Mystery Meat
My love for meat started back when I was about three years old. My parents gave me my very first hamburger. There we all sat at the table, my parents staring. Waiting for me to take the first bite. I leaned in and grabbed the burger, I looked at it, examined it. There was no cheese, that was the first thing I noticed, no cheese. Making it a hamburger not a cheeseburger. To this day I wish the burger would have had cheese, then again the taste of the cheese might have altered the taste of the meat. I looked at my parents waiting patiently for me to take the first bite, which is what I did at that very moment, still staring at my parents. I took a huge bite out of the side of the sandwich. The lettuce crunched, I can still remember the way the meat felt grinding against my teeth as I chewed, the juices of the patty dripping down the sides of my jaw. It was heaven, so much flavor, so much juice, it was the greatest thing I had ever eaten, that is until my parents introduced me to more things like steak, or ribs, or pork chops.
As I grew older my love for meat and cooking grew more and more. All I ever really cared about was cooking and making recipes. I was a very quiet child, I didn’t like to talk to people, I don’t like people. If I wasn’t at school or at home thinking up new recipes I was at a therapist. My parents thought I needed a shrink, I always told them they were wrong but they sent me anyway. I would cook at family barbeques and parties which we rarely had, I wouldn’t talk to people at the events, I would cook the food and grab myself a big plate and go in my room. Like I said, I don’t like being around people. My parents always told me I had social issues and that I needed to make some friends, no kids liked me either. They thought I was weird or something, it doesn’t matter because I think they were weird.
The day I turned twenty one I decided I’d open my very own restaurant cooking my very own meat with my very own recipes. It was delightful, everything I made was just delicious. I lived in such a very small town so my restaurant never had much business, not too many people came, other then the fact that like I said, people didn’t like me. It didn’t matter to me. Me and the few that came into my restaurant every day loved the meat, it was simply great. There was always something missing, I went through so many ideas and concoctions, I grilled, broiled, boiled, fried, baked, everything. Going through different marinading mixtures, trying to make my meat have that special something, don’t get me wrong. The food I cooked was great but I could never get it just right, perfection. Slowly my restaurant had less customers and less, until nobody came anymore. I ran out of money and my restaurant was out of business. This crushed me, everything I had loved and worked I had lost.
I spent years and years at home doing nothing but come up with more ideas, still trying to find that perfect recipe I had always wanted, trying to find a recipe for meat I could no longer have or afford. I sat at home as things got worse and worse, I became skinny and weak, my house turned into a pig sty, the little money I did have just to barely get by running lower and lower. I think at one point, something terribly wrong happened to me, I became so upset with how things were that such terrible things would run through my mind, I had gone without cooking or eating any meat for months. I had no friends, I never talked to my family, I had no one. Not anyone but my dog. I sat there staring at my dog, day after day. Really, really terrible things went through my mind about my dog, I had the worst ideas. I got so scared and stressed out about the things I thought about, there were times when I would try to pound the thoughts out of my mind. I would lock myself in my room or throw my dog outside just to try to keep things under control. I had stopped eating and paying bills, I would just lay there in my bed reciting my recipes aloud.
My dog would stare at me day after day, taunting me. I tried to fight everything away, I would try to avoid the dog but he would fallow. He would just stare at me, almost as if he was laughing in my face, making fun of me like all the people and kids I had ever known at school or around town. He was just like everyone else, he thought he was better then I was, trying to make me feel like the dog not him. I stared him in the eye, his eyes narrowed as we stared at each other. The ignorant dog took a step toward me, I hit him, He yelped so beat him, he was trying to fight with. I sat there on my pea green colored arm chair, no stained and covered in dog hair from the years of no cleaning, my hand dripping with blood as I examined the lifeless animal on the floor. I stared and stared as blood dripped down his side, I made stew that night, for the first time in months.
The stew wasn’t good like the other things I had made before, I felt so much more alone now that the beast wasn’t there. I was alone, more alone then I’d ever felt. I would sit there still, and sit and sit. One day I got the idea to invite someone over, so I did. I invited my closest neighbor over to my home. I didn’t fix him anything to eat, or clean up before he came, it didn’t matter, I left the lights off as he opened the front door, sweat dripped down my forehead as the doorknob turned slowly, I stood there waiting, shovel in hand. He took a step forward as he walked over the thresh hold. He jumped as he looked into my eyes in the dark shocked with fear, I struck him on the back of the head and he fell to the ground, I struck him many times more as he lay frail on the ground. I made many different things that night, such as ribs, more stew, hamburgers, etc. The thing about that night though, the meal was amazing. I had finally found what I thought was perfection for my restaurant. I opened a diner on the corner of my block with a little shack that had been abandoned with more recipes, better recipes. This time, many people came and everyone loved it. People would always ask me, what’s your secret? I would tell them, it’s just the meat and smile. One day someone found a my secret in the kitchen of my diner and I was sent away, bringing to where I am now. I don’t like it here, I dislike it just as much as I dislike people, they give me reason to do what I’ve done, a reason to despise them so, they made fun of me so I made them pay for it, they ruin my dreams, I ruin theirs. The man of reason for where I am today will regret it, I was so happy with my diner, and everyone loved the food I made. And that man ruined it. So here I sit in this cold dark cell writing to you, every once in a while I grab my razor hidden behind one of the bricks in the wall and cut a piece of myself, just a tiny piece, to tide me over.
