Free Sick Bastards by Matt Shaw Page A

stick the pieces of flesh in my mouth. At least sitting here, in a room away from where the meat was being prepared , I could pretend that everything was normal. I was just sitting in my house, waiting for Father to bring me my dinner.
     
    Nothing more.
     
    Nothing less.
     
    Just meat.
     
    Steak.
     
    A nice prime piece of fillet. Fresh from the butchers. Blue - just the way I like it.
     
    Nothing more.
     
    Nothing less.
     
    My mind played back the mental image of seeing the head separate from the neck of the body. My mind played back the spray of red into the blue sky. My mind played back the sight of the head rolling to a stop and the way the eyes seemingly settled on me (the latter part of the thought clearly an extra detail my imagination added for whatever reason). Stop thinking about it. What’s happened has happened. It’s finished. It’s over with. No need to dwell on it. It was a question of him or me (and the family). I did what I had to do. And I’m certainly not about to eat a piece of his body. Certainly not. I’m just sitting here waiting for Father to bring me my steak.
     
    I love steak.
     
    Shame I don’t have some chips to go with it.
     
    I’m not sure how long Father was out of the room for. When he came back in he had a plate of meat with him. I didn’t dare pay any attention to the plate, nor the blood on his hands. Instead I just stared at his face. His pale face. A look of horror in his expression that I’ll never forget despite wishing I could. I wanted to ask him whether he had taken a minute to try a small piece for himself but the words didn’t come from my mouth.
     
    Mother asked, “Are you okay?”
     
    He nodded as he put the plate down in the centre of the table.
     
    “Plenty left over if anyone fancies it!” he tried to joke.
     
    No one laughed.
     
    No one moved either. We all just sat there - none of us able to take our eyes from the plate. It’s a shame we knew what the meat was because there, on the bloodied plate, it looked like a kind of ham.
     
    Father took a deep breath in and sighed it back out again. “Down the hatch.”
     
    Quick as a flash he picked a small piece of meat up (thankfully most of them were cut fairly small in size) and threw it into his mouth which promptly clamped shut. He paused there for a second or two. You could see, on his face, that he was having an internal battle with his thoughts about whether to chew or spit it back out. Slowly he chewed. We all watched for his reaction. It was clear the meat wasn’t the best yet he hadn’t spat it back out which (on some levels) was a positive.
     
    “Pork.”
     
    He swallowed.
     
    “Shame there isn’t some brown sauce in the house,” was another attempt at a mood lightening joke. Again no one laughed.
     
    Mother picked a small piece up, and I did too. We both put the pieces of fillet steak into our mouths and slowly chewed down. Father was right. There was an element of pork to the taste. The texture was...Chewy, uncooked ham. I couldn’t help but wish there was some gas in the house with which we could have cooked some of the meat. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to light a small fire, outside, with which we could have cooked a little of the meat? Perhaps that would have made it more bearable.
     
    “It’s not as bad as it could be,” I said to Sister.
     
    She didn’t look convinced. She was clearly struggling with the whole idea of eating a fellow human despite it being our best chance of survival. I don’t know for sure but starvation must surely be a horrible way to die and whilst it’s fair to say none of us would have starved immediately - it wouldn’t have been long before the effects of hunger started to take their toll on our bodies; especially as none of us was particularly large to begin with.
     
    “We’ll need to keep our strength up,” Father told her, “just in case those things outside come by...We can’t be weak.” You could see by his face that he