Good riddance, he reckoned.

That morning the pillow whispered a pearl of piggy wisdom – big boys do it all by themselves. He knew he was a scallywag, a weasel, so easily pleased but never satisfied. Withered up, down he plunged into the bottomless bargain bucket like a crusty zinger..

There was a good amount of liquid involved too: vomit; spit; piss; discharge; gravy; chicken grease. The Gooseman projected his ooze instinctively. Why the hell not? He choked on fungal air and died of an old and invisible disease of the tongue. He wasn’t going anywhere without a proper yank on the chain.

Balls blue, fastened like a corpse’s pantaloons. He was back once again with the ill behaviour, tragically drunk and puffing on another wonky one, sucking day after dazed on his own unique brand of grim. Because there was no money and nothing better to do. Forever cramped and freaking out with a hot boozy brew by his side.

It’s twisted at both ends. Waiting for a golden ticket in the plastic wrapper of his Wonka bar. The holiday is over; it’s the end of the stash. The sponge is as spent as the spender. The Gooseman peeled his head from the pillow.

Then he tried to muster some good vibes. A hot shower should sort it out. And then he’ll cut his toenails. But the ride never ends. He don’t have the balls to push it in proper. For good this time, he decided to get wankered and wait to see what the morning brings, whether the chill would bite again.

Always alright with a bit of sludge. Now let me tell you about the Gooseman. You ain’t heard nothing so horrible in your life. He’s a tenner’s worth of touchy-feely, popping a Jezebel wink as he crawls all-fours out of a cloud of phantom assholes. He’s the next new nuisance. He’s out to scoop kneecaps. His eyes got no sockets, nibbled at by rats and bedbugs.

The Gooseman cometh. He pickles and preserves his dreams. Sometimes he even shows them to people. Watch as he drags this next one out of the lake.

Brandon woke up with his head dashed across the pillows. He hadn’t realised yet, but he was hungover. Dreadfully hungover. As he flipped onto his back an artillery of sunbeams started pounding on his eyelids, and he could almost see the tiny capillaries flashing blue and orange across the delicate film of skin. Fluttering his eyes open, he made a sound between a yawn and a groan. He still had the rank stench of beer, sweat and grime about him. He was grateful for being alone in the double bed.

The room was large and had the sterile white gleam of a dentist’s waiting room. By now he was beginning to recognise the early signs of hangover. Every slight movement he made in bed sent spasms up through his spinal column, easing out the ache in the back of his neck with the regular, gentle pace of a tooth removal. The bedsheets were still damp with the sweat of last night, but he was glad of how reassuringly soft they felt beneath him. Almost fully awake now, Brandon wondered why he was still fully clothed under the duvet, from his blue North Face waterproof jacket down to the heavy and tattered military boots on his feet – the same boots that he had worn as a soldier in the 3rd Battalion in the Yorkshire Regiment, almost ten years ago. Sometimes it felt as if he hadn’t taken off those boots since leaving the service. He looked down the length of his body and saw two crumpled hills sticking out of the duvet where his feet were. The heat under his clothes was stifling; Brandon decided that undressing in such a fragile state was an operation he wasn’t willing to carry out quite yet, and he resolved to remain quite still until the worst of the hangover passed.

He heard a clattering downstairs, muffled but still painful to his ears as if spent ammunition shells were falling to the floor of his mind. It went on for a few moments, and he recognised the sound of someone rummaging through the cutlery drawer. Stop, god damn it, he mumbled to himself. It seemed to get louder and more intense with every drawn out second, until eventually he heard whoever it was downstairs violently slam the cutlery drawer not once, but three times. There was a pause. And then again; three violent slams coming from the kitchen downstairs. The knives and forks rattled around inside and made a meal of Brandon’s brain.

Brandon held his breath and listened for footsteps. The person downstairs was making their way to the bottom of the stairs, right by the front door, and each of their steps fell on the lacquered floorboards with a deliberate thud. Keep the god damn noise down, thought Brandon. He hadn’t checked the time but he wagered it was around eleven – he was a man who always had a good sense of what time it was. It was a quality of people who spent most of their lives outdoors. Brandon had left the service almost ten years ago but he was still anything but civilian. There was a cupboard under the stairs, and Brandon could hear the person wrestle something out from the jumble of plastic bags, brooms and old shoes. Then he heard it click into the plug socket.

