Brisket

by Marco Herrera (MAHH!)

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

You.

Yes, you, searching here for a story.

Do you think I’m unaware of your existence? Of your search for tales to pass the time?

Let me tell you here and now: You’ll find no happiness, laughter, comfort, or redemption in my narration. Whether you’re listening, watching, or reading, I want to make one thing clear: Everything is meat. And I… I love meat.

This maxim has guided my every action.

So, I warn you. If you’re not prepared to face that fact, or if you’re one of those ridiculous vegans who think they’re making a change in the world… leave now. Go seek your entertainment elsewhere and move on. This story is for those who understand the world’s order; it has no time for sheep or the prudish.

It has been said that Clark Kent was Superman’s disguise. A fiction in which the alien dressed up to pass as normal.

Personally, I prefer the idea applied to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The serum doesn’t give the doctor another personality; it merely creates a disguise—an external deformation that allows him to be free and give rein to his desires. But beneath the disguise, it is ALWAYS Jekyll. It’s sad to think that nowadays—for people like you—a figure like Superman is more recognizable than the character of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Like Hyde, I, too, am a doctor. A surgeon, to be exact. A modest one, even if the community considers me exemplary for merely doing my job. Simpletons don’t understand that to save lives, you only need to understand the nature of meat.

And in matters of meat, nothing compares to brisket. With its crystallized crust, paired with a red wine aged in absolute silence, it is one of life’s pleasures. Only then can you hear the perfect cut of a serrated blade against the wet nerve. Melodies and vacuous conversation are mere distractions.

I have always despised all artistic expressions. Circus for cattle. I hope you are not one of those who compare a surgeon’s hands to those of a painter. Or worse: those who call seduction “art.” No. Enjoying meat is simply a natural act.

I have tasted all kinds of women and have reached the conclusion that the only difference between them and a good filet mignon is the crying, which is the same in all creatures. Pathetic.

Cows cry before their sacrifice, but I never hear them complain when they realize their only value lies in their body.

Crying is the final phase, when they want to see me again.

At first, sweet words, bulging wallets, the medical title, and a slender physique are enough.

The problem is that sometimes, you can choke even with a snack.

She arrived at my office one day, almost gliding as if gravity followed her orders. Wavy hair, dark like her cinnamon skin. Green eyes, arms thick like her hips. Her soft, brown skin invited you to tear it to pieces.

The loss of firmness from the degradation of collagen and elastin indicated a sedentary and well-fed life. I was hypnotized. Like a good brisket, she was perfect.

Following her was a middle-aged man, distressed and suffering from severe stomach pain. A nuisance.

While I pretended to examine her partner, I thought of ways to make her sick so I could take her to my operating room. No matter what, I would make her mine.

It was only a matter of time.

The operating room was perfect for beings like her. It is the only place where you can truly get to know another person. A temple where I demand absolute silence. A place where you can hear the scalpel’s cut separating the epidermis, the muscles being forced aside, and the crunch of bones to uncover all of a person’s secrets.

The lady’s companion screamed in pain, and upon truly palpating him, I felt a hard protuberance in his abdomen. I called emergency services when he started vomiting blood.

My ritual was known to my assistants. I liked to suture my patients in solitude. Due to my perfect streak of operations, the team indulged me. What until then had only been an auditory pleasure took on a new dimension. When they finally left, I proceeded to remove my mask. Standing next to the anesthetized body with its entrails exposed, I submerged my face into its being. In the wordlessness of the human body, the spasms of soft organs, muscle contractions, the constant coming and going of lungs, and the beating of hearts composed what I consider true art. An impossible symphony to replicate.

After a minute with my face buried among the organs, I would withdraw my head—covered in blood, but not before inhaling that bitter aroma and running my tongue over the internal moisture. I clean up, suture, and leave the patients healthier and safer than before. In the end, we are all happy.

For the first time, facing the sleeping body of this man, my mind was outside the operating room. Thinking of her face, her body, and the possibilities hidden within her.

My hand holding the scalpel trembled. Was this what my crying cows felt?

I recomposed myself, rescuing my dignity from those thoughts. I would have time later to entertain my mind with banalities. I hurried my tool and made the cut.

