I watched the ravenous pigs viciously attack the body of my dearly departed husband. It only took about eight minutes for the pigs, who hadn’t eaten in four days, to completely polish off his entire two hundred pound body, even the bones!

I had used a large sledge hammer to pound his head into bloody pieces after I crept up to him in our barn. I knew I had to drag him out before there was too much blood soaking into the hay. I didn’t really have it well planned but I had had enough of his abuse. We lived way out in the country with no witnesses to the black eyes and cut lips that I suffered at his hands. The emotional indignities that he heaped upon my suffering soul were even worse. “You stupid bitch!” he screamed, “You’re good for nothing. You don’t even have my dinner ready!”

I thought I would have to remove bits of his body from the pig pen but the pigs left no traces of their carnage. I took a rake and stirred up the muck just to make sure.

No one seemed to miss him much. I certainly didn’t. I just went about my business of raising pigs, slaughtering them and taking them to market. When the other farmers asked where Buster was, I just said, “That pig, he ran off with another woman and I haven’t seen him since!”

I have to admit that I had second thoughts about the way I disposed of him. I probably should have just ground him up and sold his meat at the farmers’ market. They say that human meat tastes just like pork!

He wasn’t horrified by what he’d done, call it what you will. No indeed, though, he did in the end wipe some regret from his eye—persistently his thoughts leading back to his home kitchen. It wasn’t the spice rack, nor linen, or fancy knives that he recalled. He had to admit to himself that he’d done reasonably well, making-do with his current lot.

The “table-setting” was neat and clean, though spare, here in the front of the desolate den that had become his prison cell. He had had the foresight to spread out his trench coat across the dirt floor beneath him, so as not to soil his supper. He’d even gone so far as to make a bib of his handkerchief, and was quite tickled. As a fact he liked dining—dining in, or dining out. Ah, sigh! shaking his head. It would have been nice to invite company tonight, but alas, there was nobody, and never had been.

Regarding the etiquette and aesthetic, he really felt he had done what he should, as best as he could. Surely, his brothers and sisters would not fault him. He was quite confident they would have advised him the same, being pragmatic and plain. But it mattered not, since they were far away, and the rest of his family had long passed on, so he was left to tend to his own comfort and pain.

And so he did. He was a doer with considerable esteem. Having once made a decision, he toiled away with great resolve. Nay, with precision! One could tell by the way he had gnawed carefully around each sinew and relished his every morsel. He reflected it wasn’t that bad really, considering all possible crimes—what others might do in such obverse conditions! He was quite pleased, in spite of himself, and proud at the thought of how another might have died sooner, yet he had persevered for 80 days and 81 nights. Truly, he could help himself! Wiping his hands he had no shame, though admittedly feeling somewhat faint.

His single remorse—which he went so far as to inarticulately voice—was almost trivial, if not so simultaneously grave. Thoughts kept sinking back to his kitchen; the smart little pantry, the big fridge by the door. It was a bit of a waste. Looking down sadly from the shoes to his bones, to the satisfied gut, full and protruding, pressing out between bare ribs in a monstrous herniated plot. Ach! that refrigerator! What wouldn't he give to save a piece of himself for later!

It was hot, sticky without a breeze in the slasher film themed bedroom, the girl in the middle of it sobbed. Her tears leave clean skin as a roadway along all the dirt and splattered gore on her small face. She could feel it all dripping, from her hair to her shoulders, the tips of her slim fingers onto the wooden floor. The blood. Scrunched off to the side of the room was the producer of it all. The man who had given her the clothes she wore, the food gurgling in her stomach, the one who created every eyelash the tears hung to. Left stabbed and brutalized in his little girls room, the room he painted blue to match those sparkling eyes of hers, it was stained red. All because he could not stop, not when she screamed, not when she cried, not even with the first slice. Distastefully he had gotten too used to the way she felt, he touched and would not stop. The girl had grown into hate and overall a gruesome look at the people and visions around her. Her birthright was to be loved and to love others, he had taken all of that from her. Left her with a pain so deep, and he enjoyed it. So, she made sure she would enjoy the anguish she caused him.