Stuffed

Written By: Anna Lewis

“Pleased,” From the mouth of a twenty-something with an ink stained cravat and a bandaged face, “To meet you.”

Philippa stares him down, eyeing the water colour spread of bruising creeping from beneath the taped-on sheet of plastic that hides his nose. She offers her best simper.

“You too. May I?”

He extends an arm, the hemline of his pleated shirt shifting to reveal the top stroke of a tattoo that disappears beneath his sleeve. Philippa watches it go, inclining her chin.

“Do you have any tattoos?” She is already reaching for the wisps of hair that veil the back of her neck, prepared to sweep them aside in the name of common interest. The man, either Jacob or Justin, shakes his head.

Philippa modifies her unspooling grip into an attempt at a handshake. The palm she receives is dry, smooth from heel to tip. It shakes without clasping; lapping waves on an eroding shoreline.

From further inside:

“Jacob! Don’t keep making Philly stand on the threshold, you absolute—“

“Would you like to come in?” Jacob, then, gestures inside. He doesn’t move out of the way first, leaving Philippa to scrape the outside of her glutes on the entryway table, a disconnected landline almost clattering out of its holster.

There is no air inside the house. Instead, Phillippa tastes elderflower and thyme and swede. It pilfers the breath in her lungs, clogging the back of her throat and forcing her to choose oesophagus over trachea, to wet the corners of her mouth before she speaks again.

“Darla, thank you for inviting me.”

Darla, smoothing a sodden brow that’s soaked all the way to her dark ringlets of hair, scrubs her hand over her black pinstriped apron. The sauce, a night out nail polish shade of crimson, only shows up every other centimetre. Nimbly, Philippa excavates a tissue from her pocket. She peels off as much of the semi-dried chewing gum out as she can before she offers it. Darla laughs, the sound expanding to fill the room and spill into the adjoining hall.

Philippa hardly notices she’s been ushered that way until the ringing guffaw ends and she’s pressed up against three other people. Twitching, she peels off.

She squeezes herself into the gap between an old oak chest of drawers and a series of still life portraits of cross-sectioned fruits. The closest, an orange, has an array of segments scattered across the front of it, the entrails leaking a juice that allows it to cast a reflection. Phillippa instead brushes her eyes over the lemon, almost intact.

“Please, sit. Honoured guests and friends,” Jacob’s arm sweeps, tinkling the low hanging chandelier like a wind chime. The droplets swing, spinning the lights in a pale disco. A flash. Phillippa blinks away the reflection and takes a seat.

Ahead of her is a feast too good even for whoever she’s pretending to be in the presence of polite company. Her best dress shoes, navy and shining, seem to deflate, digging in around her ankles while the laces hang low. The table, obscured by a sunset blend of coloured cloth that’s hung perfectly so all the runoffs are level, has been packed with precision.

Three silver handled gravy boats. A large multi-faceted serving tray, printed with blooming dandelions, piled high with boiled carrots, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and some sort of mush that Phillippa can’t make out from her end. A swatch of ramekins, gouging out lumpy jam, slopping bread sauce and a thick swirl of melted cheese. One slab of meat, as central as it could be on an oblong table, sweating gently under the long stemmed candles.

“Wow,” Phillippa manages, “This looks—“

Darla and Jacob turn their heads forty-three degrees, clasping both hands. They smile.

“It looks.”

Teeth clack.

“It certainly does,” Darla sighs, “Thank you, Philly.”

The other three people, one running her fingers through her auburn hair, another picking at the dark skin peeling around his nail, and a third, sitting, say nothing. Rolling her shoulders, Philippa picks up the pair of cutlery the closest to her plate. The other five start from the outside, hands wrapped around glimmering silver. Within a moment, the sweat from her palms starts to dull the outside, a thin, slick rainbow of reflection around the edges of her skin. Hurriedly, she wipes her fork with her sleeve.