The shrill drone of the vacuum cleaner reminded Brandon of the Bell UH-1 helicopters that were forever flying in and out of the base he was once stationed at in Afghanistan. He never talked to anyone about his tour of Afghanistan, and at the age of thirty-seven Brandon could only remember the name of that base he was stationed at when he was drinking. But the awful, constant sound of the helicopters back at the dusty base came back to him as someone ran the vacuum over the same spot of floorboard again and again, with it ramped up to full suction and ricocheting through the hallways. The stairs were all that separated Brandon’s room from the landing, the source of the agonising whirr. He was starting to think that whoever it was downstairs was making as much noise as possible on purpose. Their heels continued to stamp back and forth over the same spot.

Then Brandon remembered that it was a Thursday morning. Wasn’t that when the cleaner came in? He hurt himself trying to remember. Now the hangover was really disassembling his mind. God damn cleaner, thought Brandon, since when did he need a cleaner, anyway? He wished that the thirty-two year old Polish lady trampling around downstairs would just go away. He wished he could still remember all those domestic routines and annoyances. A click; then a short, suspenseful silence. She switched off the vacuum. Brandon couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t over yet. He could still hear echoes of propeller blades spinning in his mind, though he also was also aware of the cleaner still down there, the hostile presence behind the barricade of the bedroom door. Had he locked the bedroom door last night? He saw no reason why he would have – when had he ever felt that insecure in his own home? As long as she doesn’t come into the bedroom, thought Brandon. As long she keeps the god damn noise down.

But the cleaner came stamping up the stairs, a heavy set woman with a round, fleshy face and bovine-eyes. Her shoulders were strong and square. She was the kind of cleaner that lifted the fridge with one hand and swept underneath it with the other; who saw dirt as the work of the enemy; who had a soldier’s attention to detail in her tidiness. Step by step, swearing under her breath in Polish, the cleaner hauled herself to the top of the stairs, making Brandon stiffen as she came within a few feet of the bedroom door where she stopped. He heard her utter curses in a tongue he didn’t recognise. She was right on the other side of the door.

‘BRANDON!’ Screeched the cleaner. “YOU NO PAY!’

Like shell-fire he felt her voice lodge itself into his brain tissue. He was hit, incapacitated in bed. Thank god I’m still in my clothes, thought Brandon. He decided to remain silent, in the hope that the cleaner would think he wasn’t in.

‘I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE. YOU NEED PAY ME – NOW!’

She threw her fist three times on the bedroom door – bombs behind his eyes. He wanted to throw up. The sunlight continued to rain down over his face but it was cold, suddenly very cold, and Brandon could feel the harsh wind over one cheek.

‘BRANDON!’

Leave me alone, god damn it. The light was hurting his eyes and he shivered under the duvet, still wearing his filthy clothes and squaddie boots. Overcome with nausea, he retreated back under the duvet.

‘PAY ME YOU CHEAP BUM!’

Bang. Bang. Bang. I don’t have any damn money, Brandon remembers. The cleaner’s powerful hand was on the doorknob now and as she swung the door open the entire room was hit with a gush of freezing air. God damn that’s cold. Why won’t she just leave me alone? I feel like Hell, he groaned. He just wanted to be left alone with his hangover. He wanted the cleaner to go away.

Then Brandon realised he was asleep, and that he had been dreaming all along. Immediately he became conscious, snapping his eyes open to the sight of the street, and the piles of litter, and the scabby pigeons pecking around his boots. He had fallen asleep in an alleyway next to Tesco. The late-morning light had just risen over the supermarket roof and his fingertips had gone numb in the sharp Autumn air. Brandon rubbed the sleep from his eyes and then checked his pockets; nobody had robbed him in the night. He didn’t have anything worth searching through his foul, piss-stained pockets for. He certainly didn’t have money to pay the god damn cleaner.

I used to write and sell erotic fiction. Regular porn just doesn’t do it for some people; even the real twisted stuff doesn’t get them off any more. So they came to me. I offered them a more personal service.

