As Fate Would Have It Read online

  Bliss…

  The next afternoon Ashley insisted that her and Henry fix up, don their wraparound shades and go to the mall.

  There were protests and whining and a little anger, but Ashley reminded him of their dismal attempts at kicking and suggested that this was the least he could do for her. She wanted to feel normal, to begin assimilating back into society proper and this was the first step. Besides, she tried to contact Heather three times this morning and still nothing. She hadn’t called her house; she still wasn’t ready to deal with Mrs. Palmer and her worries, but she felt as if she should do something. Nancy Drew like compulsions nagged. If Heather wasn’t contacting her and she had no way of contacting Heather, then it made sense to look for her. But where?

  Maybe the last place they saw one another.

  Ridiculous right?

  Maybe. But then again maybe not, Heather went to the mall an awful lot. She was a shop-o-holic and spent all of her pay checks on clothes. Ashley didn’t really think she was going to run into her though, the mall just seemed like the best place to go to feel a little more connected to her.

  In the car Ashley gripped the steering wheel and made sure her cell phone ringer was on maximum volume.

  Goddamn, that bitch better get in touch soon!

  “I don’t even like society, Ash,” Henry whined from the passenger seat.

  “You have no choice, you, me, everyone out there – we are society.”

  “But the mall? Maybe we could just go to CHAOS and look for records. There are people there. Society, you know?”

  “I work there, idiot, it doesn’t count. So much for trying to reconnect with humanity. The mall, Henry. For a little while at least, then we can stop by GamerX, okay?”

  He nodded in affirmation and stared out the window at the world whizzing by.

  From Ashley’s experience all malls were virtually the same. For women there were loads and loads of stores to peruse and blow money. For men, immature, man-boy type men like Henry, there were maybe one or two stores of interest. Such was the way of the world.

  But, walking the glittering concourses with her antidisestablishmentarian boyfriend everything seemed that much more bright and clean and colorful. There were lots of people of all shapes and sizes, colors and creeds, smells and mannerisms and every single one of them managed to get under her skin. There were hip, trendy stores that borrowed from Henry’s die hard punk rock aesthetic and commoditized and commercialized and cannibalized everything he believed in. Ashley never really paid any of these things much attention. She came here with Heather from adolescence on and never felt that the mall was evil or conspiratory or anything but a place to get a Starbucks and look at stupid clothes. Watching Henry stare in disbelief at the ridiculousness of it all was an eye opening experience.

  For an aspiring punk rock musician like him, nights spent in dank clubs, days spent in garages and studios, in between time spent anywhere but a shopping mall, it was basically hell on earth. She was beginning to think that perhaps the mall wasn’t the best place to begin their cultural reinsertion.

  Maybe a library.

  Walking past a Gap Henry sighed loudly. “This place is horrible. If this is ‘normal’ I say we stick with getting abnormally high.” He smiled wide at his non-joke and then flipped off an aggressive cell phone salesmen hawking his wares from a kiosk.

  “I can’t believe we have never been here together. You’d figure you would have to come here sometime. Christmas or something.”

  “That’s why I have you, my dear.”

  True. For some cosmically unfair reason in their four Christmases together Henry always had lots of gigs near the holidays. As a result Ashley always did the shopping alone or with Heather. Henry tended to order all of his gifts online.

  “You never came here before me?” Ashley couldn’t believe Henry had never, ever been to the mall. They both grew up in this city and it was inevitable that somebody somewhere someday would drag him along.

  “No, I’ve been here. When I was a kid. It hasn’t changed much, but then again it has.”

  As they walked and talked, Ashley watched normal society buzz about. The mall may be an empty machination designed to milk need, but it was still nice and that piece of ordinary she was searching for finally enveloped them. Henry held her hand and she kissed his cheek and they even began half joking about babies and marriage and domesticity.

  “…so long as we can name my son Chopper and give him some awesome liberty spikes.”

