22. Finger Food

I grabbed a chicken wing in my hand and placed it on the cutting board. The wing was slippery and gooey. I placed it upright, balancing it on the bigger joint. Following instructions I slid the big knife into the joint and pushed. My mom’s tip turned out to work. The knife sliced through like butter, separating the wing into two parts. Cutting the remaining tip from the wing was easy. I threw the tip away and put the two chicken wing halves in the empty glass bowl.

I picked up another chicken wing and attempted to repeat the process. This time the knife did not slide through as easily. I hit bone. I tried moving the knife sideways, to find that little gap between the bones, but that turned into sawing motions. The knife was very sharp and cut through the bone far more easily than I anticipated. Within two seconds the two wing parts were separate.

I paused, holding the knife in my hand. A very macabre thought has leapt into my mind and burrowed in. This must be what it feels like to cut through human finger joints.

I held my left hand in front of my face and examined the joints. For a second I could visualize myself placing one of the fingers on the board, big knuckle down with the finger pointing upwards, just like the chicken wing. Then a couple of sawing motions and the finger is cut in two. Unlike the bloodless chicken wing, in my imagination the cutting of the finger involved lots of blood, oozing and squirting.

A wave of nausea shot through my body, making me shudder. I snapped back into the real world and was grateful to see I still had ten full fingers.

I picked up another chicken wing and resumed cutting them, placing it down on the big knuckle and then sliding the knife through. This time I encountered no bone. I picked up a forth wing and once again cut through it with no problem. I seemed to have figured out the right way to hold the wings and how to cut them.

At this rate I would have been done in no time. I was surprised that I could carry on cutting chicken wings after that dreadful thought; that I was not put off. The sense of sickness was completely gone.

Then I realized why.

I was not disgusted by the idea of cutting human fingers. I was disgusted by the idea of cutting my own human fingers. As I was cutting the next chicken wing I imagined it to be someone else’s finger.

Suddenly , in my imagination, the glass bowl full of chicken wing halves was full of chopped up human fingers. I would drown the finger bits in piri piri sauce just like I intended to do with the wings and then roast them in the oven.

I imagined picking them up and eating them just like wings. Biting around the bone.