They were no longer satisfied with strangers, celebrities, pornstars. It all felt too fake, too distanced. Where were the memories and emotion? Where was the familiarity? The only thing that could get these people off now was erotic fiction about people they actually knew. They came to me, and I wrote erotic fiction about their friends. They became my clients. Most of the time, only myself and my clients were ever aware that the personalised porn existed. The pleasure it gave them was unspeakably perverse and they never wanted it any other way. It was ugly but the money was alright.

One day I received a message from someone called Mike, who lived nearby. He seemed like a decent guy, if not a little lonely. He wanted me to write a short piece about a girl he’d met a few times called Lindsey. Him and Lindsey, something romantic, he said. But also kinky – she had claws – Mike added. No problem, I replied.

Once he sent me half my fee via PayPal I set about trawling through her Facebook posts, Titter feed and Instagram. Usually that’s all I’d need to get a good idea of the subject’s character; a few cues about their hair colour, the way they talked and the kind of things they liked. You know, just a bit of digging to see what they’re about, nothing too serious. A little detail to make the whole thing more believable and give Mike a hard-on.

I stalked their social media profiles. Whatever was public was what I had to work with, which was a lot, usually. It made it very easy for me to write them into pornographic situations. Lindsey liked eating out and Netflix, based on what she’d posted online, and it didn’t take me long before I had her bright, green eyes and clever grin beaming out of my computer monitor. She was about five-foot-six and remarkably slim, so very dainty for someone whose Instagram was full of brunch and street food. She was an art history post-graduate. She went abroad a lot, and most of her social media was taken up with artsy pictures of old churches and caves. I saw a photo on Facebook where she was hugging a Dalmatian. I nearly laughed when I saw that picture; I was already comparing her dress sense to Cruella De Vil from the Disney film, her hair streaked black and white and spilling over the top of a fur coat. There was something unusually appealing about her harsh cheekbones. Even in her photographs she had a fierce, sub-zero glare.

There was only one picture of my client and his subject together, at what looked like a Halloween party in 2015, and I saw that Lindsey’s hand was hovering above Mike’s shoulder as they looked soberly into the camera. The whole of Mike’s face was red, his plump cheeks shining under the lights of the nightclub, and he was wearing a gnome costume that he’d clearly spent a long time making himself. Being a pretty short and round guy, Mike made an excellent gnome. He’d taken his beard off and let it hang flaccidly in his hand, whilst Lindsey, a sexy sorceress, angled her broomstick as if trying to brush him away. There were a lot of pictures from that party in 2015, when Lindsey was 21 years old and dressed up as a witch. Toward the end of the Facebook album I found her tagged in the most risqué photo of her entire profile. It was much later in the night, and she was straddling a six-foot-four muscle-bound zombie, her tongue outstretched and licking the fake blood from his cheek. But she looked very drunk in that picture, and the rest of her profile was teasingly tame.

There was onlythat one picture of Mike and Lindsey together. I looked everywhere online for any trace that the two of them had ever really talked to each other. He was a nobody in her life, but a friend on Facebook.

Lindsey was single. I knew this because all three of her serious relationships had been made Facebook official, announced on her wall over the years along with Guardian articles, lots of birthday messages, and the occasional video that someone had shared with her. I also knew she was single because I’d found her Tinder account. She didn’t use any other dating app apart from Tinder, I learned, and to my surprise we matched with each other only a day after Mike had sent me £50 to start writing a piece of erotic fiction about her. There was no description on her profile, only a feed from her Instagram. I saw that most of her Tinder pictures were quite old, now that her face had matured into a constant don’t fuck with me pout, but she still looked beautifully cruel under the black and white filter of the more recent ones. We matched in the morning, and by noon I’d sent her the first message.

By early evening when the sun was starting to go down we’d arranged a date, later that very night at a bar called the Rusty Toadstool. She said why not? She had nothing else to do that night. I already knew enough about Lindsey to pretend we had all the same interests. We talked about smashed avocado on toast, Stranger Things on Netflix, and how much we really loved dogs. I asked her if she’d heard all the songs that I knew she liked. I told her that I wasn’t looking for anything serious; she said she’d like to get to know me better. It must have seemed like a strange series of coincidences to Lindsey, who’d recently tweeted that she wished she was more impulsive. You’ve got a clever grin, I typed. She liked odd compliments. She watched a lot of anime. We agreed to meet at eight-thirty at the Rusty Toadstool.

