Six Scifi Stories (10 page)

My Cannibal Lover

Only as I devour the flesh of Manny's finger for what must be the hundredth--and final--time do I finally realize that I love him back.

It truly blows my mind. It's one thing for Rations to fall in love with those who feed on them--it's not uncommon at all--but who ever heard of a woman falling for her food?

This just might be a first.

Too bad no one will likely ever know. Too bad both of us will die before long.

Manny will die from being eaten alive, and I will die of starvation when there's no more Manny left to eat.

“Have some more, Lupe.” He has one finger left, a right thumb, and he presses it toward me. He has a smile on his sugar-white face with its tutti-frutti swirls like he's a child offering me candy.

I shake my head. “I'll be okay.” My voice is hoarse. “Save it for later.”

Manny frowns and opens his mouth like he's going to argue. Then, he smiles sadly and pulls back the thumb. “Maybe you're right.”

“Double damn skippy I'm right.” I force on a smirk of my own for his benefit. The truth is, my stomach's still rumbling something fierce, but my Ration's got to stretch.

There's always been plenty of Manny to go around, but not anymore. These days, he can't replace what I eat.

This time, when he's gone, he's gone for good.

 

*****

Two months ago, when I first met Manny, I couldn't have imagined feeling sorry about running out of him. He was nothing but food to me then...food I wouldn't eat, at that.

It wasn't the taste of him that I hated, since I hadn't actually tasted him back then. It was just that I hated all his kind.

In fact, I just about shot him on sight the first time I saw him. Just about shot my lover and hired gun, Guapo Vasquez, in the bargain.

Guapo
knew
how I felt about Rations...and yet, there he was, strolling up the gangway of my spaceship, the
Puerco
, with one of those tutti-frutti naked little bastards right behind him.

Yet another rule broken by damn Guapo. For someone I let screw me as much as he did, the guy spent an awful lot of time screwing
with
me.

The pistol was in my hand about a heartbeat after I saw them. “
Mierda
!” I said, catching the Ration in my sights and flicking the gun's settings to maximum everything.

Better believe the tutti-frutti hairless bastard stopped walking...though he didn't stop smiling. Right at me.

That was a mistake on his part. His wide-eyed, sparkle-toothed, never-ending smile reminded me so much of someone I'd once known that it nearly got him killed.

“What the flap
is
this, Guapo?” The gun in my hand didn't twitch.

Guapo whistled a tune and walked toward me like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. He combed one hand through his oily, black hair and used the other hand to scratch his private parts. “You drunk,
dulcita
? This is a
Ration
. Got ‘im
cheap
, too.”

“I
know
what he is!” I wanted to swing the gun around to Guapo, but I couldn't bring myself to let the Ration's tutti-frutti bald head out of the sights. “What's he
doing
here?”

Guapo stopped in front of me and pointed at his mouth. “He's gonna
feed
us, babe. That's what Rations
do
.”

“Damnit!” I shot a glare at Guapo. “I've got, what?
One
lousy
rule
?
One
rule
, and you can't
follow
it?” I whipped the gun around and shook it at Guapo. “
No
Rations
, remember?”

Guapo stared down at me with his dark, half-lidded eyes. He reached out and tucked my long, brown hair behind my ears. “Cold storage on the
Puerco
's down,
novia
. We got no way to keep fresh food.”

“We'll have plenty of cash after the job on Polvo,” I said. “The bounty for killing that man-eater's gonna be enough to rehab half the ship.”

“Yeah,” said Guapo. “And in the meantime, we gotta eat
something
. Something that doesn't have to be
refrigerated
.”

I tossed my head, shaking the hair from behind my ears, then swung the gun back to aim at the Ration. He hadn't moved an inch. “I won't eat
that
. I'll
never
eat that.”

“My name is Manna,” said the Ration. The multicolored swirls on his sugar-white skin twisted and changed as he spoke. “You can call me Manny.”

Guapo stomped over and clapped a hand on Manny's shoulder. “Got him for a song, babe. Next to nothin'. He's used, but he's strictly Grade A.”

“That's right.” Manny nodded and patted his hairless chest with both hands. “Zero defects. My last owner only sold me because he was strapped for cash.” Manny cupped his hand, shook it, and pretended to fling dice out of it. “Gambling, y'know.”

“Out!” I took a step toward Manny. “Get the flap
out
!”

