Friday Flash Fiction 29

FRESH MEAT
By Gareth L Powell

It was cold in the mortuary. The body on the slab was a farmer, maybe sixty years of age. He’d had his throat torn out by his own dog.

“But that’s not the worst part,” Jeanette said.

She pulled back the sheet and I looked down. The man’s fingers were missing and there were bloody bite marks on his legs.

“These injuries are at least four days older than the bite to the throat,” she said, taking off her glasses. “First it ripped the tendons from his ankles, and then it took his fingers. After that, he couldn’t walk and he couldn’t fight.”

There was a bad smell. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand. My fingers were stale with tobacco smoke.

“Why would it do that?”

Jeanette looked me in the eye. “I think it was deliberate, almost calculated. I think the dog wanted to keep him alive as long as possible.”

“But why?”

She pointed to a series of deep wounds in the man’s left hip and thigh.

“So it could eat him a piece at a time.”