“There. That ought to do it!” She wiped her hands on her apron and picked up the triangular knife. “Now, as I was saying: This is a chef’s knife. This is the sort of thing you use to cut up vegetables, such as celery or carrots.”
She placed the handle in her palm and gripped the rear part of the blade between her thumb and forefinger. Walking around the table to his right side, she placed the tip of the knife on the board and angled the blade above his index finger. Charlie gave a muffled scream and balled the hand into a fist. Vera sighed, reversed the knife and stabbed it through the back of his hand. Blood welled and spilled around the blade as his fingers splayed out.
“This won’t work if you won’t cooperate.” She studied his hand. “You know, that probably wouldn’t have made a very good demonstration, anyway. Those knives aren’t made to cut through bone.” She tapped her chin with one finger, leaving a bloody smear behind. Then her face brightened. “You know, I’m really jumping ahead of myself right now. You need something a little more basic.”
Jerking the butcher knife free of the tabletop, she lopped off his thumb, index, ring and pinky fingers. Tears leaked from Charlie’s eyes as she cauterized the wounds. He tried to move the hand, but the blade of the cooking knife held it in place. Vera reached into her apron and pulled out what he thought was a small knife at first, then she turned it, and he saw the blade was curved rather than flat, and there was a long slot in the center.
“This is a peeler,” she said, twisting the contraption before his eyes. “You use it to scrape the skin off of carrots and potatoes.” She grabbed his remaining middle finger by the first joint. “You’re lucky this is a new one. They get really dull and hard to work with after a while.”
Holding the peeler horizontally, she made a swipe down the length of his finger toward the wrist. A chunk of flesh flew free and hit his cheek. Charlie yelped, the first in a long string of cries as she worked the peeler. Gobbets of meat and blood spattered the board and his arm, as well as Vera’s hair and face. She peeled the finger until all the skin and muscle was gone. Charlie shivered at the feeling of steel scraping along the white bone protruding from what remained of his right hand.
“There you go! All clean.” She pulled the chef’s knife free, dropped the peeler back in her apron and pulled out a smaller knife. “This is called a paring knife. It’s really useful for more delicate situations where a peeler won’t work.”
She walked around to the other end of the table, dragged a chair over and sat down in front of his feet. Her breath tickled his toes as she pulled off his right sock and shoe. He craned his neck, trying to figure out what she was up to, but all he could see was her hair peeking over the swell of his belly. He forgot all about trying to watch at the first prick in the sole of his foot.
A burning line ripped down the middle from the ball of his foot to the backside of his heel, painful even in comparison with the agony throbbing in both hands. Vera’s studious face came into view as she made another cut, this one around the foot just beneath his toes. Tears streaming, he tried to yell through the gag, to beg her to stop. Another slice around his ankle, and then a slit up the top side of his foot. Surely she wouldn’t… Thought fled as he felt fingers hook into the cut in the arch of his foot, ripping skin free with a yank. She peeled his foot like a grape, using the paring knife to separate skin from muscle when it wouldn’t pull off.
Pressure suddenly left the lower half of his legs, and it took Charlie several seconds to realize Vera had untied his shins. He relaxed on the table, weeping, his breath whistling through his nostrils. Thank God it’s over. It had to be. What more could she possibly do to him? Why hasn’t she untied the rest? He heard a slapping sound and craned his neck to look at his wife.
Vera stood by his left knee. She held steel mallet with a spiked head, smacking it into her palm. He recognized that one. What does she want with a meat tenderizer?
“I know you like to think you know how to grill outside, honey, but I’ve got to tell you, you really haven’t been doing a very good job of it. You need to use this thing more often, like this.” She swung the tenderizer like a carpenter driving a nail. Pain bloomed in his knee with the first blow. At the fourth, he felt the joint give way. The other knee only took three strikes to break. Then she disappeared.
Charlie held his breath, afraid to see what she might bring back this time. He started to laugh hysterically with relief at the sight of the small metal tray she carried by its handles. Is she going to bake cookies? His hysteric mirth withered as she angled the tray. The bottom contained a series of scooped holes. A cheese grater, not a tray. She set it on the table and yanked his pants leg up past the knee. He groaned at the pressure in the injured joint. When she placed the grater on his shin, he shook his head side to side.
“Oh, come now, Charlie. In thirty years, I’ve never seen you use one of these things. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t show you how?”
Leaning on his leg, she ran the utensil down his shin like a plane. He screamed around the rag in his mouth. He could feel blood running down his leg with every pass. Occasionally, the cheese grater would bind and she would yank it out of his leg and tap it on the side of the table. She worked every side of his leg until the gouges scored along bone. Once she was done, she grabbed the cooking torch and sealed off the edges of the wound.
Charlie couldn’t scream anymore; his voice had long since failed. But he cried when Vera wrenched the leg up and showed him the twin bones gleaming wetly in the kitchen light, the white darkened to black at the ends where she’d cauterized what remained of his leg.
Holding the ankle with one hand, she reached into her apron and pulled out what looked like the world’s biggest, most evil set of nutcrackers. She threaded one of the jaws between the bones in his leg and closed it gently around the smaller of the pair. She looked up at him and giggled.
“I have to be honest — I’ve never used these before. Just haven’t had a chance.” She sighed. “Remember when you gave me these shell crackers? It was what, five years ago, for our anniversary? You promised lobster that night and every night for a week after. I always wondered why you never actually bought any. Oh, well. At least I finally found a use for them.”
She gripped the jaws in both hands and twisted. Charlie watched as the bone bent then splintered with a sound like a green tree branch snapping. Vera wrapped the shell cracker around the other bone. It took more effort. She wrenched it back and forth and leaned on his foot before it crunched. As his shoe-clad foot hit the floor, Charlie found he could scream after all.
He kept right on screaming until he passed out.
Charlie woke up still screaming, the feel of cold steel punching into his gut. Eyes flying open, he found a two-prong carving fork stabbed into his bellybutton. Vera tapped the handle with a carving knife, sending painful shivers into his abdomen.
“I think our lesson’s nearly over, dear. I just wanted to show you a couple more things. First, we’re going to discuss proper carving. If you’re going to assume the job of cutting up the turkey at holidays, you really need to learn how to do it right. The way you’ve been hacking at it is quite embarrassing.”
She laid the knife’s slightly curved edge next to the fork. Blood welled as she made a wide, shallow cut that followed the contours of his stomach. The world went gray once more, but the pain of her carving kept him alert. He watched in horror as she made a ring of slices around the fork. She carefully lay each flap of skin and muscle back before moving on to the next cut.