Friday, January 21, 2011

Suddenly she realized that she had a dead tongue in her mouth

Hint Fiction
By Susana Cook

I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was but I remember the house. It was a beautiful house. Andrea, a friend from school invited me over for a play-date. I was fascinated; everything was so different in her house. It was clean and organized. They were all sitting at the table at the same time and they were kind of dressed up, her mother and her stepfather I mean. We had to call him ‘sir’. The table had nice plates, cutlery and glasses. They also had a maid who was serving us at the table. She was treating me with so much respect, as if I was an adult or her boss, like them. She put some food on my plate. It was delicious and different. I never ate anything like that before in my life. It was a tender and tasty meat. What is my mother cooking? I thought. She never made anything like that for me! I was embarrassed to ask but I liked it so much I wanted to know what it was. I wanted my mother to cook it for me. This is delicious, I said, what is it?
And her mother said a word that I couldn’t understand. What is it? I asked again
- Tongue, they said
- What?
- Tongue
- Tongue like a tongue?
- Yes, like a cow’s tongue
- I am eating a tongue?
- Yes, you are eating a tongue
I wanted to spit on the table what I had in my mouth. But everything and everybody was so refined. I just knew that I could not swallow a tongue and I could not take the contact of my tongue with the dead cow tongue anymore. I didn’t want my face to show disgust. I couldn’t talk to excuse myself and go to the bathroom to spit that out. Gosh, do I have to swallow this? If I do I will throw up. If I spit this out they will be so offended.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up to go to the bathroom but I didn’t know where it was. I was walking around the house with that tongue in my mouth and I couldn’t ask them where the bathroom was. I finally opened a door and there it was a beautiful toilet where I could spit the fucking tongue out. I did. I washed my mouth but I couldn’t get the feeling out for a long time. Every time I was thinking about it, it was making me nauseous and disgusted. I had to wash my mouth again.