Which gave me a few hours to start work on Mike’s story. After messaging Lindsey for a few hours I was sure I could do a good job of mimicking the way she spoke, capturing the coldly seductive vibe she gave off even from a few Tinder messages. Some of her friends called her the Ice Queen. Still thinking of Disney villains, I decided to set my smutty story in a vast, frozen palace, with Lindsey as a cruel mistress of pleasure and Mike as her sex slave. I thought he might get off on that.




‘You there!’  Sneered Lindsey. ‘Come here, worm.’

‘Yes mistress.’ Uttered Mike, obediently. He walked barefoot across sheets of ice, the chains around his ankles leaving a frosted trail as he made his way up to the throne. Her eyes were narrow and highlighted with menacing black mascara, unblinking, watching him stagger closer towards where she sat, slender legs folded at the knee, twirling a thin leather whip around in her fingers.

‘Do you know why I summoned you here?’ Probed Lindsey, now looking down at the whip and seeming not to take much interest in Mike. ‘Speak, little boy.’

‘No.’ The whip came cracking over the transparent, icy throne as soon as the words left his lips. Lindsey shot him a dangerous glance.

‘Excuse me..?’

‘No, mistress.’

‘That’s better.’ She put the whip to one side before touching her fingers together in front of her firm, slightly flattened breasts. Her fingernails were painted in a deep black, quick and sharp but very delicate. They reflected the cold light of the ice palace, scattering it like brittle darts, and Mike felt suddenly obliged to look away. He looked down over his plump, naked body and shivered. His cock and balls had withered up in the cold air. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

Lindsey had a colourless silk veil thrown over her shoulders, under which he could clearly see her collarbones protruding. She was icicle thin. The cruel mistress let a smile form like a crack between her harsh cheeks before coming out with an almost whispered voice.

‘You’re here because you’re been a bad boy, Mike. You know what’s coming next.’

She sat up to leave the throne, letting her long black and white streaked hair tumble behind to the level of her tight buttocks. There was a gap between her thighs when she walked, easily visible under the flowing veil, and Mike watched as it grew larger until he could see the bare mound between her pale legs in explicit detail. It was wet, and the tiny dew drops turned to ice over her flesh.

Lindsey came close enough for him to smell the floral, woody musk of her Kate Moss perfume. The tip of his numbed nose was only a few inches away from her erect nipples; the elegant mounds of her breasts rose and fell as her small, cloudy breaths blew over his face. Then in a flash she grabbed hold of his balls and squeezed. Mike groaned in submission. He could feel the sweet sharpness of her nails digging in. His cock swelled with blood as Lindsey started to twist.




It was twenty-to-eight when I got to the Rusty Toadstool. Lindsey was waiting outside for me and for a moment I pretended that I wasn’t sure if it was really her standing there or not. We hugged. We went inside and both drank Rekorderlig strawberry-lime cider which I knew she liked, up on the terrace because she liked to smoke when she was drinking, and at a table where we could see a few sprinklings of stars above. I guessed in one that she was a Sagittarius. She let me read her palm, listening and drinking in stunned silence as I recalled everything I had learnt about her past, and ran my finger along the tender flesh of her palm.

Next drink. Lindsey was doing her best to appear stern and composed, but I knew that the more she rolled the glass Rekorderlig bottle around in her hand and took frequent, submissive sips, the more she was blown away by how much, in her words, we clicked. She obviously hadn’t expected anything like this from Tinder. She told me she’d never met anyone who understood her so well so soon.

Next drink – I was buying. I took mental notes of all her subtle traits; the way she let her fringe fall forward deliberately, just so she could drape it back behind her ears and stretch out her neck; the way she always caught her laughter in her hands; the way she seemed to kiss the filter of her cigarettes. I took a good look at her frail tongue, luscious pink and moist with cider and saliva. Her thigh was pressed up against mine and she touched my arm whenever she thought she had a really interesting thing to say. I was hungry for information to add to the story, and I was concerned that Lindsey might have wanted something more serious out of Tinder. So I went all out and asked her how her tongue tasted.

