Dead Offerings

By Kimberly Thomas

            He gave her a slab of beef as a surprise gift.  It was concealed in purple gift wrap with a white star-shaped ribbon stuck on it.  The card read:  To my only love.  My dearest love.  My Maria.

            They were in the two-bedroom apartment she shared with her older sister Lauren.  The movie credits were rolling on the TV screen, and she felt his arm tighten around her thin shoulders.

            “There’s something in the freezer for you,” he said.  “I put it in there while you weren’t looking.”

            “The freezer?”  she asked, her eyebrows lifted, her fingers poised at her lips.  A kernel of popcorn barely pressed against her teeth. 

            “Go look,” he said, his brown eyes glistening.

            So she got up from the sofa and walked to the kitchen; he followed her...like a trusting cow on its way to the slaughterhouse.

            It was not difficult to find.  There was usually nothing in her freezer, and even if there had been something in there earlier that night, how could she have missed this odd- shaped package sitting beside the ice trays like it had a right to be there?

            Maria twisted her neck to see him standing behind her, his lips curved into a smile.  He nodded and watched her as she pulled it out of the freezer.

            The coldness seeped through the purple paper, making her skin prickle.  It was heavy, but she managed to carry the unwieldy gift onto the counter and tear it open.

            Beef.  A slab of beef.

            “You shouldn’t have,” she said, eyeing the pink hunk of meat, her fingers hovering over it like nervous fleshy butterflies.

            “But I love you...And you need to eat more.  You’re too skinny.”

            “Thank you,” she said and put it back in the freezer next to a carton of raspberry ice cream.  “Thanks.”

            She first met him at the grocery store.  She loved the grocery store, loved grocery shopping.  Such a sensual experience pushing the cart through the aisles in an artificially controlled climate.  Watching people squeeze the tomatoes, thump the watermelons, caress the lettuce.  The cans of soup lined up like faithful soldiers.  The boxes of cereal begging her to pick them up...to place them inside her cart.  So many cereals to choose from...and each held promise.

            “You’re sick,” Lauren often told her.  Lauren hated going to the supermarket so she let Maria take care of gathering the week’s provisions.

            She used to see Trent there every Friday evening, a tall man adorned in a white apron smeared with red, a white paper hat, plastic gloves, a meat cleaver in his hand.

            He would smile at her as she passed him by, maneuvering her cart through the crowd of shoppers.

            “Hello there,” he said, giving her a friendly nod.  

            She smiled back, her stomach lurching.  She was a vegetarian and just the sight of meat made her want to vomit.

            But she liked the look of him; liked his face, his smile, his brown eyes that followed her as she picked up a 2-liter of Sprite, a box of Saltine crackers.

            And she knew that he was attracted to her.  He always stopped whatever task he was doing to wave or smile, his arm frozen in mid descent towards a chicken, all white and naked on the worktable.

            He asked her out one day, but she said no...said that she had a boyfriend (a lie) and she worked weekends (another lie).  But one day she ran into him on the street.  She was on her way to the library to return some books, and he was on his way out...They met at the front door and she barely recognized him without his butcher uniform, without his stupid paper hat.

            But then he smiled at her and she looked down at his fingers with the hint of scarlet beneath his nails...and she knew.

            He took her out for coffee, and they started dating.

            “A vegetarian and a butcher,” Lauren said, when she heard they had gotten together.  “That’s a new one,”

            “I know,” Maria said.  “But don’t laugh.  I can’t help who I’m attracted to.”

            She buried the beef in the backyard of her apartment complex...under the cover of darkness when all normal people were in bed.  Feeling like a thief, she took a small gardening shovel, dug a hole in one of the flowerbeds and placed it in the dirt.  A short whispered prayer.  Then heaped dirt back over the corpse.

            “Rest in peace,” she said aloud, her lips pale and stiff. 

            What am I doing, she thought.  I just buried a slab of beef.

            “I could have eaten it!”  Lauren told her when she found out what Maria had done.  “I’m a carnivore, remember?  We have other meat in the fridge.  Why couldn’t we keep the one Trent gave us?”

            But she couldn’t explain.  The words would not come to her.

            “Did you and your sister enjoy the gift I gave you?” Trent asked three weeks later.