Before me, my first failure. He died. We were paralyzed, me by the screams of my assistants while my brain tried to comprehend how a small camera had ended up inside the now-corpse. Around it, oval shapes filled with white powder had burst. Which had likely caused the discomfort and subsequent death. The idiot not only stained my streak, but he also profaned my ritual and ruined a good piece of meat.

Although a better one awaited me. Her.

I faced the tedium of the following hours with gallantry. The team fell over themselves to remove any blame from my shoulders, reaffirming my status as the city’s best surgeon. As if I didn’t already know all that.

Then the police with their obvious questions.

Who cares about the remains lying in the trash? I smiled, picturing them as raccoons in uniforms.

Finally, I was ready to attend to the suffering widow.

Usually, after an operation, dazzled mothers were willing to give themselves to carnal pleasures when I had saved their children’s lives. I expected the opposite case would be even easier.

Dressed up and perfumed, I waited for her to appear with accusations and overflowing emotions.

I waited.

And waited.

On the second day, my heart was beating faster than usual. I didn’t understand it. Did she have no interest in reproaching me for my failure? On the third, I concluded it was tachycardia. I had no other choice but to call her.

She was busy, so she made me go to her house. Inconceivable.

I had never made such an effort to enjoy something. Upon arriving at her humble dwelling, I felt the humiliation of the sheep who goes where he is told, instead of being the one receiving her crawling into my office. At least the tachycardia had subsided.

When she opened the door, she looked tired, disheveled. Her clothes were not appropriate for receiving someone important. She hadn’t even put on makeup for me. If I had been like one of those stupid narcissists, I would have been annoyed by the latter. But the sight of her pores and the softness of her skin —free of chemical products —triggered an uncontrollable and wholly unexpected erection. I felt debased, like a mere savage.

With a friendly smile, she invited me in.

The interior of her house had a penetrating and familiar smell. Sugar, fine herbs, and walnut, impossible to forget. My erection softened into a sticky stain in my trousers..

“Sorry for the smell. I’ve been cooking this brisket for fifteen hours,” she said innocently, her cinnamon skin glistening with steam from the meat. I was left speechless.

The house was austere. There were only large paintings in terrible taste hanging on the wall. I sat at the table, wondering if she was a chef or merely a cook. Brisket isn’t something just anyone can make.

While she set the table, something took possession of my body; instead of waiting for her to speak, I asked, with a slight stutter, how she was.

Every image I had created in my head had been quickly destroyed, and I found myself face to face with my dark object of desire, separated only by two plates and a juicy morsel.

The brisket was among the best I had ever eaten. But my eyes could not stray from the skin in front of me. Imagining my hands digging through the fat and hidden muscle. Scratching and biting every piece of her being. I felt my mind flying, raving. But it suddenly came back to earth with a question.

“Do you like art?”

I hesitated.

I laughed and swallowed. I stretched the time as much as possible to answer what she wanted. I chewed and chewed, long after the organic matter in my mouth had turned to liquid.

 She waited patiently with her smile while she tasted her food; she was enjoying it. Even more than I was.

My response was strategic; the paintings around me had given it to me.

“Of course,” I said after swallowing. She smiled honestly and touched my hand.

She told me it wasn’t necessary to come apologize. It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to scream that I didn’t go to apologize. But instead, a tear escaped my eye. It would have been the most humiliating moment of my life had she not wiped it away with her soft hand. She stood and led me to a place she was sure would calm me. My world was spinning, my vision blurring. I didn’t understand what was happening.

Was this what people called love?

The creak of the door sounded like a distant echo. Even though she turned on the light, I couldn’t see anything.

“I’m a visual artist, this is my studio… my temple.” —Nobody’s perfect—, I thought with my last waking neurons.

That’s when I realized. It wasn’t love. I was sedated.

After losing consciousness, I awoke, as expected, tied down. Next to me were other… men. The place had no windows; it was white and clearly sterile. I recognized many medical implements. The care put into the arrangements was formidable, enviable.

In front of me was a screen. Screaming was impossible because my mouth was full of tubes. Running wasn’t an option either since I had no legs.

