Dark As Night

Meat

Warning: This story contains gore

It had been snowing for almost two weeks. This sleepy town in the deep, heavy air of the Appalachian Mountains had never seen this much snow in a full winter, let alone less than a month.
The general store was nearly out of food, the streets were barren and buried in ice, and cars had stopped being able to run as of three days into the storm. It was in this hidden, barren wasteland behind hills and frozen trees that a small cabin sat about 15 minutes away from the town. In this cabin lived Miss Ethel Jones, an old maid who had lived in that house for nigh on 17 years. Her husband Hugh had been killed in a logging accident no more than two years after they had been married, and she'd lost her two boys to the fever a few months later. No one knew loss and coped with loneliness like Miss Ethel Jones.
She had kept things up through the snowstorm, wading out into the frigid air every morning in her heavy winter coat and galoshes to fill her apron with small, shriveled potatoes for her bubbling pots of stew. Except this morning, on the 14th day of snowfall, she forced open the brittle wooden door of her shed to find out that the few potatoes left had all frosted overnight. Ruined. She shook her head angrily, turning back and stalking angrily to her cabin.
Without ingredients to make a fresh pot of stew, she began to nurse her current one as much as she could while waiting out the storm. She began to eat only once a day, and sparingly at that. "Any day now," she told herself, "the snow will let up, and then I'll go into town and get myself a big chicken and some corn. Any day now."
One week after discovering her spoiled potatoes, Miss Ethel Jones ran out of food. She had scraped every last drop and morsel from her pot of stew and had searched through her house for anything edible; corn, beans, anything at all. But the cold was cruel, and she found nothing.
The days dragged on in slow, torturous misery as she stayed inside her cabin. By the fifth day, the hunger had grown to such a fierceness that her stomach felt as if it were being pierced from the inside. She melted snow for water over her weak coal fire, but it wasn't enough. She had to have food.
Eight days later, the snow was showing no signs of stopping. Ethel sat in her cold, dark house listening to the wind hiss and howl around the roof. Her already-frail frame was now painfully thin. She hadn't moved from her rocking chair in three days. A particularly strong gust of wind came rushing through her chimney, and she wrapped her arms around herself with a shudder. She was so cold... So hungry and so cold... She just wanted something good, something-
Something warm.
She stopped, her shivering coming to an abrupt halt. 'No. No, that's too far, Ethel. You couldn't possibly.' She wanted to laugh and shake her head, she wanted to push the thought out of her mind and never let it come to light again. 'But...' She unwrapped her arms from her small torso, looking at her left hand. 'I never use it. Right hand's my strong one.' She pondered, gazing at her fingers. She watched the supple flesh move easily over the muscles. The warm, smooth muscles dripping with hot juices and glistening with moisture... And the bones, the bones that were filled with rich, supple marrow. A thin river of saliva was running out of her mouth as she imagined the crisp skin, dripping with grease as it was pulled off the meat... Meat. She needed meat.
It wasn't until spring that they found what was left. Miss Ethel Jones was strewn across the kitchen floor, a carving knife in one hand. She only had one hand. Her left arm had been chopped off up to the elbow, the flesh torn eagerly leaving ragged ribbons of flesh hanging from the stump. The flesh had been stripped off the front of her thighs down to the bone. She had evidently died of frostbite, but the men that found her would drunkenly tell stories for years after of how her face had still been stretched in a tight, satisfied smile.