By the time she’s finished, her own plate is the only one still white, a saucer of blue-lined china amid its cluttered companions. To her left, the hair twirler has mislaid some of her cranberry sauce. It spreads itself over the rim of the porcelain. As she watches, a glob twists itself free, landing on the tablecloth with a slight squelch. Philippa turns to her, mouth puckering with a word of warning, when she sees the woman’s nose.

A bloody, scabbing pair of nostrils snort, sucking some of the mess upwards and inwards. There’s a spread of vermillion coating her upper lip, and it takes Philippa a moment to understand that, for the most part, it is shifting into the woman’s airways. When it catches the light Philippa can make out viscosity, a stretch of web-like sinew woven through her nostril.

After a hanging moment, Philippa sees a lump. A berry; a cranberry. Semi-smashed and the same shade as the rest of the abrasion. Not blood, but cranberry sauce.

The woman, one finger still embedded in her shining hair, inhales until she snorts, until the berry, the sinew and the sauce is wrenched inside of her. Phillippa works her tongue over her canine, pressing the enamel in just enough to elicit a twinge. For posterity, she pinches the skin between her thumb and index finger, too.

As she does, the woman leans over and scoops up a pair of potatoes, half-crushing them with her nail. Philippa watches her take them up to the side of her head, out of her own field of vision. The woman’s hand returns to view dry.

There is room only for observation, so Philippa uses her fork to pick up a single carrot. She places it centrally on her place and begins to saw.

As she does, she dares to run over her companions.

Darla, shredding a handful of green beans into strips, takes one and guides the end up her nose. It rotates, twirling. She tickles herself, evidently, by the slight giggle that froths behind her lips. Jacob plucks off crumbs of bread, rolling them between his fingers. Pausing, he observes one, bringing it up close to his eye. His pupil constricts in the light. He plucks up his eyelid, prying it away from the surface, creating a sliver of space beneath it. The breadcrumb, balanced on the pad of his thumb, plunges deep into it. Switching sides, the woman with the mashed potatoes plugs it into her ear canals, massaging the paste over her lobes, around her helix.

Philippa does not crane her neck to get a taste of the behaviour of the two others, furthest away. Her knife, moving without conscious thought, pierces the carrot. It lands against the plate with a soft click.

Eyes swivel, focusing on her spotless face, clean plate, dangling fork. Philippa adjusts her grip, flirting with the edge of the blade.

“Do you not like it?”

It’s the ginger woman, scoring her cheek with a slice of pork pie, the gelatine sloughing off onto her skin. A flake of pastry breaks off next to her lips and sits. She does not move to lick it away; it twitches when she speaks.

“It’s— It’s food.”

“You are not tasting it,” Darla, eyes glinting, stroking butter into the underside of her throat. In the reflection of the glass of one of her fruit paintings Philippa catches a glimpse of them as children. They had held buttercups beneath their jaws, curling up under one another to discern their own tastes by the sickly yellow patch from the flower. As an adult, Darla’s fingernail leaves red crescents in the wake of its spread.

“You are all not—,” Phillippa pauses, “Taste buds are for tasting.”

The laughter is tingling, toothless, pairs of eyes closing so that they can clutch at their breasts and slap their thighs. Finger-picking man wraps a hand round his opposing bicep, the skin bursting out from his grip. Gravy trickles down the outside of his knuckles.

“We are tasting,” Jacob does not laugh, under eyes bulging, “Better. Than you.”

Philippa itches at her jawline, shifting some of the hair away that’s curling around her ears. The carrot, staring up at her in rueful bisection, is not something she feels able to close her hand around. Roaming, her gaze strips the table down to its requisite parts, searching for a show of gratitude or compliance. Something that she could use, however performatively, to--

"Try it," The ginger woman's breath comes with the scent of toothpaste, the heavy sense of sterilisation coiling up Philippa's nose. On her thumb, extending towards her, is a clump of tomato sauce. It is worked into the grooves of her fingerprint, shining a bright rouge. Philippa, without thinking, opens her mouth. Her tongue pokes through, burrowing into the open air. She can hear a tsk, a snort and a sigh, before sauce smears into the space between her eyebrows. She can feel it trickling down her nose, running along to the end, clustering on the place where her bone curves up.

