Anapa sat in the cave and watched the world pass by. It was hot and dry and just the way he liked it, his little secluded desert paradise. The chair had dried and cracked over the years, but it held just the same. He sat and watched and occasionally reached down to stroke the back of one of his pets. The slender dog-like creatures wandered in and out as they pleased.
Some days they brought him little gifts, offerings. They were the only ones to do so. He ate what he could. It was not much these days. The appetite withers with age. He heard one of his pets come in, and felt the nudge on his hand. Something warm and damp. He held it close to his aging eyes. A hand, removed just below the elbow. Still fresh. He rose, tucking his blanket back over his chair, and went over to a table next to a small oil-burning stove. A thin knife slipped between the joints and separated the limb into parts. He stripped the skin and flesh from three of the fingers and added it to a pan over the burner’s flame, already sizzling with spiced fat. His pet sat expectantly at his feet, waiting for those little treats his master would toss away.
As the meat cooked, Anapa carefully wrapped the rest of the meat for later. First, he rubbed it with salt, and then wound strips of muslin around it to protect it from dirt and insects. He placed it with reverent hands into the cool pit in his kitchen, savoring the action. Returning to the stove, he turned off the burner. The flame died, taking it’s acrid black smoke with it. He stabbed at the bits of flesh with the tip of his knife and ate them, chewing slowly. It did not take much these days. He had to make do.
The next day, another of his pets came in with a foot and part of a leg. And the next day, two of them returned with offerings. Anapa wondered if he ought to host a dinner party and then remembered that most of his compatriots had long since dwindled. He would not know how to contact them anyway.
One morning, he awoke in his chair to the sounds of whines. He walked to the entrance of his cave and found hundreds of his pets, their mouths stained with crimson smiles, all bearing offerings. The limbs of the dead littered his front yard. He set to work gathering them, salting them, and wrapping them. Such bounty did not come by often, though it was getting more frequent in recent years. He supposed the people had decided to name a new leader.
If only any of them kept to the old rites.
Jenn Writes... 