Just then, Guapo looked past me and grinned. “Hey, Frogface!” He jammed two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud. “C'mere and try some'a this!”

Frogface, my pilot and engineer, had just entered the cargo bay. At Guapo's whistle, he waddled out from behind me and headed straight for Guapo and Manny.

Frogface was in such a hurry that he literally dropped what he was doing, letting a power drill bang the deckplates in his wake. “Great! I'm starvin', Guap!”

Still smiling, Manny extended his arms toward Guapo and Frogface. “If I may make a suggestion, gentlemen,” he said. “The biceps are especially tender today. I'm roasting them up as we speak.”

Frogface, whose given name was Felix Suerte, rubbed his hands together. He looked more like a duck than a frog, with lips curled like a beak and a broad, flat nose--which, of course, was the joke behind his nickname. “I like the sound a' that.” He reached for Manny's right arm. “Think I'll try some.”

Guapo leaned in and sank his teeth into Manny's left bicep. He came away with a mouthful of meat and chewed it slowly. “Top quality,” he said when he could manage to speak. “Compliments to the chef.”

“Why thank you, sir.” Manny took a little bow.

As Frogface took a bite, and Guapo took another, my stomach churned. I wanted to look away, but that would have meant letting Manny out of my sights.

I grimaced and clenched my teeth. I couldn't stand watching people eat those things.

Rations were genetically engineered to be delicious and nutritious. They could use body chemistry to cook and season their flesh to taste, infuse it with a seemingly limitless number of flavors...then regenerate and replace every bite taken out. They were happy to do it, too.

But every time I saw someone eating a Ration, it still looked like a nightmare to me.

“Hey, Lupe, come on.” Guapo swallowed his latest mouthful. “Try some a' this. You won't
believe
how tender.”

“Get off the ship.” I took another step toward Manny. “Either you
walk
off, or I
shoot
you and throw out your dead body.”

“Lupe!” Frogface looked up from the forearm he'd been gnawing. “Quit scaring my dinner!”

“Yeah, Lupe.” Guapo patted Manny's bald head. “You wanna eat powdered cactus and spiderwebs all the way to Polvo, that's your business. Froggy and me want fresh food.”

“Forget it!” I took another step toward Manny, then another.

“Let me put it this way,” said Guapo. “If Manny leaves, Froggy and me leave, too.”

So that was the end of it, right there, and I knew it. No way I was taking on the mission to Polvo without Guapo and Frogface. I stopped moving toward Manny, though I kept him in my sights an extra minute for effect.

Then, I lowered the gun.

“That's a girl.” Guapo winked and hiked a thumb at Manny's chest. “Now have a bite, huh? You'll feel better.”

I shot Guapo the kind of glare that let him know he wasn't getting any from me for a long time. I turned the glare on Manny, too, but it didn't seem to faze him.

He knew better than to say a word to me at that moment, but the sparkly smile never left his face.

Typical Ration. Always look as friendly and appetizing as possible, no matter how annoying you might turn out to be.

But that wasn't why I hated him.

 

*****

Guapo and Frogface might have won the battle, but I didn't let them enjoy it. We spent three more days planetside on Saguaro getting ready for the trip, and I worked them like dogs. Didn't say more than the bare minimum to either of them the whole time, either.

And Guapo sure as flap didn't get anywhere near my bed. Not that he didn't try.

Manny, at least, kept his distance from me. While the
Puerco
was on the ground, I saw him only a handful of times, and he hardly said a word to me. Never offered me a bite, either, which was smart on his part.

In fact, the closest we came to a conversation was the time we walked down a narrow corridor from different directions at the same moment. Instead of moving to opposite sides, we both kept moving to the same side of the corridor. We did it three times before Manny finally laughed and pressed himself against the wall.

“After you,” he said, gesturing for me to pass. “Great minds think alike, I guess.”

“Flap you, food.” I leaned my shoulder into him as I pushed past. “Stay in the
maldecido
commisary where you belong, eh?”

I hated that tutti-frutti little bastard so much it hurt. I'm talking physical pain in my gut and my heart.

I'm talking the kind of hate that's so huge it just about replaces you. It works on you day after day for a lifetime, eating away at you.

And it starts when you're little more than a baby. That's the best time for it.

 

*****

I was eight years old when my three brothers and I caught Cornucopia. This was twenty-four years ago, and we were all starving to death during the famine on Polvo, our homeworld.

