Bloody Business

Chapter 1: Don't quit your day job

Hmph. Humans and their issues with each other. This woman, Noemie, didn't choose to be a cannibal chef, and it wasn't her choice to make in the beginning. Like her other coworkers, this was a trap that she was snatched into by a devil in disguise, either through blackmail, or with the temptation of more money, neither was she bribed. No, she was tempted into joining the bloody underworld with something else.

She used to be normal, sometimes even after falling into the trap, her days still were normal after she scrubbed herself clean from every shift.

During the day, the flapping of passing Crows whistled soothingly in the air, under the passing murders was a park that was occupied by a group of people. Noemie was the photographer, holding up a good quality camera as she gave some instructions to the rest of the crew to help with the background and props. She held up the camera as she stepped around one person that was kneeling near some nice plants, the model, the photographer was trying to find a balance between good lighting and a good angle of the model's face. Or at least that's what I assume.

The photography session wasn't anything special, it seemed like photos for a magazine or a website, probably for tourists, her company specialized in giving people a fantasy-like imagination of certain places, baiting gullible people. Oh, but there was something honest about Noemie's photos, she believed life was beautiful, and for her, it was.

The model was wearing a sun hat and a nice blouse, the color was matched with some nice soft pants that draped around her legs in a comfortable way. The photographer did her best to capture all of the model's body in the photo without any sun glare, adjusting her camera angle and zoom every so often. The photographer lady, unlike the model, had this more common look that didn't stand out as much. She wore a mid-length sleeve button up tucked into black pants that neither tightly hugged nor draped too much around her legs, they gave this illusion of making her legs look longer, nothing that would stand out much but professionally casual enough to hint that she was at work.

Another person in the crew who was wearing more of a suit-like outfit held a clipboard and was busy tapping way at their phone. An alarm went off from their phone and they then signaled to the photographer.

"Noemie! Let's see those photos."

As the others went to collect the umbrella stands and bring the model a drink, Noemie tapped some buttons on her camera before holding the screen part up with steady hands to show the person in the suit.

"If you want me to remove some parts, I can always edit them."

The person in the suit leaned their head near her to look at the photos shown on the camera's screen, then held up their clipboard to look at the details needed for the website. They straightened themselves and stood in front of Noemie, giving her a stoic look as their clipboard and phone were held professionally by their sides.

"There's no need, just submit them and you'll be done. They look marvelous as always."

"You're too kind sometimes. You can be honest with me."

"But it's true, you have a gift for making anything look like something to yearn for." The person said, then looking the lady up and down before smirking. "Especially yourself."

The woman who was shorter than the person in the suit could only nod and avoid eye contact, hiding her squeamish and cringing facial expression. As the crew and the model went out the park gates to their company van for the model and other car for coworkers, she took her camera sling off her neck and put it back in her bag that hung down to her hips before following the rest of her coworkers back to the offices.

She worked until late into the night, or when the janitor was the only person besides her in the building. Noemie stubbornly continued working until her fingers started to hurt from the buttons of her keyboard, and the clicks of her mouse. Only when her fingers feel too hurt to type anymore did she decide to finally end her shift after a stubborn few hours. She didn't want the daytime to end.

Her computer screen which was burning from being on for so long was finally turned off, the humming turned off like a sigh.

The woman walked away from her surprisingly neat desk, and walked past the desks of her other coworkers in the dark, muscle memory protecting her from being clumsy as she navigated her way around the tables, chairs, and cables. She went up to the little machine that kept track of hours for workers and clocked out, bidding the janitor on the way out and leaving the building after checking her flat bag and pockets for everything she needed and didn't want to leave behind.

Keys, wallet, pocketknife, notes and pen, taser, employee ID, secret motel pass card, and a rustic key.

She didn't seem to be happy about it, but slowly moved her feet as her shoulders seemed to fill with even more tension as the day got darker. It was a curious thing, it's not like she had a dangerous time walking home, and there was no one waiting for her, so it would be confusing when watching how stressed she was getting when she was about to go home after a long day of work. Except she wasn't going home.

It's been a month or two now, and every night after she works for as long as her fingers will allow, she takes a bus ride to what seems like the outskirts of the city, and then orders a taxi to take her to an area that seems to be heading towards the mountains. Into the forest, to a place that is not exactly forgotten on the maps, lest the cab driver would have never found it, but it certainly doesn't have enough attention on it anymore.

There she walks a fancy path to a motel.

She doesn't work for the motel, but rather what appears to be underneath it. It's difficult to follow her inside, just the way it was supposed to be. The tense looking woman walks through the entrance, with a visible frown, and hastily pulls out her motel pass card for the man behind the desk to see, he simply nods and has her follow him, this was the difficult part.

Sometimes the path changes, the rest of the motel is fairly as normal as the others, save for the little maze behind the doors for employees only, Noemie follows the man without questions and without bothering to try to remember the path herself, he leads her to what appears to be a metal door, almost looks like a giant fridge door, and she goes in. It's just a dark tunnel, not long as the other side is easily seen after a minute or so, and she pushes it open after turning the little trick lock.

