Free Short Story Sunday! Sorry it's a little late.

It's that time again. My favorite day, the first Sunday of the month, which I have declared Free Short Story Sunday! This is where I'll publish a short story of mine to thank all of you for registering on my webpage and supporting The Blood Prophecy Series. Some of the short stories will be horror and some won't.

Hope you enjoy this month's horror story, Eating Vegan, A story of the dangers of pretending to be something you are not. Posers be damned. All the other short stories I've posted are always available in my past Blogs, so be sure to check them out!

Hope you enjoy the stories as much as I do writing them.

Edited by the talented Liane Larocque at Mystic Canyon Publishing.

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READER DISCRETION ADVISED, this may not be suitable for all audiences.

If you enjoy my short stories please consider trying my books, The Blood Prophecy Series, a vampire adventure extraordinaire, and Inferno of Secrets my first mystery.

EATING VEGAN

Emma Fairchild never went for her six-mile run in the morning before going to her job at the local GNC store or without putting on her antique two-karat engagement ring. She prided herself on knowing about every supplement powder or pill known to man and when and for what reason to take it. She had spent her mere twenty-three years of life deeply immersed in all things healthy, right down to never touching a single slice of meat. “Pure Vegan is the only way to go,” she boasted to all who would listen and even more so to those who would not. “Meat will clog your colon and poison your body!” She would preach endlessly with the same passion and conviction of a Baptist Minister from the Deep South. In Emma’s world, vegetables and clean living were her gods, and she had added the sanctity of marriage since she was engaged and flaunted her giant ring as if it were a trophy. She ran in the morning, went to the gym at night, and never smoked or drank alcohol. Her high was spreading the word about vegan living.

Emma’s boyfriend, Roger Carvel, agreed for the most part but was known to, on occasion, forget his convictions and indulge in a bacon cheeseburger and a few beers when Emma wasn’t around. Emma suspected his infidelities but could never prove it. This didn’t stop her from preaching to him every chance she got, even though she too would cheat, just not with her diet. Roger’s solution to her nagging was when she got up on her soapbox and began insisting he never, ever touch the evils of the flesh of animals was to simply pin her to the bed and show her the evil ways of his own animal upon her flesh. This she rarely objected to. She enjoyed Roger’s sausage. It was the only meat she didn’t have any trouble swallowing. This was pretty much why Roger put up with her annoyingly high standards, that, and the fact that she also had great tits and a tight round ass. She, in essence, was his trophy.

On one of these occasions, Roger was pounding the hell out of Emma’s virtue when he inadvertently yelled out in his moment of passion, “Oh, Elsa!” Emma, of course, abruptly pulled away from him.

“Who the hell is Elsa?”

Roger, quick on his feet, or in this case, his ass, quickly back peddled.

“I didn’t say Elsa. I said Salsa. You know the tomato stuff we have with our whole grain organic chips.”

Emma glared at him for a moment and then let it go, but it nagged at the back of her mind for the rest of the evening. The thought of Roger seeing other women angered her even though she had other men on the side. What was okay for her was not okay for him.

Unbeknownst to Emma, Elsa was the cute blond from the local pub known as The Hot and Spicy Café, where Roger would get his burgers and beers. Elsa was a beautiful young woman with even bigger tits than Emma’s and an ass any man would kill to have breakfast on. Even though Roger would have his blasphemous food at The Hot and Spicy Café, he had never dared to ask Elsa out even though she was very nice to him while he was there. Roger stayed clear of her, not only because he was in a committed relationship with Emma but because of the rumors that Elsa was known to eat grown men alive, or so it was said. This scared Roger just a bit. He knew she was the kind of woman men would fall in love with, and she would rip their hearts out — at least, that was what he thought the local talk had meant. But he couldn’t help keeping her out of his fantasies whenever he felt the need to relieve himself in Emma’s absence, which was rather often since Emma traveled a great deal for her job as a regional manager.

As Emma’s job grew more and more into a career, Roger found himself having more time to go back to the bar to sample more of what Elsa was serving. Unlike Emma, Roger’s job was on the town work crew that repaired the roads. It was a government job, and it paid well, had good hours, and good benefits. But he wasn’t especially fond of the work since it was mostly his job to hold the big stop and slow sign on one end of the road construction, which held as much excitement and pizzazz as watching paint dry. It also gave him seven and a half hours every day to dream about how soft and juicy Elsa’s burgers were.