Next drink. We made out for a little while outside on the benches until Lindsey complained that it was too cold. She didn’t want to smoke any more cigarettes because I’d told her she tasted like ash, and we went back inside the Rusty Toadstool which was much emptier than it had been when we first arrived. Squeezed into a couch in the corner, I asked her if she knew anyone called Mike. She thought for a few seconds and said no, she can’t remember anyone called Mike, but then planted her hand suddenly on my thigh and said yes, come to think of it she did know someone called Mike once – that he was the brother of one of her course mates at university, older brother, she remembered, and that he’d tried to dance with her one night. Halloween, she thought. Years ago. He wasn’t her type, she said, and she put her fingers to her mouth and laughed. She wanted to know why I was asking. I hooked an arm around her little waist and said nothing, and then she asked me what my type was. You are, I say, and jam my tongue into her mouth again.

Lindsey was quite tipsy. She was asking all kinds of things about me that I just didn’t want to tell her, and I was glad she liked making out so much when neither of us could say anything. Her tongue was going increasingly loose in my mouth and I was pretending to take down her number and add her of Facebook. Eventually the bar closed and I suggested we go to the off-license to get a bottle of wine before going somewhere else. She agreed. I think she would have agreed with anything I said, since she believed we had such similar thoughts. She said we could go back to her place and listen to some of the songs we’d been talking about, that I should come see the record player in her bedroom. So we took the bus to the other side of town and she led me into the flat. It took her over a minute to fumble with the keys and the lock of her front door. I knew the wine would not sit well on top of the cider in her belly.

We sat side by side on the edge of the bed as a vinyl copy of Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers rotated on the turntable. Lindsey had taken a few sips out of her wine glass and was nestled into my shoulder, but she was too drunk to say anything interesting and I was beginning to get bored of all her sloppy affection. She wasn’t the Ice Queen I’d expected and hoped she’d be. She’d melted. I think she was quite lonely too. Drink up, I said, pushing the rim of the glass to her sharp lips. I wanted the date to be over as soon as possible, filling both our glasses with Hardy’s white wine whilst they were still half empty, making slurred small talk about Jarvis Cocker, and then about nothing.

She could drink no more. She clung onto me, losing her balance, and tried to make me fall backwards with her onto the bed to complete the Tinder transaction she expected. I resisted and let her fall with a soft plod on the duvet, slipping out of her helpless arms. The record stopped and I got up to turn it over. When I came back to the bed Lindsey was curled up on her side, still awake and sniffing. Is there something wrong with me? she mumbled into the bedding. I put my palm over her back. She only seemed to melt more. I like you better when you’re a cold bitch, I told her. Then she started to cry and in her drunk confusion there was nothing she could do as I massaged up and down her spine, counting all her sharp bumps.

She was in quite the state. The tears had stopped flowing and now she was breathing heavily into the pillow. I memorised the inside of her bedroom and finished my wine. When I was satisfied that she was almost unconscious I drew up behind her and whispered into her ear. You’re nothing like you are online, I said. You’re a lot more boring. I think I liked you better as a witch. 

I gave her pretty face a slap to gauge her responsiveness. She didn’t flinch. Then I undressed her and positioned her body face up on the bed, legs apart and arms outstretched, admiring the shapes that her smeared mascara had left down her cheeks. Sometimes she tried to curl up again but I made reassuring noises into her ear and pulled her back into place. I took out my phone and saw that it was nearly three in the morning. Aiming my Samsung at her exposed body, I took a series of pictures: full frontal, close-ups, and some from behind after I rolled her over. I realised how light and frail she was. She was shivering from the cold air over her naked body, still completely out of it, and I watched the tiny hairs and goosebumps rise from her skin as my mind filled with metaphors. Making sure I left no obvious trace of my being there, I let myself out of her house and onto the dark street. I took out my Samsung again and opened up Tinder, where I found Lindsey’s profile, blocked her, and deleted her. I’d made sure we only ever talked on Tinder. I vanished from her life like a ghost.

It took me a long time on the night bus to get back to my side of town. There were sirens going off nearby and the floor was littered with broken glass and condom wrappers. When I got home I was eager to get on with my story straight away. I spent a long time looking at the pictures I took and started writing whilst the night was still fresh in my mind.




‘Who tells you when to come?’

‘You do, mistress,’ he stammered, taking Lindsey’s toes into his mouth.

‘Good,’ she forced the front of her foot all the way to the back of Mike’s tongue and felt a sadistic tingle as he choked. ‘Now who’s my bitch?’

‘I’m your bitch, mistress.’

