Even in the clearest, coldest water, gardenias are the white of a virginal bride a only short time — their purity and innocence turning weary yellow then bitter brown in days. Days, yes, but if you had the patience to watch unblinkingly -- but seconds, it always seemed, if you turn away and then back: life before, nothing but dead petals after.

Looking at her, faded crinoline in the hard light of morning, I felt shame that I had faulted in my patience. If I hadn't continued on my rounds, hadn't allowed routine to take me away from this gardenia in the asylum sunroom then perhaps she would have stayed full, rather than continue to drain.

The day was warm, threatening hot, but the threat was prescient in that room: the glass magnified the sun, and I would have said something, anything, to keep her in a better environment — a cool bowl of water rather than a hothouse — but I indulged her. Something about the heat, about the dancing waves that lured perspiration out of every corner of the body, that seemed to quell her hysterias.

"What is it about the foods that begin the day, doctor?" She looked up at me from the chaise lounge, her indicating with an aquatically tired gesture a breakfast tray on the terra cotta floor tiles beside her: pancakes and syrup, a half glass of orange juice, a half grapefruit — barely touched, hardly eaten — quickly lusted after by a slow circle of fat flies. "Too sweet for any dessert, but we expect, crave them. Dreams, doctor, maybe dreams hunger for sugar, for syrups and compote — maybe that's why we can tolerate such sugars only in the mornings."

Gardenias and then, with those words, a child's plaything: a porcelain plaything outliving some child, then adult, then matron. Life burned away, but beauty preserved like a doll still beautiful despite ages on a shelf — but in her case the flame wasn't age, but rather some unknown trauma, some daylight nightmare — a cryptic brutality that turned a girl into crisped petals and cracked china.

"You have been good to me, doctor," she said, looking up at me from under a cream colored sun hat, flashing at me eyes the color of polished amber. "To everyone else I'm just another monkey in this zoo, but you, doctor, you look and you see me. For that, kind sir, I am eternally grateful."

She looked again at the breakfast tray, as if seeing the crystallizing syrup, the feeding flies, thick juice for the first time. Those amber eyes widened, for a moment seeing not discarded food and dirty dishes but something else. Rather than the tray, the food, she looked up at me. "You deserve kindness, doctor, gratitude for the humanity in your lovely eyes. I would cure myself of this madness if it were in my power, because that would be the best gift to give you, but I cannot. I would demonstrate myself to you in other ways, but I can tell that would not be a gift you would… appreciate, as I will always be patient to your doctor."

My face flushed red, my mouth too full of things to say — so silence was the only thing that made it out.

"Beyond a healthy will, which I cannot give, I know what you want, doctor. Ha! I know your real desire, doctor, I know your scientific hungers — so I will, despite my horrors, give you a taste this morning of what occurred, what happened that Thursday last, the beginning that has ended here, with you, and this place.

"But, doctor, before I begin I must tell you of what I have learned. The real lesson. We all have hungers, doctor, we all crave and pursue: yours is truth, to solve the puzzle. But with the smallest taste appetites can grow, doctor, they can become something large and terrible and… consuming."

She paused to brush gently at her faded skirts, smoothing the material: an echo, a memory of how things must have been, before saying, "There's a road —"

There's a road up by the highway, you may have seen it, that rounds a low hill. A perfect place, Sebastian, said. Sebastian, my brother, said.

Somewhere a book said that just as we all wish to consume something we also have something to give. Tragedy is when you live your life without discovering what it is you have to give. Cruelty is when you have something to give, but do not — and Sebastian? Sebastian was neither tragic nor cruel, but something else: a man without definition, a man with appetites, but also with a true gift, greatness to give. Sebastian is my brother and if you ever had the pleasure or misfortune to make his acquaintance then you, too, would know that definitions fail to catch him. Sebastian was my brother, and Sebastian was… Sebastian.

"That road," he said to me a year, maybe a year and some months, for the world rarely listens to real anniversaries, "is perfect." Where it curls around the low hill, he did his building., Because Sebastian is the oldest by some years and some months, because I rarely pay attention to details of time, Mamma and Poppa left him some money. Not enough for true luxury, but more than enough for a man like Sebastian to begin.

Mamma adored Sebastian. She would sit in the drawing room in the afternoons and simply talk about Sebastian like his was a face that decorated the lobby of the Odeon and not her flesh and blood. "That Sebastian" she would saw, fanning herself and sipping the sweet drinks that I would make her, "is a man like no other," and I would agree, for I, too, say his as a face that could possibly flicker and shine in a matinee.

