THE LAST SUPPER

a horror short story about family trauma

Our bodies are all rotting from the inside. That’s what they do from the moment we are born until the moment we are too decayed to continue. We hide our deteriorating bodies behind makeup, which creases on the reality, wrap our crumbling limbs in fancy clothes; we sanctify ourselves to be scarified to the altar, that is, Christmas dinner.

We sit on our marks at a table for thirteen -- enough for us, our accompanying misery, and the ghosts of those whose misery consumed them already- our dolls of decaying clay, stilled in front of the last supper that is spread in front of us.

We gorge ourselves to fill the growing void that is slowly gnawing at us from the inside. We devour the overcooked pig and burnt roasted potatoes, teeth grating, over-chewing, in the desperate hope to fill the withering shells our bodies have grown to become. We are too lost in our inhibition to measure each other’s stage of decomposition, to engage in each other’s company, and yet, we starve to know that the food did nothing to satiate everyone’s emptiness.

Still, our doll-like shells make idle chitchat from mouths filled with grease and malice, yearning to nibble on the juicy meat of one of us’ weaknesses as we starve for the real feast: each other.

We focus on our respective growing corpses; our reflection on the clear plates reveals how the decomposing clay clings to our wrinkles of fear, shame, and regret. One of us dares to let the mask slip during that moment of introspection, assessing their own shame, and the rest of us hawks, already diving after roadkill, fighting for scraps.

The desert is put on display for all to see, and our eyes glimmer in the reflection of the knife with anticipation of the treat to be lacerated. We are enraptured, on an all-time sugar high, as our residual cherubic sweetness is unraveled for everyone to taste.

But we overindulged, and then the aftertaste kicks in, guilt wraps its claws around our full stomach, bile rises up our throat, filled with unarticulated words of compassion. This rising bile, this growth of regret and shame which snacks on the remanence of sweetness, is soon the only memory of it in an alarmingly hostile carcass. So, we lick our plates, yearning for an addictive goodness that is nevermore to eat away at our germinating cancerous shame. But this spoiling cancer is, ironically, the only part of us that has not expired; it is the charade that keeps our corrupted body together.

Why do we starve for each other’s misery, for it to be mirrored in all of us? Why do we compete over who brought the bitterest of deserts? Why do we feast on each other’s unspoiled remains of goodness until there’s nothing left but a cemetery of shame, guilt, and self-repulsion; until there’s nothing left but a family.

That is what families do, what families are. Growing balls of repugnant bitterness who attack each other’s growing corpses like vultures turned on by putrefaction, in the sordid need that the other’s shame mirrors our own. Misery likes company. We prey and feed off each other’s growing acerbity, agony, until there’s nothing left. Until we’ve expired and you find our bloated, decomposing shell in a foul alcohol and cigarette-infested dump, being nibbled away by non-metaphorical maggots.

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This is my thank you for 3k. I didn’t think there would ever be this many people who cared about what I had to say, so for once I decided to share some of my fiction with ya’ll. This something I had already posted back in October but deleted because I was submitting it, but fuck it, yall earned some fiction from me.

I started this platform last year and didn’t expect anyone to resonate with what I had to say (not that I’m so unique), but the point is, I started from 0, and I wanted to thank each of you, because this couldn’t be possible without each and everyone of you.

I am proud of what we’ve built together this far, and can’t wait to see what’s in store for us in the future.

Hope you enjoyed it.

From Marseille with love,

*vapes away*