Dead Dining

                        The Morbid Chronicling of  Grim Happenings; case #247

                                                            Dead Dining

            Somewhere over a hundred garbage hills and a dozen oil wells, beyond a river of waste and a road of rot, in an odious castle filled with a despicable smell, our dreadful story begins. The trees are dead where they stand and the birds are all fled from fear of this place. The mailman no longer delivers to the front gate, having lost the nerve to even approach the shadow of such a sinister place. 

            Before more of the setting is revealed, it should be said that there was once quite a pleasant child who was a darling to behold, but time is a mysterious wonder that changes all in one way or another. This child was no exception, and in many ways, time changed her. No longer a dear doll to her long dead parents, this girl is indeed a woman with the most odd of obsessions.

            The clock chimes half past five in the land of Trell when the green-eyed woman sits herself down before an array of food that would sicken any sane person. Vulture guts stuffed with poppies and caterpillars, mushrooms drizzled in tar, tiger tails and snakeheads all adorn her table that night. She is but a single woman, her waist the size of toothpick’s, devouring it all with a smile stretched wide across her pretty face. The woman's name is Benny Skoul. With a wealth that rivaled the Queen of England's it is rumored that she once used to go after the most delicious  foods of the world, but at the end what she ended up desiring was the world's most gruesome of dishes. 

            A new cook comes to her large mansion in complete and blissful ignorance, never suspecting the terror he has plunged himself into. He soon learns.

             "You dare to feed one such as myself such simplistic dishes. Have you no reverence, for your lady?" she shouts, throwing away the apples that aren't poisoned. Nothing so normal or safe would suite a woman like her. She wanted gruesome foods!            

            She has the same cook gut her a trout and throw out the fish, leaving only guts and bones for her to chew. She swallows and smiles a small smile, thinking that it is good, but not nearly filling enough. She complains quite rudely and the cook leaves her in a huff, his kitchen a mess. She can hear his rants as he descends into the lower chambers of her bleak and lonesome castle and is pricked at the heart.

            “A horse could better suite her quirks. Why should someone of my caliber toil for that monstrosity? Back in France they never treated me like this!”

            Benny grabs a loose curl colored silver and wraps it around her finger, pouting to herself. "Who is he to say such a thing to me?" she asks the empty walls. “I pay him well enough, don’t I? The villagers supply him with enough to work with, in place of their taxes don’t they? Why just last week from the bog they brought me a drowned rat the size of a carriage!” She picked up a dried rabbit foot without its hair and sucks its toes one by one before devouring it whole. “You would think with all the ingredients I own he could prepare the best, but noooooo… How hideously normal his meals were, I must say.”

             She exhaled loudly, slouching in her seat before spotting something a boy was carrying out to the back. Her eyes lit up with delight at the sight. “Ho there, discard those treasures not, but bring them here to me.”

             Her servants come into the living room with chairs and stools they were about to throw out, but she eats them all, loving the moldy flavor of their wood. No one bothers to be amazed anymore, since her eating habits were as old as they were unbreakable.