My Cannibal Lover E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Lupe and the mercenary crew of the spaceship Puerco track a shapeshifting killing machine on a planet of pure Hell. Their only food in the barren frontier wasteland: Manny the Ration, a walking human foodstuff who makes Lupe sick to the stomach. As Lupe and her men close in on their target, the fugitive killer strikes back brutally, devouring her crew one by one. With no one else to turn to, Lupe must team with Manny the Ration for a death-defying chase through an ever-changing wilderness. In the heat of a race for their lives, Lupe finds herself doing the unthinkable: falling in love with Manny. But what will she do when her only chance for survival lies in eating the edible man she loves?

Leseprobe

My Cannibal Lover

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

My Cannibal Lover

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

MY CANNIBAL LOVER

Copyright © September 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.bobscribe.com

Cover Art Copyright © September 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

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Also by Robert Jeschonek

100th Power Book 1

100th Power Book 2

100th Power Book 3

Blastoff!

Cosmic Conflicts

Gray Lady Rising (with Annie Reed)

In a Green Dress, Surrounded by Exploding Clowns and Other Stories

In the Empire of Underpants and Other Stories

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

My Cannibal Lover

Only as I devour the flesh of Manny’s finger for what must be the hundredth--and final--time do I finally realize that I love him back.

It truly blows my mind.  It’s one thing for Rations to fall in love with those who feed on them--it’s not uncommon at all--but who ever heard of a woman falling for her food?

This just might be a first.

Too bad no one will likely ever know.  Too bad both of us will die before long.

Manny will die from being eaten alive, and I will die of starvation when there’s no more Manny left to eat.

“Have some more, Lupe.”  He has one finger left, a right thumb, and he presses it toward me.  He has a smile on his sugar-white face with its tutti-frutti swirls like he’s a child offering me candy.

I shake my head.  “I’ll be okay.” My voice is hoarse.  “Save it for later.”

Manny frowns and opens his mouth like he’s going to argue.  Then, he smiles sadly and pulls back the thumb. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Double damn skippy I’m right.”  I force on a smirk of my own for his benefit.  The truth is, my stomach’s still rumbling something fierce, but my Ration’s got to stretch.

There’s always been plenty of Manny to go around, but not anymore.  These days, he can’t replace what I eat.

This time, when he’s gone, he’s gone for good.

* * *

Two months ago, when I first met Manny, I couldn’t have imagined feeling sorry about running out of him.  He was nothing but food to me then...food I wouldn’t eat, at that.

It wasn’t the taste of him that I hated, since I hadn’t actually tasted him back then.  It was just that I hated all his kind.

In fact, I just about shot him on sight the first time I saw him.  Just about shot my lover and hired gun, Guapo Vasquez, in the bargain.

Guapo knew how I felt about Rations...and yet, there he was, strolling up the gangway of my spaceship, the Puerco, with one of those tutti-frutti naked little bastards right behind him.

Yet another rule broken by damn Guapo.  For someone I let screw me as much as he did, the guy spent an awful lot of time screwing with me.

The pistol was in my hand about a heartbeat after I saw them.  “Mierda!” I said, catching the Ration in my sights and flicking the gun’s settings to maximum everything.

Better believe the tutti-frutti hairless bastard stopped walking...though he didn’t stop smiling.  Right at me.

That was a mistake on his part.  His wide-eyed, sparkle-toothed, never-ending smile reminded me so much of someone I’d once known that it nearly got him killed.

“What the flap is this, Guapo?”  The gun in my hand didn’t twitch.

Guapo whistled a tune and walked toward me like nothing out of the ordinary was happening.  He combed one hand through his oily, black hair and used the other hand to scratch his private parts.  “You drunk, dulcita?  This is a Ration.  Got ‘im cheap, too.”

“I know what he is!”  I wanted to swing the gun around to Guapo, but I couldn’t bring myself to let the Ration’s tutti-frutti bald head out of the sights.  “What’s he doing here?”

Guapo stopped in front of me and pointed at his mouth.  “He’s gonna feed us, babe.  That’s what Rations do.”

“Damnit!”  I shot a glare at Guapo.  “I’ve got, what? One lousy rule?  Onerule, and you can’t follow it?”  I whipped the gun around and shook it at Guapo.  “NoRations, remember?”

Guapo stared down at me with his dark, half-lidded eyes.  He reached out and tucked my long, brown hair behind my ears.  “Cold storage on the Puerco’s down, novia.  We got no way to keep fresh food.”