It was a sweltering day in late August when Roger had agreed to go grocery shopping with Emma for their evening meal. It didn’t take more than about five seconds of being there before he began to regret his decision to go with her. Emma waved her massive engagement ring in the face of the pudgy boy at the bakery counter while nagging insistently about sugars and Trans. fats before moving on to what he thought would be a safe area of the produce aisle.

“Do you have organic broccoli? Is it GMO-free? I don’t want any of that genetically modified crap. It’s killing all the honeybees, you know!”

Even though she was right, and it was terrible how greed and profit took over even the basic things of life, such as food, her incessant, self-righteous attitude bugged the hell out of pretty much everyone they came across, including Roger. Emma only got more worked up in the cereal aisle and even more so when they reached the cooler full of kielbasa and bacon. Processed meat was even worse than whole cuts of meat as far, as Emma was concerned.

“Do you have any idea what all the nitrates in processed meat and lunch meats do to the cells of your body?” she screeched at the poor pimple-covered high school kid behind the deli counter, in his apron and plastic hair cover, who was there for a part-time job so he could buy a lousy used car.

He stared at her blankly, not knowing what to do with a hysterical, meat-hating, perky-breasted, socially conscious activist. All the poor kid could think to do was to ask, “So, do you want the turkey breast or the ham that’s on special?”

This, of course, sent Emma over the edge, and she ran from the store, screaming as if someone had stabbed her repeatedly with a knife.

Roger gave the kid and the manager, who had come over to see what the fuss was about by this point, a sympathetic look before paying for the broccoli and sweet potatoes that were acceptable to eat and put them into the all-natural fiber, eco-friendly bags they had brought with them. From Emma’s home, that is. He then threw in a Snickers bar, which he ate before meeting Emma back at her energy-efficient hybrid car. Roger was for helping the environment and all and doing what he could, but Emma took it to a level that just made him want to kill her and stuff her into an all-natural fiber bag where he could then throw her lifeless body into the compost heap. He didn’t mind so much when they were at her apartment or his place, and he could shut her up with sex, but that didn’t fly in public places. To add insult to injury, Elsa was also at the grocery store to witness Emma’s rampage. She looked amazing in her tight pink T-shirt with the big black letters across it that read, Psycho-Bitch on board and black yoga pants. She gave Roger a sympathetic smile and moved quickly down the aisle with her cart full of thick strips of under blade steaks, cheese, and a dozen eggs.

Upon seeing Elsa’s food choices, Roger thought of breakfast, and then the vision of having it on Elsa’s naked ass popped into his mind, along with other parts of his anatomy. He hurried for the door as if his ass was on fire, which, metaphorically, it was. It seemed the harder he tried not thinking of Elsa in that way, the harder he got. Emma glared at him when he arrived at the car.

“What took you so long?” she growled as she leaned in and kissed him. “Oh… My God… You have a candy bar on your breath! Did you actually eat one of those high-fructose, poisonous things? Are you crazy?” She waved her hand in his face as if she couldn’t stand to look at him before starting the car and racing off.

A week later, when Emma had to be out of town for business for the entire weekend to help open a new store, Roger couldn’t resist going to The Hot and Spicy Café to see what new things he could try on the menu. Much to his disappointment, Elsa wasn’t working that night, but this didn’t stop Roger from eating a bucket of hot wings and washing them down with a pitcher of beer. What Emma didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, he thought. After consuming the wings, the guilt he tried not to feel began to seep into his liver along with the beer, which only made him order another pitcher to drown the guilt. Once he drank all the beer, the owner of the Café, a hell of a nice guy by the name of Sven, realized that Roger was in no condition to drive home. He called his daughter to come give poor inebriated Roger a ride home. It turned out that Sven’s daughter was Elsa. She happily came down to help her father being that she wanted the best for him and his business, not knowing who it was that she would be driving home. She was a little apprehensive to see it was Roger once she arrived. Drunken Roger was more than thrilled, which was made obvious by the ever-growing bulge in the front of his jeans. Roger, at this point, couldn’t keep his slurring words to himself and was going on and on about how beautiful she was and how much he’d always wanted to ask her out. All of his pent-up fantasies suddenly spilled from between his overly loose lips. Now even though Elsa was nice to Roger, since he was a customer and being nice meant more tips, she was more than appalled at his advances, knowing that he was engaged to Emma and had no right asking any other woman out on a date. Sven wasn’t happy about what he saw and pulled his daughter aside.

