A Feast for the Damned
The handcuffs scraped my wrists as I tried to pull free from the iron railing bolted to the edge of the banquet table. The chain links rattled and the cuff slid from side to side along the railing until it was stopped by the bolts drilled into the table’s thick mahogany. I was trapped, only able to move my arms far enough to reach the plate of grotesqueness set before me. Around the table with me sat five other people, each handcuffed like myself. The looks of nausea and misery that marred their faces was reflected in my own.
“Now, now. No getting up from the table without permission,” a rich bass voice chided me from the head of the table. I tried to glare at my captor, but my eyes held more helplessness than malice.
My dinner host laughed, a childlike giggle that sounded inhuman in his deep voice. His ice-blue eyes met mine, staring me down. His glare extinguished the feeble sparks of rebellion I’d kindled in my heart. His eyes were like the talons of a beast that grabbed my soul and twisted. I shrank in my chair, looking away from his pale face, only for my eyes to fall upon the meal laid out before me.
It was a man’s forearm, broiled in an oven and covered with a thick, red sauce. My dinner companions had similar fare placed before them: a woman foot, a child’s leg, a mismatched pair of hands. The odor of dinner was…enticing, God help me. Six days of nothing but rust-tainted water served through the bars of a makeshift cellar prison had sharpened my appetite to a razor-like edge. Despite what my eyes beheld, my nose betrayed me. I felt the saliva pooling in my mouth.
“Thank you for accepting my dinner invitation. I hate to dine alone.” That obscene giggle followed. “We’re going to play a little game tonight. It’s called ‘Whoever Finishes First Gets to Live.’” Our captor, lean like a hungry wolf, steepled his skeleton-thin fingers in front of him as he reclined his the throne-like chair. A killer’s smile graced his face, his inhumanly long incisors revealed by his arching lips.
“Now when I say, ‘Go,’ you all start eating. And when the first person finishes, then it’s my turn to dine.”
This monster in the form of a man rested his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward.
“Ready. Set. Go.”
The fast rattle of handcuffs filled the dark dining room as we all reached for our meals.