  “Chopper? That’s a ridiculous ass name. And what is this ‘My son’ crap?”

  “Mine. A little hardcore fucker just like me.” Henry leaned in to give her a kiss on the lips.

  Ashley smiled in anticipation, but just as Henry moved closer she caught a glimpse over his shoulder that made her gasp.

  “Henry!” She tried to stop him, but the kiss landed awkwardly, unreturned and Henry disengaged clumsily.

  “Fuck. What is it?”

  “Shhh.” Ashley’s eyes grew wide; she was tracking something over his shoulder.

  Henry made to turn, but she grabbed his shoulder and kept him still. Again, “Shhh.”

  Henry leaned in and whispered, “What the hell?”

  “It’s him.” Her eyes continued to follow.

  “Him? Who?” Henry tried to turn again and again she wrenched his shoulder.

  Ashley talked low, “Don’t move. It’s the weirdo. The guy that Heather went out with.”

  “So?”

  “It’s the guy. The one I told you about. He bumped into her and then asked for her number–”

  “And they went out and so?”

  “Nobody has seen her since.” Ashley began to walk in the direction she was staring and motioned for Henry to follow along.

  “You don’t know that. You didn’t even try her house this morning. She’s probably home.”

  “She hasn’t even called me.” She continued on, sneaking, following the stranger from a good distance.

  Henry kept up, “She’s pissed, Ash. She’ll come around.” He grabbed at her arm and tried to get her to let it go, but no, she pressed on.

  “Come on.” She waved Henry closer and tried to rope him into her game. It may be true that this mystery guy had nothing to do with nothing, but why not make sure?

  Besides, she had Henry with her and even though this guy was a full head taller and bigger, Henry was crazy. If something weird went down he could easily stomp this poor guy into oblivion. Ashley had seen him fight before and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Who are we tailing?” Henry began with a whisper and given the noisy surroundings adjusted his volume to a normal level.

  “The tall one. In the white, wearing the cook outfit.”

  “That guy? What are you going to do?”

  In and out of mall traffic, weaving, trying to remain inconspicuous, they were gaining on him. “I just want to ask him about Heather. If they went out, if he knows where she is, stuff like that.”

  Henry shook his head and matched her pace.

  “You’ll protect me right?” This seemed to change his demeanor from beleaguered and annoyed to anxious and purposeful.

  “Hell yeah I’ll protect you. Let’s get this fucker.”

  Ashley smiled inside. Henry wasn’t dumb. But she knew how to push a few buttons and bring him along. If she made like she was in danger or some unlucky fool needed a good bashing he was good for doing the dirty work. From those retarded videogames of his to his passionate jealousy to his pissy temper, Henry was intense and not to be crossed. She loved this about him. It sent a thrill up and down her spinal column.

  The ‘Cook’ pushed through a pair of glass doors into the parking lot. He walked casually, tall, dark, nice sun glasses, one of those goofy kitchen outfits. He was carrying a bag from a cutlery store. Ashley picked up speed and Henry kept the pace. They exited the mall and kept their target in sight. The cook walked between cars and then slowed.

  “Holy Christ!” Ashley p
ut her hand on Henry’s arm and stopped him. “That’s Heather’s car.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not her, her car. Look. What’s he doing?” Ashley led Henry along, keeping it casual. She whispered, “He’s just standing there.”

  The cook paused for a moment and then made for another car a few spaces over.

  Maserati.

  Ashley remembered that Heather said he drove a Maserati. It pissed her off, made her envision a lecherous, rich, old man trying to put the moves on her friend.

  “He’s going for the Maserati.”

  Henry stopped walking, “How do you know?”

  Sure enough the cook got into the Maserati and drove away.

  Ashley tapped Henry’s arm and hurried off for their car. “We have to follow him!”

  “He’s gone!”