She entered, as splendid as always, and slowly took off her clothes. I watched, hypnotized, her strong body with wide hips and a pair of breasts worthy of a pre-Hispanic goddess. Her wonderful arms swayed to their own rhythm. I could imagine my hands under her skin squeezing her soft muscles.

“Meat is art,” she said, chewing every word, every syllable. “The perfect raw material for refined tastes. Meat is the primal muse.”

She turned on the TV, and from a computer she accessed the dark web. She exhibited a digital gallery with a name I don’t remember. Her work was titled “C-section.”

The screen was black, and only an underwater sound was heard. A thread of light cut through the absolute darkness, slowly and clumsily. A pair of gloved hands opened the darkness to reveal a man in a surgical gown with a stunned look and screaming people around him. Now the aquatic sound gave way to the clear beats of a heart that gradually stopped while the surgeon stared like a fool.

For the first time in my life, I felt fury. Against myself, against the record of my failure. I begged her to remove the image, but those tubes only let out a murmur.

She turned off the television. She didn’t wish to make me suffer, she said. It was just art.

The next day, the tubes were removed from my mouth, just as my arms had been removed from my body. Despite that, my situation wasn’t as terrible as that of those who accompanied me.

Once more she arrived and undressed. Now she brought along a steaming plate.

I would have recognized my muscles anywhere. She gave me a taste, and I didn’t refuse.

It was delicious. The wine was missing, but I still emptied the plate. It was worthy of me and of her.

I tried to talk, to find some way to… to not die. Although in my position death could be a swift release.

“None of you will be leaving for a while. You are all necessary for my next exhibition. I’ll let you know in advance… it will be a cubist piece.” I partly understood what she meant.

Another one of the men there was crying, at least that’s what I thought… she approached to calm him.

“The soul resides in organic matter,” she mused. “It continues eternally, while bodies are fleeting. All souls are equal—mere energy to power the machine. But each body is unique, perfect in its imperfection, in its individuality. Like a custom-chiseled commission.”

“Bodies are art.”

“What we will do is postmodern. We take the original perfection and turn it into something more. Something that in the viewer’s eye becomes eternal.”

“It will be greater than us. Everyone will see the value of meat.”

I pondered her words. I no longer possessed a tongue with which to converse. But… sharing the meat. What a novel idea.

My existence drifted between dreams and a wandering state. Unable to distinguish days from hours. I don’t remember when she opened my torso; I couldn’t see it, but I was sure I was connected to a device that managed my bowel movements and basic needs.

She approached, turned on a camera, and put her arms inside me. Despite the anesthesia, I felt her hands stirring my intestines and squeezing my spleen; the pain and spasms destroyed the nerves in my brain. She took out my liver and was kind enough to rub it on my face; I smelled it, and its touch reminded me of my precious ritual.

With her hands, she tore the liver in two and drank the blood with bile. She covered her body, her delicious skin, in my juices. In that moment, we were one. She approached and kissed me, transferring my own essence back into me. A truly singular gesture.

And the end would come. I don’t know how much time passed. I assumed my body was no longer the same, but a better one. A forty-cubic-centimeter salkoro. A giant rissolée. With no neck to see beyond what was in front of me.

How I could still be alive was a mystery. The last of my companions had been removed hours or days ago. I already knew his fate; it was the same as the others that made up the structure inside that display case with red light.

She entered, naked, carrying a meat cube that had been smoked for hours; it had a crystallized crust with various condiments. The eyes had probably exploded or melted away in the process. She fitted it like a brick into that wall of human cubes. Only one forty-centimeter gap remained—the final piece; the cherry on top. The best one, modesty aside.

She looked at me, with respect, like a kindred soul; our connection needed no words. She turned on the camera and took a knife. She cut a piece of the roasted meat cube she had just placed in the display case.

She approached and picked me up like a baby, still connected to the tubes that kept me alive. Into a hole that I suppose served as a mouth, she introduced the steaming piece of my companion.

I felt something wet cover my eyelids and run down the straight surface of my body. The meat was perfect. It was undoubtedly a work of art.

She left me in my place.

“I’m going to get wood. I’ll smoke you for 24 hours. You’ll be perfect.”

I only have one thing left to say:

I love meat.

You are meat. To be consumed, and to consume.

By time. By life. By art. By her.

Everything is meat.