It is not ugly, his death. The cats are careful. Frederic sings while they devour him; a new song, his own song, a sweet thing that smells of summer and rosemary. His smile is beatific. As his toes and his calves are winnowed to bone, Frederic leans forward to gather close the tide of velvet bodies and like fish, they nibble at his fingertips. It is only when his stomach has been excavated, abdominal cavity hollowed into a perfect blackness, that he rests onto his back, his arms spread out, as though in imitation of the martyred deity he so loathes.

The cats do not let even one drop of blood escape.

I stay with him until he ceases singing, until two kittens flee with an eyeball each, tattered membranes dripping from delicate jaws. I stay with him until he is gone, dispersed into Ulthar, a new wraith for her coffers.

There are many things that are said of Ulthar, most untrue and some interesting, but it is never said that we are unkind.

the truth that lies under skin and meat

english breakfast, $15.20

Plump sausages laced with spice; black pudding still thick with the taste of copper; bread fried in pools of butter; mushrooms roasted in puddles of butter; baked beans soaked in grease and thinned-out tomato sauce. More butter. A bottle of sour brown sauce.

Like nothing skinny, pretty Molly would normally eat.

Meat was too triggery, Molly used to tell her friends, whenever they asked why she preferred finger-bone slivers of raw carrot to veal, heads of broccoli to lamb brains stewed in an intricate masala sauce; raw things, clean things, vegetal and bloodless. They had laughed. But it is a half-true fact.

Meat isn’t wasn’t triggery.

Meat triggers triggered.

international phone call, £156.28

Last week, he told her everything.

Molly plucked at the seams of the armchair with her short, sharp nails until its stuffing fell out like clumps of hair and skin. Over and over, while her voice held steady and her heart thrashed in its cage of ribs.

“And you let her just… get away?”

“What else did you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. Report her—?”

“I can’t. I’ve I told you already. She has a daughter. If she goes to jail, they’re going to give custody to her next of kin: her parents.”

Molly felt a throb of hunger, a loosening of tendons. Under her skin, cells conspired against their veneer of humanity. “So?”

“Her parents are the reason she is the way she is, Molly. I can’t—I can’t do that to an innocent girl.”

Molly swallowed. In her head, the words “innocent girl” were indistinguishable from “meat”.