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Carnage House

– this is your trigger warning

With All The Trimmings

by Alexander Hay

THE TASTE WON’T leave my mouth. It’s haunting me in a twisted sort of way. Every time my mind wanders, I keep tasting it. When I do, my stomach turns. Bitter, rancid, tart, and yet strangely sweet. It tastes like sewage stinks…like death.

The one thing I used to love about Christmas was the turkey. Yeah, I know. It’s the dullest thing to enjoy, but my mum’s one great contribution to world cuisine was her yule bird. Always cooked to perfection. Succulent. Never dry, and always neatly drizzled with cranberry sauce.

These days, though, the thought of it makes me feel ill. I haven’t eaten turkey, or any other meat in the last two years. I have nightmares too. It’s all because of the guest we had for Christmas dinner, and what she showed us.

I may as well start at the beginning. My husband and I had invited some friends over for a good old fashioned middle class dinner party. Yeah, I know, my dad was an electrician and my father-in-law legged it out of the country with his mum’s sister. But one can always dream of respectability, yeah?

So along came my sister-in-law, a couple of friends from work, and... Her.

I can almost remember her name, and her face seems so familiar. It’s like a dream you can’t remember, and the more you try to, the more it fades away. It’s difficult for me to fully explain how or who or why she was. All I can say for certain is that we ended up sitting next to each other.

She seemed pleasant enough. I remember chatting with her about jam making and gardening, or whatever else us respectable middle class types do. My husband carved the turkey poorly, and the rest of the dinner was slightly overcooked, which was technically my fault. (But I didn’t say that. You didn’t hear it.)

For all that, everyone was getting stuck in, apart from my sister-in-law. She was going through what my husband called a “tragic pause” and was spending her Christmas Day pissed up and mostly passed out in the living room. Thank goodness I had someone less fucked up than that to talk to.

Or so I thought.

“Would you like to see something interesting?” our mystery guest asked.

“What, how to show a certain person how to carve meat properly? HurHurHurHurHur!” smirked my husband’s friend from work.

“Oh, fuck off!” my husband grunted.

“Don’t mind him,” my friend from work said. She had been at the sherry already, and wasn’t her usual reserved self.

“Oh, please just carry on,” I said to our guest.

“Thank you.” She smiled. “Does anyone else mind?” She looked around the table, sounding only too reasonable.

“Yeah...”

“Go ahead...”

“Whatever...”

“As long as I can have another glass?”

“Excellent,” she said, with another pleasant smile. “Now, did I ever tell you what I do for a living?”

I had to admit, I never thought of that question back then. Looking back, I realise I didn’t know a thing about her.

“My role is, or rather was, in the field of...persuasion,” our guest began.

“Like telemarketing?” my husband’s friend said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” my husband sighed.

“What? It was only a joke!”

“Ahem, may I please continue?” she asked, once again in the nicest way possible.

I nodded. My husband and his friend petered out to mild grumbling.

Our guest continued. “As I said, my stock in trade is persuasion. It’s hard to describe in simple terms, but... Well, let me give you an example.”

“Can I smell lamb?” my friend said.

“Yeah... Me too,” my husband said.

“Why not look and see?” our guest asked.

“Wait—what the pissing hell?” my husband’s friend said.

I looked. The turkey had gone. In its place was a large leg of lamb. I glanced at my plate, then everyone else’s. The slices of turkey were now lamb too.

“What did you just do?” my husband demanded of our guest.

“I asked you a question,” she said.

“No you didn’t,” my husband said, confused.

“But I did, don’t you remember? I asked you to look.”

“I don’t remember...” I found myself saying.

“Look again,” she said.

I checked. Now the leg of lamb was gone. In its place was a small roasted bird. The smell was rich and earthy—pheasant.

“I’m confused now,” my husband’s friend said.

“Well, give it a taste,” our guest replied. “You may find it ‘pheasantly’ surprising.”

My friend was the only one brave enough to try. “It is pheasant!” my friend said. “I mean, it tastes just like it!”

“Always had you down as a posh bird.” My husband’s friend smirked. He was a child of the seventies.

“You try it!” my friend said. “Go on!”

“It does, actually,” he said after a mouthful. “I mean, it is pheasant.”

“How would you know?” my husband said.

“What are you doing?” I said to our guest. “I mean, how are you doing it?”

“A good persuader never reveals their tricks,” she smiled. “Keep looking.”

At this point, my friend screamed at the top of her voice. I have to admit I gasped too. Because there, in the centre of the table, the pheasant had gone. In its place was a huge roasted hog’s head—straight out of a medieval banquet—right down to a big apple in its mouth.

“Oi! Keep it down in there!” my sister-in-law slurred from the living room. “I’m washing Jamesh fuc’ing Bond ‘ere!”

“Okay, I’m getting a bit freaked out now,” my husband said with a nervous laugh.

“Nothing to worry about,” our guest said.

All of a sudden, she leant forward and gouged out the pig’s eye with her fingers, then leant back and plunged the eye into her mouth, devouring it with a wet, slow munch.

“Jesus!” my friend said.