‘Again.’

‘I’m your bitch – I’m your toy, mistress. Do what you please, mistress.’

‘How does it taste? How does it feel on your tongue?’

‘Delicious mistress.’

‘You disgust me.’ Lindsey removed her fine, petite toes and stood before Mike, who was kneeling on the slickness of the floor. Her cunt was luscious pink and swollen, a winter flower unfurling right in front of his face, and he could smell an irresistible musk rising faintly from her crotch. ‘Lick it,’ she snapped.  Without flinching he touched his tongue upon the smooth velvet of her cunt, his face pressed against her hips where she had a little mole on the left hand side. ‘Deeper.’ He plunged further in and felt her thighs squeeze around his head in pleasure. Tiny hairs and goosebumps went erect across the surface of her skin. And before he knew it she’d flung off the veil and was completely naked in the chill of the ice palace. He looked up and saw her black and white fringe falling over her cruel expression as he sucked away, seeing her pinch the fine strands of hair between her fingertips and tuck them behind her ears. All of a sudden she pulled away.

‘You’re dull and boring,’ she hissed, ‘There’s nothing interesting about you at all, manchild. You’re nothing but a fat lump of flesh to me.’

‘Yes mistress. Boring and fat mistress.’

Lindsey turned her back on Mike, and as she strutted back toward the throne he counted twenty four bumps on her back. She took hold of the whip.

‘That’s right,’ she said without turning around, ‘you’re mine now, Mike. I want to punish you. I’ve wanted to punish you since we first met at the Halloween ball. Do you remember, Mike? All those years ago. I’m going to punish you now, Mike.’




I sent the story to Mike when it was finished a few days later, and almost immediately the rest of the money appeared in my PayPal wallet. I love it, he messaged me. It’s twisted and kinky and I can’t wait to read more. I really like what you did with Lindsey, he added, she makes such a hot mistress. For a moment I thought about selling him the photographs I took, though I knew it was safer and more profitable to just churn out some more cheap and sleazy erotica about the object of his desire. Sure, it was ugly. But the money was alright.

It was another few months before I finally stopped writing personalised erotic fiction. Honestly, I hadn’t got a kick out of it since I wrote about Lindsey, the Ice Queen. I don’t imagine that she ever experienced the same intensity of sexual power that I gave her in the stories. Eventually Mike stopped messaging me to ask for new instalments and I gave up the porno for good, glad to spend less time scouring profiles on social media and inventing lewd situations to write them into. I don’t think the whole thing was very good for my mind. I don’t think it was healthy for my growing list of clients either. 

One day I created a fake profile on Facebook and found Lindsey again; with a new, more modest profile picture and a few new pictures of her hiking in the countryside. She looked different in these pictures. With my fake profile I sent her all the stories of her erotic adventures in the ice palace, as well as a transcript of all my anonymous messages with exposed Mike. I thought it was about time Lindsey felt like she was in charge of things. I thought she deserved to bust his balls for real this time. I don’t know why I did it. I only thought it might be funny to watch Mike squirm, and if he wants to find me – I’m a ghost. 

Every good organ snatcher knows that eyeballs fetch a higher price than tongues. If I sold a good-quality eye every week I’d be able to pay rent with the eye alone. But it takes a skilled snatcher to pop them out without damaging the retina, without making a mess of the nerves that cling to the unseeing side at the back. It takes patience, and it’s near impossible to pull off with the owner wrestling your hook away. Nobody wants to buy a burst eye now, do they? No, I have always stuck with tongues – safe, easy and reliable tongues. You can butcher a tongue with a single draw of the knife. You can have it flapping around in your hand before they have a chance to try to scream.

It was a damp night and I was on my way home through the rain to my girl Lavinia after many hours of harvesting. I had six tongues stashed in my canvas sack and I could feel them writhing around inside and oozing like fat, bloody slugs. They were good tongues and would look good at the market once they were made to look a little more presentable. But fresh from the throat, they looked vile. No matter how well I made the cut, or how juicy the tongues I sourced were, the fleshy lumps have never looked like anything other than slugs. They disgusted me. Especially when they turned cold and slimy. They withered into shapeless urchins and wouldn’t stop squirming until the last drops of blood had drained away. Six tongues was a good haul and I decided to go home, soak them in water, and see if Lavinia had waited up for me, taking my time to stroll back through the grimy streets of the east end. Lots of bad characters roamed this part of town at night, but I didn’t see anyone as I walked on, thinking about my girl.