Pappa did not hate Sebastian, but he did not love him the way Mamma loved him. Pappa would talk about Sebastian like he wasn't in the same room or even standing right there before him — right there. "That boy — " he'd begin, though Sebastian was not old, but certainly not a boy " — is too different for this world" and I would agree, for I, too, saw him as I saw no other man I had ever met, or seen. Sebastian was an angel face, but he was also a man with cold marble eyes equal with his movie screen beauty.

I did not hate, nor did I adore him with blushing cheeks, as did my Mamma. Sebastian was the boy who picked wildflowers and sprayed their petals on my bed one morning. Sebastian was the boy who put a dead frog under those same covers. My brother would, for no reason, call me a beauty like no other — singing poetry about Helen of Troy and the names of movie beauties like Elizabeth Taylor for no other reason, he said, than my face was caught an evening light "just so" but he was also the boy who told his friends, my friends, complete strangers that my legs swung wide and often, sometimes for trinkets, sometimes for coins, mostly just because I liked it.

Later, after many summers of petals and dead frogs, we both traveled to the big school in New Orleans. In a big house dripping with ivy, a yard pressed under lethargic willows, we moved forwarded in our lives. I discovered the fabrics, cosmetics, perfumes, and laughter of being a woman. I also learned both the power and the shame of being a woman, how I was what men wanted but that they also hated me for that wanting.

In high rooms framed by curling iron balconies, and in steaming kitchens, Sebastian discovered something as well: he discovered pans and pots, flour, starch and sugar; temperatures, coolings, spices, and flavors. With first whispers then with pleas Sebastian's audience of students and teachers asked for new and better delicacies. Nothing seemed impossible for his tea and table spoons, his measuring cups and ladles or his… yes, his hands, I suppose — though watching people eat what he put in front of them you would swear, as did I, that there was something beyond simple cooking involved in his recipes. Angel, devil, my brother put all of himself into what he prepared, and as he cooked, and as more and more people sampled his wares, Sebastian, asked for and received greater and greater rewards. Sebastian, it seemed, had discovered his gift — as well as the cruelty in not rewarding it to the hungry.

Our parent's death, the result of an interaction between their habit of a Sunday morning drive after services and an early freight train, came — for Sebastian at least — at a fortuitous moment in his education: between experiments with sautés and bouillabaisse a teacher, whose own specialty was baked goods and sauces, was discovered bent over a hot stove with Sebastian's own baster between his buttered buns. Much was ignored, much was denied, but too much had been done of both and politely, Sebastian and I, my guilt solely by familial association, were asked to leave.

But Sebastian's dismissal from the school did nothing to remove the beautiful expression from his perfect face. Leaving me to put our parent's affairs in their orders, and to make the arrangement for their internment, he spent long days driving in the country, looking for something he wouldn't specify.

The day of the funeral, the minister praising their goodness, denying their own guilts with much better conviction that the school had done for their students and teachers, Sebastian drove me many miles beyond the city, into the rolling hills. At a certain point, where the road rounded a low hill, he stopped the car and said: "a perfect place. A perfect place for what I want to do -- what I was born to do."

The day was hot, though not as hot as this day, doctor, and I was still in my black dress from the funeral, but I still felt a deep chill as Sebastian spoke those words: the feeling of ice, of goosebumps, on a heated day. With his gift, and the pleasure he felt in withholding it, my brother had found the ideal location. I didn't want to go with him, to help him in what he wanted to do, but I did nonetheless. Sebastian was many things, doctor, but most of all he was my brother.

Then he began to build. From the city he hired teams of big, sweaty men to come up with him to that low hill, that spot along that road, to lay brick, hammer nails, lift great beams, and pound sheets of corrugated steel. That summer was not just hot, it was the hottest; the air was not just humid, but rather the most humid anyone could remember as having felt — but still Sebastian was there, helping those brawny men lay, hammer, lift, and pound until piles of bricks, nails, beams, and corrugated steel grew into the architecture of Sebastian's desire.

I helped him as much as I could. At first it wasn't a place for a lady, but I still came up every day with a lunch of potato salad, fried chicken and beer for him and the workmen. But when it was finished, I was there right beside him when he took down that crudely painted OPEN SOON banner to put out an OPEN sandwichboard.