“You going to be alright with this wasted yahoo?”

She smiled at her father, “Not to worry, Papa. I took my medication like I was supposed to.”

Sven gave her a concerned look but said nothing further, knowing that his daughter was doing much better these days. He gave her a kiss on her forehead, and she and Rodger went out to her van.

Elsa helped Rodger into the front seat, which wasn’t easy with him continually trying to grope and kiss her.

“Does your fiancé’ know what you do when she’s not watching?” she asked him.

He began to laugh. “The self-righteous bitch is fast asleep by now at the Marriott Hotel in Boulder, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he answered with slurred and sloppy words.

Elsa’s anger rose inside her. She couldn’t help her overwhelming need to teach him a lesson, and instead of taking him home, she took him to her apartment. She let him cop a few feels and smiled at him.

“Now, you rest here for a while, and when I get back, I’ll make you a meal you’ll never forget,” she said in a way that made Rodger believe the meal she had in mind would be him on a platter. He couldn’t believe his luck. Being as drunk as he was, it only took a minute before he was fast asleep on her sofa.

Elsa hated the likes of Emma since it was her that Elsa had caught her boyfriend cheating with not two weeks before and that Rodger was completely unaware of. The thought burned in her mind, and the molten hate she had for both Emma and her boyfriend soon overtook her entire being.

As promised, Elsa returned to her apartment about three hours later and found Rodger was sobering up enough to have full control over his amorous advances, but Elsa gently stopped him.

“Just wait,” she said sweetly. “I promised you a meal you wouldn’t forget.” She carried in several plastic bags filled with red meat and smiled at Rodger. “Just wait a little longer, and I promise my cooking will change your life forever.”

He smiled back at her wantonly, and all he could think of was how, in just a little while, all her delicious meat would be his. She cooked for what seemed to Rodger to take forever since the smell of her cooking made his mouth water and his loins ache with anticipation.

Elsa finally finished, and she set a beautiful table with fine China, crystal wine glasses, and candlelight to serve the aromatic food.

“What exactly is this?” he asked as he began cutting into the succulent red meat.

“It’s an old Scandinavian recipe called Hevn.”

He never asked, and she didn’t bother to tell him that Hevn was the Scandinavian word for revenge. He took a forkful and pushed it into his mouth. He had sobered enough to have grown very hungry. He smiled at her as he chewed, and she sat attentively watching him. He took yet another fork full. “Hmmm,” he mused as he chewed the tender meat. It tasted different than anything he’d ever had. At first, he thought it might be lamb, but he wasn’t sure.

“What kind of meat is this? I can’t seem to place it,” he asked as he chewed another fork full while mussing over how delicious it was. “I know, its grass-fed goat, free-range? Am I right?” He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him without saying a word. He chuckled a little between bites from the soft doe-eyed look she gave him when he suddenly noticed that she wasn’t eating. “Aren’t you having some?” he asked with loving concern in his voice.

She smiled warmly. “No. I just want to watch you enjoy it.”

He took several more bites, almost finishing what was on his plate when in mid-chew, he heard a strange crunch as if he had hit a large bone. He reached into his mouth with his fingers with as much polite grace as he could to fish the foreign object from between his lips. He pulled it out and went to hide it quickly in his napkin when he saw it twinkle and then look at it more closely, no longer caring how impolite it may look. He held it up to the light in between his fingers only to find that it was the engagement ring he had given to Emma.

His eyes widened in horror as he looked first at the ring and then his plate before looking back up at Elsa. Oh, my God! What has this crazy bitch done?

Elsa was laughing hysterically at him, and in between her glee, she squeezed out the words, “It might be meat, but you’re still eating vegan!”

Rodger began to gag on the piece still in his mouth when he suddenly realized that what he thought would be harmless cheating behind Emma’s back went horribly wrong. Elsa called after him as he went running for the door.

“Still think what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her?” Elsa laughed as he ran out, vomiting violently as he struggled out the door and into the night.

The End