I carve holes in the femur bone of my former enemy. I have sucked the marrow out and cooked his tender flesh for consumption. His organs and muscle I have ground into sausage. I cook the sausage and feed the homeless in Tompkins Square Park. The media heralds me as a generous hearted humanitarian. I am a minor celebrity in my community. I have eaten dinner at Gracie Mansion and have had my portrait done by famous artists that live in the city.
The holes are for a flute. I play strange and beautiful music through my enemy’s leg. The music is dark and sensual. The music is forty thousand years in the making. My Germanic ancestors carved similar instruments from the bones of bears. I am no different from them. There is no more dangerous animal than man.
I make another flute from my enemy’s other leg. The rest of his bones I grind into powder. I mix the powder with cocaine and snort my enemy into me. I absorb my enemy’s powers in this fashion.
I play passionate and sad music on my two red flutes and have no intention of recording my songs. Nothing is permanent. Change is the only constant. I exist in the ether; eternal and illusory.
His teeth I surround with oven bake clay, one at a time. I sculpt tiny animals with the clumps of clay and bake them. I create a glaze with some of the left over blood and all of the little animals are red. I surprise the neighborhood children with my gifts and their mothers adore me. I have two dates with divorcees next week and get away with murder.
Michael S Gatlin just finished his second novel and was recently published in Splizz, Dharma Lick, and Tomato-tomato. He owns a bar in Manhattan called Verlaine—because he couldn’t bare hearing people mispronounce Rimbaud.