            “We loved it,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck and placing a kiss on his lips.

            With an unsteady sigh, she breathed in the scent of the cologne he always wore.  It smelled of cloves and leather and the sea.  But lurking about the edges of his familiar smell...was the unmistakable scent of blood.  She had almost schooled herself to ignore the pungent scent of murder.   No one else could smell it.  She had even asked Lauren if she had ever caught a whiff of it on Trent’s skin.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lauren said.  “If you’re that opposed to his job, you need to break it off with him.”

            But she couldn’t break it off; she loved him.  She loved the way his smile tiptoed across his face...a shy, hesitant smile that took its time reaching the corners of his lips.  And when he looked at her, it was as if she was the only object in the world he could see.

            Whenever they went out to dinner she ordered a salad, telling him that she was on a diet. She became a master at examining the wall behind him to avoid seeing his teeth tear into the dead flesh (whether it be cow, pig, or fowl). 

            “Would you like to sample some of my steak?”  he would ask her, holding the fork towards her.

            And her stomach churned as she shook her head.  “No thanks.”

            What if I tell him I’m a vegetarian, she often asked herself  while at work, staring blankly  at the computer screen.  “Should I tell him?

            “Tell him!”  Lauren said.  “It’s no big deal. Tell him that you don’t eat meat!”

            “But he’s a butcher,” Maria said.

            “Then dump him,” Lauren said, stifling a yawn.  “Lord!  You always have to make everything so difficult.”

            So Maria decided to convert him.  She convinced Lauren to go to the movies with some friends while she prepared a fantastic meal for Trent.  Vegetarian pasta, tossed salad, a meatless casserole.   He sat down at the table across from her, and she watched him.

            “It’s beautiful,” he said. 

            And she watched him.  Watched him scarf down the pasta, the salad.  Watched him devour the veggie burgers, sip the white wine. 

            “How is it?”  she asked, her eyes staring at his wide forehead, his chin, the speck of tomato sauce decorating his green t-shirt.

            He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

            “Delicious!”  he told her. 

            “Do you think you’d like to eat like this every day?”  she asked.

            He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners.  “Well, I don’t know about that.  You didn’t have any meat on the table.  I can’t go a week without meat.”

            “Oh,” she whispered, looking past his shoulder at the clock on the wall. 

            “What’s wrong?”  he asked, placing his hand over hers.  She looked down at it—at the traces of red beneath his nails.  Her stomach heaved, and she pushed herself from the table.  The chair legs grated on the hardwood floor.

            “You’re going to have to leave.  I don’t feel so good,” she said.

            She stood beside the chair, her arms wrapped around herself.  The smell of blood--sharp and acrid filled the room.

            He looked at her, his eyes stretched wide, his mouth gaping open like a fish caught on a hook.

            “What’s wrong? Did I do something?”  he asked, his hand poised in mid air over the place where her hand had been.

            “I’m sorry,” she told him, her voice trembling.  “I feel sick...I...”

            He jumped up from his chair.  “Do you need me to take you to the emergency room?  Do you--”

            As he walked towards her, the bloody aroma was so overpowering she felt she would die if he came closer, if he tried to touch her, if his fingers made contact with her skin.

            “No!”  she shouted.  “I don’t need a doctor.  Just, please, go!”

            Within seconds, she had locked herself in the bathroom, the sound of her retching drowning out his feeble knocks on the door.

            She doesn’t answer his phone calls.  At first he leaves messages on her machine.  Gentle, confused, concerned utterings.  But soon, the messages are frantic, angry.  She starts going to another supermarket--the one five blocks further down the street with higher prices.

            He knocks on her front door, but she does not open it.  She will not let Lauren open it either.

            He leaves gifts at the door.  Offerings of dead things.  Chickens, steaks, ground beef.  Frozen dead things that call her by name.  And each night, when the normal people are asleep, she buries the dead things in the yard.  A short whispered prayer, and then heaps of dirt are shoveled onto the bodies. 

            And sometimes late at night, she hears him whispering her name in the darkness, soft and gentle.  He calls to her in the blackness, making her leave her warm bed, making her creep to the window and pull back the curtain.  He stands outside, staring up at her in the moonlight, his face pale as bone, his hands red...as blood.