his arm, he could see raw muscles and even some bone peeking out from the raw, jellied mass his flesh had become. He coiled the pustulant mass on his plate
Almost immediately, yellow slime gleamed, and the blood seeping over the wound slowed and started to solidify. In no time at all, he would have another scab--another serving--then another, and another. Percival was a cold bastard, but he was also a gourmand. He knew that even the worst of meals must come to an end, eventually. And surely, he would finish this repast and once again have opportunity to dine on more refined fair. Surely.
Foregoing knife and fork, Percival dug in.
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