We sneaked over the wall of the estate where Cornucopia lived, and then we threw a net over her and hauled her to a shack out in Barrio Sucio.

We cheered and laughed as we tied her up, because we were heroes. We were too late to save poor dead Mama and Papa, but we'd saved ourselves and our friends. Maybe we'd even saved the whole barrio.

It had been so long since we'd eaten well, we'd forgotten what real food tasted like. Now, we had a living, breathing Ration all to ourselves. If we took good enough care of her, we might never go hungry again, no matter how long the famine lasted on our world.

At least that was the plan.

“You remember me, don't you?” As the boys tightened the ropes around Cornucopia's shoulders and torso, I patted the top of her smooth, bald head.

Cornucopia nodded. That same old sparkly Ration smile was pasted onto her pudgy face. “The little beggar girl. Always begging for a bite of me.” Her voice tinkled like tiny bells when she spoke.

“And you never said ‘yes.' Not once.” I pinched the meat of her shoulder, thinking about sinking my teeth into her. “But I guess you can't say ‘no' anymore.”

“Actually, I can,” said Cornucopia. The iridescent swirls on her face flowed and changed color. “Nothing has changed.”

“Like flap!” My oldest brother, Roto, took a deep whiff at the back of her neck. “You're
ours
now! You have to
feed
us!”

“No,” said Cornucopia. “I don't.”

“And why is that?” I made a face at her. I wasn't taking her seriously.

“I'm still someone else's property.” Cornucopia nodded. “Señor Gustavo still owns me, and I can't feed anyone unless he tells me.”

Roto's wild, frizzy puff of black hair bounced as he laughed. “We aren't going to ask your permission, y'know.”

“Yeah,” said my other brother, Miguel. “Don't look like you can stop us, either.”

“You're right, I can't.” Cornucopia's angelic smile drifted from Roto to Miguel to my third brother, Oswaldo.

“Didn't think so.” Miguel grinned and drove his teeth into her tricep. He tore off a hunk of meat and chewed it with his eyes closed, an expression of perfect bliss on his face.

I understood why he hadn't been able to wait. None of us had eaten anything but bugs and rotten garbage for weeks. My stomach growled just from watching him.

“That's good,” said Miguel. “Oh God, that's good.”

Oswaldo, just a year older than I, was the next to pounce. He bit into the flesh of Cornucopia's right thigh and came away with a mouthful dripping with rainbow blood.

Miguel laughed. “Thank God,” he said. “Oh, thank God.” Then he hugged Oswaldo.

I was just about to go in for a bite of my own when Cornucopia spoke up. “You were right when you said I couldn't stop you.”

“Tell me about it.” Oswaldo bit off another hunk of her thigh.

“I can do something else, though.” Cornucopia's smile never wavered. “I can kill you.”

Roto smirked. “Good one. Kill us how?”

Cornucopia looked a little embarrassed. The swirls on her face shifted from blue-green and gold to red and deep pink. “Poison,” she said. “If my owner hasn't programmed your genetic code into my glands, one bite of my flesh will poison you.”

Oswaldo stopped chewing his food. So did Miguel.

“She's bluffing,” said Roto. “The
perra
's trying to scare us into letting her go.”

I glared at the Ration. I had a horrible feeling she wasn't bluffing at all. “Why didn't you say something till now?”

Cornucopia shrugged. “Would you have believed me?”

Miguel groaned. Oswaldo coughed.

“Don't listen to her,” said Roto. “She just wants to escape.”

“That's not an issue.” Cornucopia shook her head slowly, still smiling. “The
policia
are almost here. They followed a tracking tag in my bloodstream.”

Automatically, I looked toward the door. Then, when Miguel and Oswaldo started vomiting, I looked at them instead.

“What's the cure?” I shouted.

“There is no cure,” said Cornucopia. “They'll be dead in minutes.”

I heard sirens outside the shack, and I went to my suffering brothers. As they collapsed--first Oswaldo, then Miguel--I dropped to my knees with them. I felt as if my own guts were being torn out by rough hands.

For many years, death had been my constant companion on Polvo...but this was different. These brothers were all I held precious in the world, all that had kept me alive in the darkest of times.

And the worst of it was, their deaths could have been prevented so easily.

As they released their dying breaths, I glared at Cornucopia. Even then, that damned sparkle-toothed smile never left her face.