It’s gruesome work but times were tough and the rent never stopped rising. I was also in considerable debt to some of these bad characters, the sort with a taste for snatching more than tongues. They hadn’t bothered me for a while but I knew my period of grace was almost at an end. I kept things simple. I was renting a shoebox flat with Lavinia in the cheapest part of town, where there were always enough strangers passing through every night to harvest, and where nobody, I thought, would ever think to find a freezer chest full of tongues in the kitchen corner.

The lights were off in the front room when I entered and I called Lavinia’s name hesitantly into the darkness, in case she was lying in bed and foraging through her phone like she sometimes did. I heard nothing on the other side of the bedroom door so I made my way into the kitchen, felt for the light switch, and started unloading the tongues into the empty sink where they fell with a spurt. I was disappointed that Lavinia had already gone to bed. Very quietly, I left the cold tap running and fetched some plastic sandwich bags for the tongues before they went to the freezer. But as I slid open the freezer lid I was hit with a spasm of shock. The entire chest was empty. My stash was gone. It was a long minute before I noticed Lavinia standing in the doorway, wearing only her black nightdress. 

‘We need to talk,’ she declared. From out of her silk pocket she pulled a severed finger and thrust it toward me. ‘I’m seeing someone else.’

I stared at her for a moment, and then back at the freezer which was to my despair still empty. I felt my tongue stiffen and I could only open and close my mouth in silence, as if separated from my freezer and my girl by a glass tank, an empty goldfish bowl all around me. Then Lavinia approached me with her eyes all green and serious and shining under the strip light above us. She was still brandishing the finger and with her other hand she slowly reached out to touch my shoulder.

‘It’s gone… It’s all gone.’I flinched when she made contact with me, realising what was happening.

‘Babe, come on. I’m only kidding you. Don’t pull that face at me.’ She moved in closer for a hug but I pulled away, putting a few feet between myself and the finger that she had quickly taken away from my face. I thought I heard her try to stifle a laugh. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘We’re finished...’

‘No,’ she cooed, ‘don’t be so silly. I’m only teasing I promise.’

‘… ruined I tell you.’

‘Stop it.’

‘What the hell are we going to do?’  I saw her expression crumple as I muttered through my teeth, and with a sigh of remorse she turned her gaze to the floor and to her bare, slender feet. ‘Gone… it’s all gone.’

‘Look, I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t said anything. I wish I’d never found this stupid finger.’

‘What? What are you talking about Lavinia?’

‘This – the finger. I found it under the coach earlier.’ She gave me the finger. A few pale flakes came off in my hand and I could tell that it had once been preserved in formaldehyde. ‘Must be a few weeks old now, look how wrinkled it is. Please don’t be angry with me, I only wanted to scare you a little bit.’

When I first started as an organ snatcher I took nothing but fingers and the occasional thumb. They are easy enough for an amateur to remove with a bolt cutter, even with the more valuable parts of the body flailing around with each snap of bone, although fingers are the least valuable part of a human to harvest. As soon as I realised I could make three times as much money from tongues, I stopped keeping loose fingers in glass jars around the flat, relying instead on the succulent mouth molluscs I preserved the freezer. But now my cornucopia had disappeared.

‘Do you know how many tongues I owe? I’m dead, darling. I’m meat.’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘Look! Look in the freezer!’ After a brief pause she peered into the icy space and gasped.

‘Oh my God...’

‘See?’

‘Babe I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Forget about it. The tongues! Where are all my tongues?’

‘They were there this morning, I checked. But since then… oh God, what are we going to do?’

I tossed the decomposed finger into the bin, turned off the tap so the tongues wouldn’t swell up, and threw my head in my hands. I couldn’t say anything. Silently, Lavinia joined me by the sink and began untangling the slugs.




A while later I had composed myself, and was sat at the plastic kitchen table making a list in my head of all the people who might have stolen my stash.

‘Are you sure you didn’t hear anyone come into the flat?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘And you didn’t do anything with - ‘

‘I told you, no. One minute they were there, and then...’ Lavinia sniffed as if she was about to cry.