The name of the place was Sebastian's idea, of course. If it'd been up to me I would have certainly named it something else, say French — those lovely, pretty words that would be on the lips and tongue like sweet cakes and lemonade, not something crude like those words that Sebastian chose to hang out front. But that was Sebastian, you see: he knew all those pretty French words, but to him, and what he wanted to do, what mattered more was what was on the plates, and not that the place settings were guided, or even that clean.

Like his menu: chalk on blackboards — and what was on those slates in simple block letters GRITS, HOMINY, BISCUITS, CORN ON THE COB, and most of all, those three letters, doctor, those three very special letters: BBQ, as in BBQ CHICKEN, BBQ RIBS, BBQ PORK. "If it walks," Sebastian would say, "I'll cook it -- and if it talks, I'll serve it."

Serve them he did, doctor. At first it was long nights there in the cool darkness of the place: Sebastian in the kitchen, slicing, stirring, feeding the ovens, the grills, the air heavy with sweetness, with honey, with butter, with the sound of crackling meat, the sputters of fat and grease on the coals. I would write on those blackboards, trying to improve Sebastian's simple lettering with my own feminine swirls and arcs. In the kitchen, Sebastian was a magician: turning bleeding raw meat into delicacies glowing with spice and glazes, transforming raw vegetables into steaming feasts shimmering with butter. Watching him, through clouds of aromatic steam, I remember feeling the bite of jealousy — that my brother was in his place, performing his talent, when all I could do… all I could do was write down what he was doing.

It wasn't long before people started to come. How they heard I don't know, because Sebastian didn't advertise or even talk to many people about what he was doing up there on that road. Maybe the wind shifted one day, and that rich steam from his roasting meat, the alluring scent of his cooking vegetables reached down to the city, into the noses of a lucky few — and maybe those few told their friends, until the smells of Sebastian's magic, or just their rapturous description of them, spread throughout the whole of the state.

People came. Sebastian stayed in his kitchen, doing his magic. People came, and people ate. Soon there were too many for us, and so I hired a pair of colored girls to help with the taking of orders, cleaning tables, washing up, while I walked around, dressed in my finest, making sure everyone was happy. I like to think that some of them came up that road to that little brick and iron building to see me, but it's a sad little dream, doctor, because they came and they ate: their faces never turned away from the BBQ, their grits, their hominy, their biscuits and ears of buttery sweetcorn. But I stayed. I stayed because Sebastian needed my help, or I hoped he needed my help, and… I didn't have anywhere else to go.

Sebastian didn't want to go anywhere else. Sebastian was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do — and even more, because Sebastian's passions were great, but never simple. In the kitchen, he made his magic, turning raw, cold, meat into honey-glazed brilliance. I used to watch him, see the flames in his eyes, both from the charcoal as well as his own deep burning, as he brought his cleaver down on a slab of beef, chopping it hard, neatly separating rib from rib. Or when he broke a chicken with his bare hands, dipping a fat drumstick in his bubbling cauldron of sweet mixtures before putting it over the glowing coals, the sauce and bubbling and hissing in an almost echo of the sounds our customers made in when they took their first bite.

But Sebastian smiled at other times, doctor. Like when every table was full and our girls were all a fretting and worried so at not being able to handle all those hungry people, and I would bring a quick gesture hand to my brow and feel myself damp almost wet doctor, from the heat of the kitchens, the warmth of the day, and the demanding stomachs of them all. Days like that, when all of the state it would seem was demanding their BBQ, pushing one drumstick, one steak, one pork rib, after another into their sucking, chewing mouths, Sebastian would step out of the kitchen and stand there, watching — just watching them all until one, then, others noticed him. They knew, you see, they knew that there wasn't anyone else in the kitchen, and no one else they'd accept even if there were another available. The magic was Sebastian and Sebastian's alone: no one else could turn meat into glazed ambrosia — the BBQ of the Gods.

He'd stand there, just watching them eat, then he'd walk by them, their eyes saying what their mouths, so full of tasty meat, could never speak: Get back to that kitchen, boy. Feed us, boy. He'd walk by them, his smile growing with each step, until his face was lit by a glow of pleasure… wicked pleasure, devilish pleasure. Then he'd go to the door, hold it open and call out, as loud as he could: "That's the last, folks. Eat what you got because today we're closing early."