“Not quite,” our guest purred. The pleasantness on her face had begun to fade and a more malicious, gleeful look began to creep in instead.

There was an uproar. We all started shouting at once. But she silenced us with a gesture.

“Try it. It’s still pork.”

Gingerly, my husband cut off a small slice. “Yeah,’ he said. “It’s pork.”

“It’s definitely not fucking kosher!” his friend said, probably the first half-witty utterance of his life.

“May I have a napkin please?” our guest asked me. Without a word, I handed it to her, and she wiped the grease and eye gelatine off her fingers.

“I suppose I ought to make my point,” she said, and I noticed the hint of a cruel smile on the edge of her mouth.

“Err, go ahead,” said my husband’s friend, still mesmerised by the vision of the hog’s head before him.

“This isn’t a trick I’m playing on you,” she said.

“Could have fooled me!” my friend said.

“I admit to a certain degree of manipulation, I suppose...” she said with mock humility. “But you let me in. If I am manipulating your perceptions, it is because each of you let me toy with them in the first place.”

“Bollocks,” I said. “You’re playing a trick on us. I just know it.”

“Am I now?” she asked, and this time the smile on her face, clement or mocking, was gone. Instead, I saw anger and felt not a little pain, like looking into her eyes hurt my mind. I suppose it hurt the very idea of me if you get what I mean. Like the part of me that held my identity was under attack, bending and twisting, fraying around the edges.

“Then how do you explain this?” our guest asked, gesturing back at the hog’s head, that venomous smile back on her face. This time, my husband’s friend spewed over himself, his dinner, and the table. It wasn’t hard to see why.

The hog’s head was gone. In its place... I get dizzy, and nauseous just remembering it, but as I do, it becomes horribly clear.

~~~

In front of us was a child, no older than a year and a few months. It had been roasted, whole. Its head, hair, eyes, nails, teeth... All of it had been cooked. Where we carved off meat before, there was now a huge gaping hole in the child’s abdomen. Its half-raw guts and organs oozed out blood, molten fat, and viscera. I looked down at my plate. The pork had now been replaced with badly cooked human flesh, skin, fat, and giblets.

I had eaten some already.

Oh, I had more than a few mouthfuls, I can tell you. For some reason, I didn’t throw up. I was barely aware of the screams and gasps around me. Instead, I just stared, and stared, and stared, barely able to breathe, as the world seemed to swirl around me. I could taste it in my mouth and feel it in my stomach.

“Get out!” I dimly heard my husband scream.

“Sit down and be quiet,” our guest hissed. I sensed my husband falling to his seat, too stupefied to argue any further.

Our guest cleared her throat. “You are not amused by my parlour tricks? Then see for yourself, the final revelation!”

The roasted child was gone, and in its place was a mound of filth—rot, decay, faeces, and stench. Things too big and vile to be maggots oozed and gnawed their way through it. Bloated things like flies buzzed lazily around the shit and disgust before us. It had appeared on our plates, we had eaten it, and it was rotting and poisoning us from within.

My friend screamed and so did my husband. Manic screams, like animals trapped in a fire. My husband’s friend spewed out even more. And me? My eyes were wet with tears as I began to laugh at the ugly comedy of it all. Rot, shit and carcasses. How festive! A Merry Christmas one and all!

It disappeared. In its place was neither a pheasant, a hog’s head nor a dead child, but a turkey. The turkey I had cooked that morning. Which, unlike everything else on the table, I had taken care to make sure was cooked to perfection. At least, that is how I now remember it.

I heard a chair scrape on the hardwood floor. Our guest was on her feet. Her pleasant smile was back. “You might think me cruel,” she began. “But I trust I have made my point. Think of how you are lied to, manipulated, and deluded every day. I have only made it more obvious. Have I pulled at the foundations of your tidy little psyches? Good. A little madness does wonders for one’s sanity.”

“All you sit here at this table, claiming to be of sound mind, yet all it takes is a single revelation to bring your entire sense of being down with you. I simply had to walk in this day and tear it all down! Well, I trust you have benefited from this gift of mine. Joyous Noel!”

With a laugh, she got to her feet and left us to our devices. We were too stunned, sickened or maddened to answer, to even react.

In the next room, I could hear our guest talking to my sister-in-law. It sounded like a friendly chat—I could even hear them both laugh at some inaudible joke. There was rustling in the hallway as our guest claimed her bag and coat. Then, finally, the distant sound of the front door opening and closing.

She was gone.

I wish I could say I felt relieved. To this day, I cannot remember her name. I can’t even say I know where or how I met her. I only know that she seemed...familiar, like I had always known her, but only realised her presence, if only for a while.

My sister-in-law staggered in with half a bottle of Blue Nun still in her hand. “How’shit goin’?” she slurred. “Jush been having a friendly chat with whoever that wash. She’s like a really nishe person. Who the fuck wash she, anyway? None of you lot bothered to introdushe me.”

She paused. “Ish that shick?”

No one replied. We didn’t dare. I can still taste it all to this day.


About the Story:
All I want for Christmas is the vegan option.