The lady enters what looks like a locker room and goes to her locker, puts her stuff inside, and gets dressed in what looks like a chef uniform, the outfit that's all white, save for some blotches of blood, with a line of off-center buttons, along with gloves that looked thicker than rubber, and then she passes through another door to the kitchen.

The kitchen smelled like iron all over, blood as fresh as can be. It wasn't all bustling like any other kitchens, there was a team of chefs that the lady worked with, they all nodded their head to her as she entered, the last member of the team to arrive. The chefs also had gloves on, I know it sounds like a typical thing to have gloves on in the kitchen, but it felt like the chefs here really didn't want to touch what they were cooking.

The time was probably eight or nine and there must have been four people at the time, but sometimes there were more.

They all surrounded a table, no words were shared, and some refused to let their eyes wander, until they could hear this clock box on the wall buzzing and began to move at last.

One chef, he looked like a tall man, walked over to a giant door with a big wheel as the handlebar, turned it open, and walked inside, there were bodies and piles and boxes of human pieces in there. Boxes of frozen limbs were organized on the shelves; arms, legs, some sticking out the boxes they were in, the fingers were curled, all of them curled like the person was trying to latch onto something before the arm was cut off. Torsos were lined against each other on their own shelf, some had the hip parts cut off, the hips also had shelves of their own if they were cut off. The neatest looking shelf was the one for the heads, a special glass container held each one as the faces were preserved with care, but those parts were just a guess, the faces were all turned to face the wall.

The tall man whose surname was Charles pulled out a cart with a tray of two very large, carefully wrapped ingredients that were to be used for the night. The smell of iron and flesh grew stronger. The rest of the chefs began moving too.

It didn't make sense at first to why they all looked so serious, because the funny thing about the restaurant they cook for isn't that the patrons are cannibals, it's that the restaurant has only one table every night. Sometimes it was a long rectangular table, other times a big circle table, but this night, it was just a medium sized table, only one chair was there. They were only serving one person that night, so it was confusing why Noemie, the woman who worked surrounded by people during the daytime would be stressed by this.

Actually, the oddest thing about this restaurant is that it's really not a formal restaurant in the slightest, rather more like a playground for someone who wanted others to cook her fantasy dishes for her. No one here is even fully trained in culinary arts, they were all simply chosen for her fantasy.

The tall man took some scissors from the shelf and cut open the wrapped ingredients, one chef was ordered by Noemie to look away, as the other took the pieces that they needed to work with. The fourth chef, a sun kissed man with a drained looking face, took all the bags of blood, made the sound of a deep sigh, and walked away to his station. The lady and the tall man who cut the bags open took what looked like the torso together, working to move it from the cart to their own station, which was the biggest counter, and had the greatest number of knives in its inventory.

"Charles, please take the cart back to the freezer. Alonzo, go check with the waiters to see if the patron is here, and if they are, tell them that we still need time to prepare. Try to look out for the waiters." The lady said to the man who was turned away.

The Alonzo guy was the only one who didn't look at the ingredients being used; he did seem to have the softest appearance out of all the other chefs, but he did have a purpose, it was only done much later. The soft looking man Alonzo did as he was told, grabbing some plates, utensils, and some cups into a basket on his way out to set the tables, not daring to look at any of the stations as he walked out.

The sun-kissed man who took the bags of blood went over to his station, it was a countertop that smelled oddly sweet. There were shelves with bags of flour and other jars or bags of those powder ingredients people use to make those sweet and soft types of food. His station was also closest to another fridge, a normal sized one with the most normal food stuff inside, it of course also had the eggs that he would use later.

As for the lady and the tall man named Charles who took the torso, they were busy washing and preparing it before cutting. Their station had a lot of big looking machines nearby that would get hot when turned on, it's hard to remember the names of them, I just know that they were for cooking meat.

"Did they say they wanted the skin on or off?" Noemie asked her partner.

"On, and they asked for it to be roasted, I'll turn on the burner after all the ribs have been cut."

Charles looked through the cabinets, the shelves, clearly searching for a specific tool while Noemie was using her hands to size up the torso, and likely feeling for the rib areas. She had a much smaller knife, a razorblade, and used it to mark the parts where she felt the ribs were at as she pressed.

Every human body piece that they cook with has a lot of meat on their bones, sometimes it's a very tough kind of meat, other times it's just firm, and there have also been times where they dealt with fatty meat that was easiest to cook as the fat appeared to melt sometimes. There are skinny bodies on the rare occasion, sometimes a special request from the patron, but the chefs have never done much but boil those.

"Merde!" The lady said out of nowhere.

The tall man turned to her, expecting to see or hear some context of reason, and the woman had the torso on the table, on its back, and was looking inside one of the larger holes. Some of the ties or small strings tying the holes closed were cut off as she looked inside.

"There's still organs inside. Did the patrons want that?"

"Does it really matter? He might like the surprise."

She looked at him, frowning and unsure. "And if he doesn't, we could be next."

He shrugged, standing there as he cleaned his glasses.

