La Alien Night Banquet

"Dinner" 1993, West Los Angeles The sound of the fork hitting the porcelain plate was clear and piercing. "Today's beef is too old," said the wife suddenly, her voice like a rusty hinge, "like the cat you buried in the garden last week. " Mike looked up and found that Mary's chin was drooping at an unnatural angle, and the corners of her mouth were cleft to the base of her ears, but she continued to chew. "Honey?" His throat was dry. "You always forget to fertilize the roses." Her voice broke into the static of an old radio, "So I replaced the fertilizer with—" Her head slipped from her neck and hit the dinner plate with a thud. "Holy shit!" Mike's chair suddenly retreated, but was hit by a brute force - Mary's left leg folded up from under the table, her ankle twisted at an impossible 180 degrees, and tightly wrapped around his calf. The crisp sound of the broken tibia was mixed with the whisper of the woman's head: "—replaced with the ashes of our first child." The head on the plate is still talking, its rotten lips opening and closing, revealing the squirming finger bones with wedding rings inside. Mike's scream was stuck in his throat, because now he could see clearly - what was entangled in him was not his leg at all, but a garden shovel handle with minced meat hanging on it. When blood began to ooze from the ceiling, Mary's rolling eyeballs happened to stop in his trembling palms, and her pupils reflected the pit he dug with his own hands last winter - now there were three skeletons of different sizes lying in it.