  She kept running across the parking lot and Henry followed, muttering curses all the way. They jumped into their car and pulled out of the mall to give chase, but once on the road there was nary a sign of the Maserati or the casually elusive cook

  III

  Souvenirs

  (A Feast of Worry)

  There was always a fairly large window of panic after a re-supply (murder).

  And though there were many, many, many reasons why Montgomery wanted to quit, he thought and sighed and internally cursed himself as he ate a late lunch (a cold meat sandwich), this was one of the big ones.

  The biggest.

  The most aggravating.

  Less than an hour ago he went to check on Heather’s car. They had met in the mall parking lot before their date and decided to leave her car behind when they agreed to go to his house for a nightcap after dinner at Chili’s. The entire time, zombie-walking through the mall, getting the nerve to go check on the car and then standing before the automobile in the expansive parking lot, he felt as if he was being followed, watched, stalked, preyed upon.

  Was he?

  No. Nerves. Paranoia. Idiocy.

  And he made it back to work, head buzzing guilt unhampered, with a new sharpening stone (which he didn’t even need) that he bought from the mall cutlery store in order to seem inconspicuous. Guilt was guilt, but thankfully there were no cops or news reporters or any sort of ruckus – Heather’s car was still where they left it, and returning to his workplace he found everything was still business as usual. There were no authorities lying in wait for a murderous executive chef. There was a trifling matter of a missing crate of fresh shrimp that should have arrived at Maize a few hours ago, yet it wasn’t much of a matter at all as it was his sous chef’s problem. Montgomery wasn’t even supposed to be here today. But he hated vacations and couldn’t get through the down time without at least checking in. While eating his brown bag lunch he obsessed over whether he should go back to the mall after he was finished with work to check if the car had been towed yet.

  Why?

  What was the point?

  Did he want to get caught?

  Did he have a death wish (prison equaled death as far as he was concerned)?

  No and no, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t let it go. With each kill he was on edge for at least two to three months. Checking the newspaper, surfing the internet, watching the nightly news, going over and over and then re-going over every detail of their date, the drive, the dinner, the initial meeting, fretting over the evidence in his garage – soon to be congealing in a far away sewer, worrying about Liz’s Dad’s missing acid barrels, and more and more and more until he felt like his head was going to explode and he was going to die from daily panic attacks.

  Each time he wielded his knife, liberating a victim’s lifeblood, staining the annals of time, altering the energy of the entire universe, he felt as if thousands upon thousands of eyes were scrutinizing his every move. Guilt rode him hard and turned his sideburns prematurely gray. Life became an exercise in paranoia and shame and fear.

  The Argument churned within nonstop: He was a murderer. Stop. A filthy, lowdown murderer. Stop.

  Justification mounted an impressive attack: But, it was just meat. Like cows and chickens and pigs. But better, way better.

  Sense and the ghost of goodwill asserted: But each victim, each meal, had a family and a life. People were hurting and mourning.

  Regret and sorrow ensued.

  Montgomery wished he could somehow absorb their pain, but there was nothing he could do, so they suffered over their seemingly senseless losses and he suffered for selfishly bringing these losses about.

  But such was the way of the world.

  If only his taboo predilections for human consumption were accepted by society as a whole. Imagine the worldwide benefit.

  Justification strikes back: imagine industrialization, institution and good old American consumerism in action. Think of all those wasted deaths - 160,000 per day globally - all of it useless meat burned away or left to rot to dust in the earth. What a shameful fallow of potential resources. If humanity would only wake up, if they would only cast off the shackles of cultural convention and get a clue.

  Idiot fools one and all.

  Think about it – if each individual yielded anywhere from twenty to fifty pounds of consumable flesh (based upon a rough average – children and seniors, the diseased and any accidental deaths that resulted in inedible maiming or ruined meat would account for considerably less) the world stood to produce about six and a half million pounds of sustainable food per day.

  Per day!

  A global problem like hunger, like third-world starvation, like cute little kids with distended bellies and blood parasites and a buzzing horde of flies continually surrounding them wouldn’t even exist.