Gingerly, her hand curls around a napkin, dragging it into a ball. She forces her wrist to stay on the table, not to move away from where it rests. She lets the sauce stain her skin.

“Good?” Darla asks.

“It is—“

“Good?”

“On my nose,” Phillippa cannot help herself, even as she watches all five of them flinch.

Her pores itch, a flaming wave of peppercorn smatter setting the bridge of her nose alight. She scrunches. There’s no taste except for the burning.

“It burns,” She admits, and this garners her a slight smile, the divots at the edge of Darla’s cheeks opening themselves. Philippa had used to prod the other woman’s dimples with her finger; she wonders if Jacob ever has.

At the far side, the woman just sitting has drowned her entire face out with a layer of mashed sweetcorn and peas. Every time a few drop off, hurling themselves from the cliff side of her cheekbones and landing on her plate, she takes another handful and grinds the absence.

She speaks, finally.

“You should try some of the meat.”

The meat, Philippa can make out, has not been touched. It is too far away for her to reach from this side.

“If somebody passes it to me, I will.”

None of them shift or move, exchanging glances amongst themselves as they begin to reload their own plates from the crockery closest to them. Philippa runs her tongue over her bottom lip.

The ginger woman holds out a hand, palm flat and facing the ceiling. She juts out her chin, jabbing her head towards the plate of meat. Philippa takes the offer, the other woman sliding the soft sprigs of her fingers in between her own, stitching their palms together. Massaging it in further, she feels the tickle of mashed potatoes breaking down under the pressure, a thin ream of skin crumpling and tearing. Then, the woman pushes up.

“Should I?”

With her free hand, Philippa reaches for the chair. The scrape bleeds into a whine, three of the four legs dragging along the floor while the lone remainder carves though nothing. It slams down the same as the others. When the woman tenses again, Philippa is prepared.

She scales the table in one motion. Foot first on the chair, second on the shimmering table cloth. The gold-pink-orange palate is lost under her best dress shoes, the toes dullened and tugging a cobweb behind. Her companion removes her guidance the second that both of Philippa’s heels have touched down. Philippa has eyes only for the central silver dish and its bloodied parasite, clinging to the edges of the plate, a tremulous medium-rare.

It proves difficult, but not impossible, to navigate around the dishes. Eyes excoriate from all sides, and her eventual ability to stoop low, digging her nails into the meat and shredding off a section, sends a wobble down her cramping left calf. The piece is the size of her kneecap, rosy flesh topped with a half-ring of fat. Philippa pinches from the base, picking a single thread and ripping it out, balling it up into a knotted ring.

She considers swallowing it, opening up the gullet lined with nubby enamel and grinding it down enough to slide down through her tubes. Out of the corner of her eye, there’s an imprint of Darla, hair falling over her dark eyes, dimples crinkling still. She’s resting her elbows on the table, propping her chin on one sauce stained elbow. When Philippa wrinkles her nose, she can feel the sauce on her nose wrinkling in tandem.

Her hand does not move up, but down. The room spins, electric and silver, gleaming with spots from the chandelier that tickles the top of her head. Stomach roiling, Phillippa ignores her burning throat. Clumsily, she skips nose, ears, face, neck. She neglects her chest, her arms. Hanging a moment, her fingers fumble with the button that holds her jeans together, the zipper that holds the button, the fabric groaning outwards with the overspill of skin. The lace of her underwear has left prints in her hips.

The hand holding the meat swoops. Jacob frowns. Darla smiles.

Philippa holds her balance as she tries not to stumble off the table, knocking the teardrops above her head. Spinning, the chandelier reflects all the light away from her. Then towards. Then away again.

The pork tastes delicious.

Anna Lewis is a recent University graduate who studied, and loved, creative writing as part of her degree. She has always had an interest in horror, and that's only grown as she's begun to develop her own pieces and idea. Dedicated to surrealism and oddities, she prefers to deal in nebulous atmosphere than in slashing and gore, a fact that has warped her short stories increasingly over the years.