Oh, their faces. Bankers who bankrupted folks with swirls of a pen, doctors who offered last rites, schoolteachers who spanked disobedient children, policemen who cracked bones everyday -- they'd all just sit and stare at my brother, the meat he'd prepared sometimes even falling from their shocked loose mouths. Looking at them, their appetites still clawing at their fat bellies, you knew what they were thinking, what they all wanted to do: Get back to that kitchen boy, yeah, but did they? No, doctor, they knew where they sat, they new their places — rich man, high class, iron balconies, fancy clothes, big cars, they knew their place: they were on the bottom, and Sebastian was high above them. They knew that if they said a word, made one little squeak then who knew what would happen? Maybe Sebastian wouldn't open tomorrow — or the next day, or maybe something would be missing from my simple blackboard menu, the one thing they didn't realize they couldn't live without, until it was gone.

So all of them, they did what Sebastian asked: they stuffed their mouths with the last of his glistening meat and then they shuffled out, not a complaint from one of them — not even from their unfulfilled bellies. Out they went, under the rapturous joy of Sebastian — happy when he was in the kitchen with the steam and his raw meat, ecstatic when he told them they could have no more. Not cruel — Sebastian wasn't that, neither was he tragic. He was simply my brother, and he had a gift — a gift that consumed him. Yes, that's right — very right. It consumed him in many ways.

Many ways: not too long ago I learned that Sebastian had appetites beyond his need to work his magic in the kitchen, as well as hold his tangy creations just out of reach of a hungry mouth.

Do you hear it in my voice, doctor, the dread, the terror — the memory is still too clear in my mind. There. Right there it is: in all it's details. The deep purple of an approaching Summer night, the scuffed arcs on the floor from where someone had pushed back a chain, the pale sweep of chalk from a clumsy sleeve against one of the blackboards, a fat crow sitting on the roof, the buzz of the back porch light, the shadows — yes, the shadows. I remember I had gone around to the back, looking for one of our girls — the foolish thing having gone off and forgotten to put the lid once again on one of the pickle barrels.

I never went around back before. I never needed to. Sebastian said I shouldn't have to… doctor, did I know but didn't allow myself to understand? Did I really know what happened back there, when the sun had set behind the thick pines and the shadows bled off into the dark night? Did I understand what was happening but always keep my eyes turned towards the front, towards the buzzing electric lights?

I thought the night was moving. Trees, I remember thinking, the trees and moving — that's why darkness seemed to be slipping over darkness. But there was no breeze. The night was hot and still and simple: the distant pines, the back door, the hard, glaring light in its curled metal shade, and Sebastian, standing there.

Then I saw them. Not shadows. Not trees moving in a nonexistent breeze: men. Shabby men, dirty men — hobos, tramps, beggars. Their skin wasn't white or black, just dirty. Fall far enough, doctor, and does everyone become the color of an old dirt road? They had fallen a great distance: they wore old burlap sacs, coats missing sleeves, pants missing legs, belts of rope, shoes that were nothing but bags tied with twine. They shuffled and limped, and held their hands out.

"You know the rules," Sebastian said, wiping his hands on his filthy apron. Hearing his voice I stepped back, hiding behind a corner of the building. Burs, I remember, scratched at my ankles.

The men — the things that used to be men, I mean — heard what he said and I knew, then and there, that they'd heard it before. This wasn't a new thing I was seeing. This was something Sebastian had done before, something he did often. Maybe it was something he'd discovered about the place, or more terrible still, he'd pick this place, on that certain road, because Sebastian knew these things were there.

"A lick for a lick, a bite for a suck," Sebastian said — and, oh, there was such a laugh in his voice: a steel dark, razor sharp laugh. He'd laughed before always in the kitchen but never, not once, like he did then.

He laughed and his hands went under his apron. He laughed and pushed his apron aside, and there — in the too clear light from that shaded electric lamp, my brother held himself. It is a bad thing, doctor, for a sister to see her brother's… manhood, but that night I did. Heaven help me I did, and I didn't just see it, but rather I looked at it. The details locked forever in my mind, and I found myself thinking of him as not my brother but rather a man, a man standing with his member hard, projecting out into the warm night air.

Here was the baster that he'd used to well in school, the portion of his anatomy that so many staff and students had seen, touched, and no doubt sampled as much as they'd sampled his dishes and delicacies.

Big — and was that pride I felt or a woman's hunger? Am I forever damned for thinking such things about my own brother? But I did think such things are even more: the strength of the shaft, the hardness, the veins, the plushness of the head, the glimmers and gleams of sweat. The heaviness of his testicles, and the way they seemed distant, out-of-focus from his thick tangle of dark hairs.

He repeated himself to them, or maybe it was to me? "A lick for a lick, a bite for a suck," he said, but this time he turned slightly. The backdoor was ajar, and he put his hand between the door and the jamb — coming back with a thick, heavy turkey leg. Even in that merciless light is glistened with juice, with sauce, with sauce and just as my body had responded to Sebastian's erect manhood I felt my stomach react to the sight of that meat; a new kind of hunger, but equally strong and determined. My stomach rumbled softly, and if my other, womanly, anatomy could have made a sound it would have in response to its own cravings.

"Who's first?" leered Sebastian, holding out the fat drumstick in one hand and his erection in the other. For a moment, none of the shaggy men moved - then one did, stepping forward on quaking legs and then, equally shaky, dropped to his knees. He seemed uncertain, his cloudy eyes shifting from penis to meat and back again. "You know the rules," Sebastian said, booming, angry.

The man — or the thing that used to be a man — did, it seemed, because he dropped his filthy, tooth-rotten mouth without hesitation over Sebastian's erect penis and began to loudly, sloppily suck. The sounds… there aren't any words to describe the sound of that bum, that hobo's lips around Sebastian's hard flesh. No longer hungry, what food remained in my tight belly threatened to expel into the night air — but still, I watched.

The bum sucked on Sebastian like his was the fountain from which all life grew, as if through his diligence he could draw into himself Sebastian's talent, wealth, intelligence, and power. Finally, Sebastian put his hand out and pushed the hobo roughly back. "That's enough," Sebastian said as the dirty thing fell back into the dust and dirt. "Bite," he said, holding out the drumstick.

This times his lips did not hesitate: with a hungry lunge the filthy thing was on the meat, tearing at the tender flesh with his few remaining teeth, swallowing as much as he could before, again, Sebastian shoved him back — this time with a cruel kick to his shoulder. "Okay, whose next?" my brother called out to them, his voice thundering, jeering, mocking them and their pathetic lives. Standing high above them, holding tasty meat and his glistening erection, he laughed at them.

But still, they came. This one may have been black or he may have simply become part of the night, like a rat that scurries along a gutter. But he came, toothless mouth gasping for my brother's flesh, my brother's meat. First, though, the flesh — rolling his dirty, scabbed mouth over Sebastian's gleaming erection, pushing himself onto the stiffness of him — lacking in control of muscle what he gained in determination: impaling his lips onto Sebastian, pushing him deeper and deep into himself and even clawing at the ground.

Sebastian, his face like a marble angel in the pure light, a halo of moths swirling around his golden hair, tilted his head back and slipped out a low moan: the sound a cat might make on killing just the perfect mouth, or a woman might giving up her chastity. But Sebastian was not about to finish, not yet. Again, Sebastian's elegant hands fell to the dirty shoulders of what once has been someone's son, maybe even someone's brother or father, and pushed him away, brutally hard, sending him sprawling into the dust.

"A prize earned," Sebastian laughed, throwing the creature a whole drumstick, the plump meat slapping onto his dirty coat and rolling down into the dirt, collecting rocks, sticks and more foul matter than I could ever imagine. But my foulness was his world, and before his gasping, clutching brethren could steal it away, he wrapped spastic hands around the meat and eagerly stuffed it into his spasming maw.

"Who's next?" bellowed Sebastian, my brother, his eyes mad, his body immense — and they came, more of them, dozens of them: dirty hands slapping at each other for a chance to feast on Sebastian's manhood, to earn his currency, to buy a taste of heaven. I watched, doctor, I watched and did not turn away. I felt trapped, as condemned to stare from my dark vantagepoint as they were doomed to be ground even farther into the dirt by their desperation for even just the smallest taste of finery.

But I watched for another reason, doctor, for as I was shocked, revolted, by the spectacle of my brother's game with these wretched creatures I also watched because I was in awe of my brother's power, his control, and, yes, I must say to my undying shame, my utter humiliation, my brother's manhood. I've always loved my brother, doctor, but that night, watching those bums and hobos suck and chew at his member, I wanted more than just a love a sister might feel for her brother, but rather — rather I wanted to be down on my knees, down in the dust and dirt as well, I wanted to taste my brother's magnificence, to consume his meat — both the flesh the Lord above gave him but also, as a reward for my services, the meat Sebastian's divine gift had enriched, made almost holy. I wanted to take communion, doctor: a communion of a man's — no, not just a man's, but rather my brother's penis.