  But no, we are so fucking civilized.

  We couldn’t possibly eat another human being.

  We can read great literature like Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal and simply laugh at it as preposterous, all of us, even the author with his pointed satire, but nobody ever really seemed to seriously consider eating human beings as a viable solution to our ever-growing world of problems. Instead such dark views are scrapped and labeled parody.

  We can kill, or torture, or wage wars over our idiot ideals, but there is no way we can bring ourselves to progress, to ditch medieval thought and utilize the abundance of perfectly edible carcasses our destructive tendencies tended to leave in its seemingly unquenchable wake.

  Superstition. Sacrilege. Forbidden Fruit.

  Disgust. Revulsion.

  The sacrosanct inhibition.

  And yet there is a plethora of ample evidence to prove that even our earliest ancestors, before rhetoric and politics and agendas, engaged in cannibalism. Markings on excavated bones show us as much. Geneticists have even found that some people carry a particular gene that’s sole purpose is to prevent the spread of brain diseases that can only be derived from eating human flesh.

  Social stigmas however, hold firm.

  Politics, for better or worse, rule the world.

  To be a cannibal, an anthropophage, is in diametric opposition with societal norms.

  Montgomery blamed civilization. Technology. Constants undermined by a perpetuation of shame and pride and a myriad of other muddling human foibles.

  Fucking ancient Greeks. They used the cannibalistic practices of non-Hellenic barbarians to question their humanity and demonize them, thusly giving the common people an enemy to rail against. This same cycle of ignorance caught fire and continued throughout history, eventually eradicating (or driving underground) all human flesh eating heretics. This anathema remains fully ingrained within modern day society, so much so that anyone challenging the rule is classified as insane or monstrous.

  Well, maybe he was insane, maybe he was monstrous, but Montgomery was a highly qualified culinary expert, transcendently skilled in the art of food and flavor, aroma and texture. His palette and his brain agreed, without question, that human flesh, exquisite, delicious, tender human flesh, stigma be damned, was the best of the best. It wasn’t too salty
, too tough, too tender, too sweet, too gamey, too delicate, too greasy – instead it was all of these things in their most perfect state, intermingled faultlessly, heavenly.

  Montgomery often thought he would have been better off born in a different era.

  Sometimes, particularly after a full belly of meat, drunk on a nice bottle of wine, dead tired from wild sex with Liz, he dreamed of darker times, of ravenous times, of an age that may or may not have existed, but was surely akin to some ancient, bestial era in our prehistory.

  A steady diet of too many fantasy novels coupled with an encyclopedia’s worth of extensive cannibal research (justification for his ways) clotted within the sticky folds of his brain and gave birth to glorious visions.

  He pictured himself naked (cut, six pack, a warrior’s body), blood dripping from and clinging to every inch of his rock hard form as he tore long strips of flesh from a freshly killed enemy and threw them on to a bed of red-hot coals. The meat sizzled and filled the air with mouth watering, mind numbing smells. Nubile females, shapeless and formless in dreams, merely a snippet of hot skin here, a flash of pink there, powerfully erotic, ridiculously proportioned and built for lust, clung to him and lavished his body with savage kisses. Overhead, tentacles of lightning jagged through the night and lit the sky, capturing the scorching carnality of sex and feasting in second long snippets of frozen debauchery.

  Recalling the primeval imagery made Montgomery’s skin flush and his sex harden with aching need.

  There was a huge part of him that respected civilized society, however, he couldn’t help but think that somewhere along the way humanity had gotten it wrong. Where were the outlets for our baser desires? What was humankind expected to substitute for the thrill of the kill and the ingestion of won meat?

  Montgomery wasn’t particularly religious or spiritual, but he could understand how certain tribes believed that if you devoured the heart or brain or flesh of your victims you absorbed their power. Heather was easy, no challenge, no alpha male buzz blitzing his system, but there were others and after they lay broken at his feet, Montgomery felt like a freaking God.