The Weight of the Last Meal

Fiction

The room smelled of wet wool and tallow. Everyone was humming a tune that sounded like it was drowning, which is how most things end in this valley. Elias Thorne lay on the pine table, his skin the color of a spoiled mushroom. His daughter stood by the window, her face a mask of salt and grief, but she didn't look at me. Nobody looks at the Sin-Eater when the work is actually happening. I stepped forward and placed the plate on his chest. A piece of coarse corn cake, a pinch of salt, and a small cup of water. This isn't some high ceremony; it is a transaction. The family pays the fee, and I take the filth so Elias doesn't have to carry it into the dirt. I took the first bite of the cake. The shift happened instantly. It started as a cold needle in the back of my throat, then it bloomed. As I swallowed, I felt a rush of something thick and oily, like old engine grease, sliding down my esophagus. It didn't just go to my stomach; it branched. I felt a dozen jagged shards of ice splintering through my chest wall, carving paths toward my shoulders. The daughter sobbed quietly into her handkerchief. The sound was soft, rhythmic. Inside my skin, it was a riot. A cluster of needle-teeth began to chew at the lining of my forearm, a frantic, scratching hunger that made my muscles twitch. I kept my face flat. I've done this forty times in ten years, and the trick is to not let the shaking reach your hands. The salt came next. It tasted like copper and old blood. The moment it hit my tongue, a heavy sludge poured into my veins, thick as wet cement. It slowed my heart, pushing against the valves with a crushing weight. It felt like I was swallowing a handful of rusted nails that were unfolding, stretching out to hook into my ribs. I drank the water to wash it down. The liquid felt like liquid fire, searing the paths the sludge had made. For a second, I could feel Elias's life in reverse: the lie he told his brother in 1974, the money he stole from the church collection, the quiet cruelty he showed his first wife. These weren't memories; they were parasites. They were things with weight and edges. I stepped back from the body. My skin felt too tight, as if something were trying to push its way out from under my collarbone. My breath came in short, jagged hitches. The daughter finally looked at me. She didn't say thank you. She just handed me the envelope with the cash and pointed toward the door. I walked out into the cold mountain air, feeling the ice shards in my chest slowly begin to melt into a dull, throbbing ache. It is a heavy way to make a living, but the bills don't pay themselves.