HARD SOUP

Every year for Valentine’s Day Maritime author A.F. Stewart hosts a BLOODY VALENTINE event gathering an assortment of slightly twisted authors who post their fiction and/or poetry all in the name of celebrating love.

This year’s theme is BAD LOVE.

I am taking part in this event and will be posting a piece of short fiction.

And a recipe…

COME and join the BLOODY VALENTINE HORROR EVENT!

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Hard Soup

I have marinated the meat in the best red wine I could afford, five days now, with garlic onion and bay leaf and a little stick of cinnamon, lots of cracked black pepper, and lots of aching tears.

On the fifth day I rubbed it with olive oil and browned it well in a hot pan.  I kissed it for luck.

Crane was right, it tasted bitter.

I carried the meat ceremoniously to a black metal roasting pan that I had beaten with a hammer into the rough shape of a coffin.  I browned a sliced onion in the pan, added more tears, and a little butter for flavor.

Then I deglazed the fry pan with a bit of the marinade, stirring and scraping the caked-on bits from the pan, swilling it into the juice for more flavor.

I poured the contents into the coffin-roaster, covering the meat just a little over half way.  I stuck the coffin-roaster into a slow oven, set to three hundred degrees.  Nice and slow, everything took time, let the hurting leak on out.

I added the insecticide last.

I served the meal in a valentine shaped bowl, bought especially for the occasion.  I set her body in her chair across the table from me.  The freezer kept her when I could not.  Her chest hung open like a secret treasure box.  She had a smile on her face. I’d placed it there, a finishing touch before placing her in the freezer.

Finishing nails.

Then I spooned it up.  Bitter, it tasted bitter, but no worse than finding your wife in bed with your best friend.

Heart meat is hard, unless you cook it properly.

I ate it up, every last drop.

I bit my lip until the gag reflex stopped working, and then I waited to die.

If I had timed it right, they would find us together before she thawed.  A frozen tableau, two hearts, one broken in my chest and one well braised in my belly.

Well done.  Well done.

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This story, HARD SOUP, appears in my e-book collection of dark love stories BAD VALENTINES TWO – which is available today on Kindle for only 99 cents.

 

BUT – just because I love you – why don’t you pick up a free digital copy of my e-book BAD VALENTINES: THREE TWISTED LOVE STORIES today only on Kindle!

PLEASE HELP ME win a Kindle Scout publishing contract by nominating my book and you can earn a FREE Kindle copy of my newest novel KELPIE DREAMS if the book is selected.

Wow – that’s three PSA’s (Public STEVE-VERNON Announcements) in a row. I think that might be a world record!

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon