Free MalContents by Randy Ryan C.; Chandler Gregory L.; Thomas David T.; Norris Wilbanks

MUSHROOMS
    by Gregory L. Norris
     
    Sunny Weir knew knives. In a way, knives were more important to her life’s work than food, because without her knives a tomato was just a squat lump of bulky vegetation and Kobe beef and Hamachi tuna were inedible, unless the diner was a dog. A chef was nothing without her knives. Until she turned and saw one aimed at her, one with a sharp, shiny blade perfect for carving meat, Sunny considered herself a master at wielding them. Only she’d never been on this end of a knife before, and now she was the meat.
    The bitch nailed her in the bathroom, right as Sunny moved toward one of the four private stalls across from a length of granite countertop and an equal number of sinks sitting beneath a mirror. She caught the glint of light bouncing off the blade, reflected above the sinks. She was later told that second or two of warning likely saved her life. The knife had been sailing toward her back.
    “You fucking bitch,” the woman shrieked.
    Sunny only got out a hurried, “What the fff—” before the blade sliced through her gown and into the meat of her right breast. The pain wasn’t immediate, which made it worse because she knew it was coming. Splinters of a second passed before the unholy agony of being stabbed hit her and she went down, blade and all. Enough time for her sarcastic Inner Bitch to muse that silk charmeuse, while fetching, was hardly a substitute for chain mail at these cutthroat industry gatherings where everyone, including the catering crew, were out to knife you in the kidneys. Or the tits, as in this particular case.
    The catering crew. She absorbed the details of the woman’s clothes as she dropped into an undignified and bleeding pile outside the bathroom stall. Her attacker was boxy in shape, a woman without a waist, dressed in the standard black and white garb of the company walking her appetizers around the party atop Sunny’s new line of dinnerware and platters.
    “How’s that for a slice and dice ?” the woman said, leaning down to fire off a wad of spit at her. As it flew, hitting her cheek, Sunny noted the ugly mole on the woman’s face, caramel-brown, with a pucker-brush of hair jutting out of its core. Enough, Inner Bitch chortled, to apply makeup with. Or on.
    Sunny’s consciousness leapt out of her body and floated disconnected beside her, recording the rest of the details from halfway up to the ceiling: the woman’s roots showing at the base of her long black mane, the witchy locks pulled into a ponytail and held together by a cloisonné chignon; her girth, more pear than apple; and the rabid madness in her unblinking black eyes, which bottled an intense rage that made it clear she hadn’t come simply to injure, but to kill.
    Sunny’s two disconnected halves slammed back together as the bitch reached for the handle of the knife, still lodged in the breast that Joseph probably wouldn’t knead and suckle on at the Harborview Hotel following the party. In one fluid motion, Sunny reached up and popped her attacker hard, right in her closest eye. The woman screamed, a terrible sound more animal than human, and Sunny remembered the ring on her pointer finger, a big one, with an Asschercut diamond and lots of little diamond chips. Diamonds weren’t, Inner Bitch remembered, the strongest substance on the planet, but in fact the third. Being third from the top was still enough that her fingers came away wet. Blood trickled from the woman’s eye socket.
    Her attacker recoiled. Sunny grabbed at the knife’s handle. In all her years as a restaurateur and celebrity chef, she’d run knives through every meat imaginable, the everyday as well as the exotic. The blade hadn’t gone in far, but it was enough for a taste of how all the cows, pigs, chickens, fish, quail, and lobster she’d served up had felt, right as the executioner’s guillotine fell. The sensation was a curious rush of heat as well as ice. She had grown intimate enough with the knife