"Honestly, if I have to deal with any more of this, I think I'll die." He said casually, crossing his arms as he looked at the torso.

His eyes moved over to look at Noemie and saw how upset his words made her as she stood there with her hand on the table with a dull expression. Her mouth fell agape as she tried to tell him something, before shaking her head and sighing.

"I'll make sure you don't get into trouble, just stay with me longer." She said quietly while looking down at the corpse pieces.

The man cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck, having some regrets as he watched her try and inspect the insides of the torso. She liked his company; he must've just remembered that as he took the initiative.

The tall man could be seen reaching inside the torso from the largest hole, the waist, and pulling out whatever was left inside, you could hear a gushing and squishing noise even from a distance away. There was a pink looking and limp thing that was pulled out, then a redder, lumpier thing that seemed to be attached to a string thing, some pools of blood came out with the organs.

How or when they receive the order of what meal the patron wants, the person who hired them all likes to play a fun mystery game of slipping notes into each of their lockers or giving them a cryptic email with idioms and metaphors, to describe the recipe to them. That, or she'll give a title of the dish and the chefs have to guess what she wants as she giggles in the shadows, it makes a lot of them react with simply a groan as they read her letters or emails.

"A liver, and a heart. It was probably on purpose."

"I'll cook those with some fava beans later, let me get a tray." The lady replied.

She put the two organs in a separate tray after cutting the red strings connecting the lumpier red organ from the torso, and then went to look for a knife. The tall man took a really big looking saw and started to cut the torso vertically down the middle through the chest. This is where it was quickly realized that not all of the blood was drained from the body.

Noemie didn't say anything even when looking surprised at the scene, she came back with a smaller, curved and thin knife, and waited for him to cut it right down the middle with his strength before taking one half. He sighed in annoyance.

"Well, I guess, they might like it juicy." She said, like she was trying to comfort him.

Her coworker just let out this odd sounding, forced or unsure laugh.

"They'll like anything as long as they know it was human." He said in this hushed-like tone; it was hard to tell. They all spoke quietly and gently, or not at all, like they were afraid of what could be heard outside the kitchen walls. Their boss was, how do you say, unpredictable.

It was hard to tell what they were doing, cutting up the parts in ways for which I didn't know the reason for, putting some strange looking but good smelling stuff on them that was hard to keep up with since they didn't explain it. If it weren't for the ribs they cut up, I'd have forgotten what they were making, but the sun-kissed man over at his station, it was easy to tell what he was making, his station always managed to overpower the smell of iron with something sweet. Like honeysuckles that are rare to find.

There was a bowl with what looked like the usual flour and other powders for baking bread, but then he added other things like butter, and then a bottle of something that smelled like vanilla, then sugar, which was the easiest powder to name. He mixed them all up using this loud machine that spun this skeleton hand looking thing inside the bowl, he stopped to then add some eggs, milk, and then the blood. It honestly looked far cleaner than whatever was happening at the meat station. Though everything did smell gross at first, like a raw goat's eye or water mixed with milk, but then everything started to smell good again after a bit. When the chefs finished, Noemie called for Alonzo, it seemed like it was safe and clean enough for him to come back in again.

Now it was his turn. Noemie and Charles pulled their trays of what was once a human's chest, to a tray of ribs, the skin was cooked, and smoke was coming off of it, but even with how delicious they looked, Noemie was waving her hand in front of her face with a disturbed look. The heart and liver were now singed and lost their red and pink, and the man who was taking care of the blood was still only paying attention to his own craft.

The soft looking boy took some plates, again, this time much larger than the ones he took out earlier, and started to take the ribs and set them up into something more fancy looking then when they were on the tray. Whoever's body that torso belonged to, it has been turned from ugly pieces of a corpse to a delicious platter of ribs, the liver was cooked with fava beans and served on a separate plate, the heart was turned from red to a shiny brown with lines of black and shredded into pieces then mixed with other shredded pieces of some lettuce or cabbage, looking like some sort of salad with meat. It looked like some sort of small feast for a family.

The man who was mixing the blood into his bowl of sweet-smelling stuff finally finished, taking the round pan out of the oven, he carefully flipped it out onto a plate to reveal a pretty normal looking cake, no sign of any human fluids used in it whatsoever. It was a dessert that was clearly going to be served last, as Alonzo and Charles worked together to move the big platter of human ribs onto a tray, and then onto a cart. The salad bowl with the chopped-up heart and the plate with the liver were put on a different tray.

The door that Alonzo went through, this door with a very nice design, not like the one that led to the locker room, a new face came through it, dressed in a corset vest and bow tie, black outfit with a tint of red. It wasn't a very memorable face, and they didn't say much either, they were silent and stone-faced, didn't say anything to the chefs, just took the liver and the heart salad and left through the doors. Two more people that looked just like them came in, one had a bandage on their face and looked kind of scared, that'll be explained later. The two other waiters took the cart with the human rib platter and pushed it through the fancy door.

After a few minutes, the three waiters rushed back into the kitchen, sweats of fear on their faces as they either collapsed to the floor or leaned on the table, panting and heaving heavily like they saw ghosts.