Supper: The Horror Short Story You've Been Craving by Carolyn McCray Page B

stirred the huge pot. They were
gonna have guests. They had to do this right.
    He heard the huge lummox of a brother coming up the back
porch steps long before Cliver saw him. The house shook with the pounding of
his feet.
    “Ya, Cliver?” Ruf asked puffing from the exertion.
    “Did ya put away your toys?” Cliver asked.
    Ruf nodded vigorously.
    He better have. Ma would have another stroke if Ruf left a
head lying around again.
    “Did you bring the meat?”
    Ruf again nodded his head up and down like a bobblehead
doll.
    “Well?” Cliver asked as he scraped a little burnt material
from the bottle of the pot.
    “Well, what?” Ruf asked.
    “Do you have it?”
    “Oh yeah!” Ruf exclaimed, pulling a partially decomposed
foot from his pocket.
    “Damn it, Ruf!” Cliver yelled, clanging the spoon on the
cast iron pot. His brother was a great butcher. He was just not so clear on
what he was supposed to be butchering.  “I told you, a hand.” When his
brother’s thick brows pinched together in confusion, Cliver put his own hand
out. “A hand, Ruf. Not a foot!”
    Ruf laughed, though, hearty and loud, his fat stomach
quaking in mirth. “Oh, I thought you meant give you a ‘hand,’ like help out
with the soup!” His brother’s eyes teared up as he laughed again. “Want me to
go out and get you one?”
    Cliver snatched the foot from Ruf. “No, we don’t have time.
Give it here.”
    A foot did not release the same bouquet as a hand, but what
were they to do? Their guests would arrive any minute. He tapped the foot on
the counter to knock most of the dirt and straw off of it, and then dropped it
into the deep pot.
    He turned back around to find his brother still giggling.
“Hand…”
    “Did you put the live one back in the smokehouse?”
    “Sure enough,” Ruf said but you could tell he still wanted
to giggle.
    “The live one?” Cliver asked again. You had to stay
on top of Ruf or well, you got a foot instead of a hand.
    But his brother nodded again. “Yep. Had to gag her and
everything.”
    Well, that did give Cliver some hope that Ruf had gotten it
right. “Okay, then go get Ma cleaned up. We’ve got company coming.”
    Ruf clapped his hands and awkwardly skipped off down the
hallway.
    Cliver heard footsteps above his head. Bitsy was coming down
from the attic. His sister hurried into the kitchen, wiping her dirty hands on
her skirt.
    “They’re nearly here. Dinner ready?”
    “Will be,” Cliver answered, looking at her stringy hair and
bony body. If only Ma would let him marry Bitsy. He was getting tired of those
outsiders. With all the crying and hysterics. Then if you paralyzed ’em. they
just lay there. Why couldn’t his mother let him have what she and Pa had?
    “And Ruf?” Bitsy asked. “Is he getting Ma?”
    Cliver scowled. Who did Bitsy think she was? He’d been doing
this since before she was born. Just because she was the baby of the family and
she and her twin sister got all the looks didn’t mean she was the boss of him.
    “Of course,” he snarled, suddenly pining for Bitsy’s twin,
Betsy. Why’d she have to go off and leave anyway? He bet Ma would let him marry
Betsy. Who else was she going to marry? Ruf?
    “And he fed the rest of the bodies to the pigs?” his sister
pressed.
    “Bitsy!” Cliver exclaimed, although honestly he had
forgotten to ask Ruf that. Still, what nerve did she have?
    “You know how special Ma thinks this next one is, right?”
Bitsy asked, her hands on her hips.
    Cliver rolled his eyes. Ma had one of her visions. That
finally they would find the missing piece to their family. She predicted a
wedding within the fortnight. Bitsy and Ruf were impressed. Cliver wondered if
it weren’t a bit of another stroke. Why would Ma think they needed another man
around the house?
    Stirring the pot, spreading the flavor of the foot into the
stock, Cliver wondered what any man in that car had that he didn’t.
    * * *
    Leo got out of the car and stretched his legs.