I reasoned it must have been someone I knew. The odds that the thief was another organ snatcher were high, since it takes less effort to burgle someone else’s body bits than to harvest them yourself, and that a competitor must have somehow known that I was storing five kilograms of prime human tongue in my freezer chest. They would make a killing from it. The only people who bought organs off the black market belonged to secret societies – the sort of powerful eccentrics believed to rule the world – who served up dishes of glazed eyeball, pickled palm flesh and braised tongue at their more extravagant banquets. Often in their initiation ceremonies, new members of the elite cult would have to prove their commitment through a display of cannibalism. We, the organ snatchers, were never caught short of stock when the call came, always through an agent, always from a withheld number. The tongue, whilst not, surprisingly, the most flavoursome part of a human, is still considered a delicacy among the anthropophagi; it sells at the price of silver. I thought of my losses and winced.

‘It took me three weeks to get all those tongues.’

‘I know babe, I know.’

‘All that time wasted.’ I thought of all the nights I’d spent lurking in the darkness, stalking strangers who had lost their way this side of town. Only a few hours ago I had been congratulating myself on how efficient I had become at snatching tongues. The whole process took me less than thirty seconds – lunging out from the shadows and slipping my knife inbetween their lips – always making the cut at the very back of the throat to remove as much tongue as possible. They were still choking down blood by the time I slipped away. That’s the beauty of tongue snatching; it leaves them voiceless, helpless to call for help. I had collected three kilograms of flesh this way but all my stealthy efforts had been wasted. The freezer was still empty. My fingers had been quivering with rage, then they merely itched with regret. By the time Lavinia finally spoke again they were deadened with resignation.

‘So what are we gonna do?’ Her eyes pleaded with mine.

‘There isn’t enough time to replace that much meat. Debt’s due. I’m going to miss the next order.’

‘What’s gonna happen to us? What about the rent?’

‘Damn the money.’ I snapped, seeing her reel back, ‘and damn the tongues.’ Poor, beautiful Lavinia started to cry. Then I stood up and walked determinedly to the sink beside her. The tongues were dry and turned up at the tips, looking more purple and swollen than when I had fist put them there to rinse. I linked my arm around her waist, hooking a thumb into the pocket of her nightdress, and murmured into her ear with the most gentle and reassuring voice I could muster. ‘Have you ever tried one of these things?’

‘No,’ she sobbed, ‘I think they’re disgusting.’

I took two of the tongues from the sink and placed them side by side in a frying pan, adding a knob of butter and some black pepper.

‘Forget about the debt for a minute, Vinny. I’m through with snatching.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying I think they’re disgusting too.’ As the heat rose in the pan the slugs started screaming and frothing with bile, releasing the stench of evaporating blood. ‘I’m sick of tongues. I’m sick of this dingy flat. Forget about tomorrow. Tonight we’re going to eat like the Illuminati.’

Lavinia turned on her heels and hugged me tightly. My chin was resting on top of her long, chestnut hair and I almost got a taste of it when she tilted her head upwards to kiss me. Our tongues bumped into each other for a shy instant before rolling together with a wet smack as slick as amorous slugs.

‘What I said before,’ she whispered, breaking away and licking her lips, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘I know, babe. I know. You wouldn’t ever run away with a nasty little finger snapper, would you?’

‘Never.’

‘I know you wouldn’t.’

‘I was so happy when you brought your first tongue home.’ Lavinia sniffed.

‘Shh. I don’t want to hear any more about it tonight.’ With one of my free hands I flipped each of the tongue steaks with a fork. The cooked sides had turned the colour of a bruise. ‘Sit down at the table, they won’t take much longer.’

Lavinia set the table and sat down. I realised it had been half an hour since I had last checked the freezer chest.

‘They really do look like slugs, don’t they?’ She said, as I put a plate of tongue in front of her.

‘Horrible, ugly things.’

‘Good riddance.’

We took the first bite at the same time, chewing and staring into each others eyes. She had a look of complete peace about her. I knew that tomorrow I would have to explain what happened to the debt collector, and I couldn’t afford to waste any time looking for a new job. Bad characters would come calling soon. But all that could wait. I was dining on fresh tongue with the woman I loved, and for the rest of the night we didn’t say another word to each other. We lay in bed, warm, living bodies side by side, and waited to see what the morning would bring.