“We’ll have plenty of cash after the job on Polvo,” I said.  “The bounty for killing that man-eater’s gonna be enough to rehab half the ship.”

“Yeah,” said Guapo.  “And in the meantime, we gotta eat something.  Something that doesn’t have to be refrigerated.”

I tossed my head, shaking the hair from behind my ears, then swung the gun back to aim at the Ration.  He hadn’t moved an inch. “I won’t eat that.  I’ll never eat that.”

“My name is Manna,” said the Ration.  The multicolored swirls on his sugar-white skin twisted and changed as he spoke.  “You can call me Manny.”

Guapo stomped over and clapped a hand on Manny’s shoulder.  “Got him for a song, babe. Next to nothin’. He’s used, but he’s strictly Grade A.”

“That’s right.”  Manny nodded and patted his hairless chest with both hands.  “Zero defects. My last owner only sold me because he was strapped for cash.”  Manny cupped his hand, shook it, and pretended to fling dice out of it. “Gambling, y’know.”

“Out!”  I took a step toward Manny.  “Get the flap out!”

Just then, Guapo looked past me and grinned.  “Hey, Frogface!” He jammed two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud.  “C’mere and try some’a this!”

Frogface, my pilot and engineer, had just entered the cargo bay.  At Guapo’s whistle, he waddled out from behind me and headed straight for Guapo and Manny.  

Frogface was in such a hurry that he literally dropped what he was doing, letting a power drill bang the deckplates in his wake.  “Great! I’m starvin’, Guap!”

Still smiling, Manny extended his arms toward Guapo and Frogface.  “If I may make a suggestion, gentlemen,” he said. “The biceps are especially tender today.  I’m roasting them up as we speak.”

Frogface, whose given name was Felix Suerte, rubbed his hands together.  He looked more like a duck than a frog, with lips curled like a beak and a broad, flat nose--which, of course, was the joke behind his nickname.  “I like the sound a’ that.” He reached for Manny’s right arm. “Think I’ll try some.”

Guapo leaned in and sank his teeth into Manny’s left bicep.  He came away with a mouthful of meat and chewed it slowly. “Top quality,” he said when he could manage to speak.  “Compliments to the chef.”

“Why thank you, sir.”  Manny took a little bow.

As Frogface took a bite, and Guapo took another, my stomach churned.  I wanted to look away, but that would have meant letting Manny out of my sights.

I grimaced and clenched my teeth.  I couldn’t stand watching people eat those things.

Rations were genetically engineered to be delicious and nutritious.  They could use body chemistry to cook and season their flesh to taste, infuse it with a seemingly limitless number of flavors...then regenerate and replace every bite taken out.  They were happy to do it, too.

But every time I saw someone eating a Ration, it still looked like a nightmare to me.

“Hey, Lupe, come on.”  Guapo swallowed his latest mouthful.  “Try some a’ this. You won’t believe how tender.”

“Get off the ship.”  I took another step toward Manny.  “Either you walk off, or I shoot you and throw out your dead body.”

“Lupe!”  Frogface looked up from the forearm he’d been gnawing.  “Quit scaring my dinner!”

“Yeah, Lupe.”  Guapo patted Manny’s bald head.  “You wanna eat powdered cactus and spiderwebs all the way to Polvo, that’s your business.  Froggy and me want fresh food.”

“Forget it!”  I took another step toward Manny, then another.

“Let me put it this way,” said Guapo.  “If Manny leaves, Froggy and me leave, too.”

So that was the end of it, right there, and I knew it.  No way I was taking on the mission to Polvo without Guapo and Frogface.  I stopped moving toward Manny, though I kept him in my sights an extra minute for effect.

Then, I lowered the gun.

“That’s a girl.”  Guapo winked and hiked a thumb at Manny’s chest.  “Now have a bite, huh? You’ll feel better.”

I shot Guapo the kind of glare that let him know he wasn’t getting any from me for a long time.  I turned the glare on Manny, too, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

He knew better than to say a word to me at that moment, but the sparkly smile never left his face.

Typical Ration.  Always look as friendly and appetizing as possible, no matter how annoying you might turn out to be.

But that wasn’t why I hated him.

* * *

Guapo and Frogface might have won the battle, but I didn’t let them enjoy it.  We spent three more days planetside on Saguaro getting ready for the trip, and I worked them like dogs.  Didn’t say more than the bare minimum to either of them the whole time, either.