I was not the only one. No, even though I knew Sebastian had done this before — many, many times I was certain — I also knew that this time, this one night was special: something about his recipe, something about the stars, or the moon, or some other form of cosmic alignment, but that night those wretched creatures wanted their own transubstantiation, wanted Sebastian's complete divinity. They clawed and fought each other, beating and tearing at themselves to get closer, to get their pustulent mouths around him, to such and lick and draw as much of my brother as they could into themselves.

Through it all, from the start to the very end, Sebastian laughed. He laughed -- I knew, I understood -- because this was the ultimate for him, the pinnacle: Sebastian was everything to these once-men, he was everything they'd ever wanted, and they would do anything, endure any pain, any humiliation, to get to him.

As, doctor, would I have. Hungry mouths working him, tongues washing his body from his penis and testicles to his booted feet, they worshiped him. He sprayed then, and they arched their gasping mouths to catch as much of the silvery erection as was possible, fighting again for the tiniest drop, the smallest taste.

Sebastian, his head thrown back, his eyes wide open and glassy, let them pull more and more of himself out through their fingers, mouths, lips, and more, much more. My brother, Sebastian, was at the peak of his life, the crowning glory of all he's sought his entire life. Then, at that moment, he turned his head and looked straight at me — our eyes meeting for eternity in the staccato beat of my heart. Sebastian, looking at me — and I knew he'd always known I was there — smiled.

But then, doctor, it happened — the thing that pushed me too far, that started the screams that only your drugs have dulled. The thing that happened only last Thursday yet is as present in my mind as just a moment, a second ago.

A flicker of pain like lightning on a hot summer day, struck across Sebastian's face — but his smile never left his lips, never broke through his joy. The wretched things, they became even more excited, more fevered in their activities. Their claw-like hands reached up, clutched at Sebastian's apron, his pants, his belt and with a great surge of starvation, they pulled him down into their seething mass: teeth and gums and lips and hands tearing, ripping away at my brother, at Sebastian.

They'd had a taste, you see, Doctor; and their appetites couldn't be satiated with his drumsticks, hog ribs, beef anymore — no, they hungered for the ultimate flesh, the perfect meat. They hungered for, and consumed before my very eyes, my brother, Sebastian.

I did not stay to see what else occurred, no longer frozen in horror, I turned and ran, screaming into the night, towards the road: the images and sounds of what had occurred, was still occurring behind me. I ran until a car stopped, the sheriff, of all people, who drove me to a hospital, thinking my wounds of the flesh and not in my mind, my spirit. I told them, I tried to tell them what had happened that night but they did not, would not, believe. Even after the sheriff had gone up that certain road, looked behind that brick and iron building, they wouldn't believe. I know what they'd said doctor: an accident, some kind of horrible accident with machinery — or, and I do know they've whispered this as well, that perhaps Sebastian was killed, murdered by my hands. But I tell you this, doctor, I saw what I saw, I watched my brother, my beloved Sebastian, as he was consumed, feasted on by those men. I saw the appetite he'd awakened in them bloom forth in a maddening. I'd seen Sebastian consumed by his own mad, awful, hunger.

You may think me mad -- everyone here may think my mind is broken like a cheap china cup, but I tell you the truth. I cannot make myself well, doctor, but for your kindness, your caring, I can at least give you this truth of what happened to my brother and myself. I just hope this does not stir your own hideous appetites.

I went about my rounds the rest of that day a somnambulist: nodding thoughtfully, holding the hands of the patients, listening to their deliriums, but I was not there. My mind was gone, lost in its own dark pathways. I did not know what to make of her story. Her pathology was obvious, her mental disease clear — but something remained, something nagged.

When my shift ended, I climbed into my car and drove. I did not consciously think of where I was headed, my hands guiding me along darkening streets, out of the city and towards the rolling, distant hills. I did not mean to go there, but perhaps I needed to go there, to add substance to this fading flower's delusions — to see if anything was real about her torturous dreams.

I drove for a long time, much longer than I expected, until it was there in front of me. A low brick structure, with a corrugated iron roof. A single sign hung out from, a bold proclamation. I didn't get out of my car — instead I just stared at it, certain, as I was never certain before, of the horrible truth.

Finally, I turned the car around and headed back — determined with my insight to pull her back from the precipice, the living nightmare that had occurred to her.

I left EATS behind, and went back to her.

 

©2002 M. Christian - Contributor's Bio

'Suddenly Last Thursday' was anthologized in Best of The Best Meat Erotica