For weeks, I’ve been stealing beef from the supermarket. Only the choicest cuts—prime rib, sirloin steak, filet mignon. When I get them home, I rub them with olive oil and sesame oil and buttercream flavoured massage oil and slap them against my bare thighs until my thighs bloom red splotches. Skin flowers, roses in milk. I like the sound of beef meat slapping my meat. It’s a wet sound, like a heart exploding. I slap and blood and oil spray in all directions. The sting on the thighs makes my whole body vibrate and colours seem brighter and I seem brighter and when I feel bright I shout Good boy, Garrett! because every piece of beef I buy is named Garrett because Garrett is a much better name than Michael and Michael is a loser who only wants to stuff his thing in me and watch my tits flop like baby birds who can’t quite fly. Michael only wants to stuff his thing in me and bend me in ways I don’t bend. With Michael’s thing stuffed in me, I am a beautiful cunt, you like that baby? Tell me how big it is, tell me how I’m ripping you apart. Garrett never talks.

Kate Gies teaches creative nonfiction and expressive arts in Toronto. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in The Humber Literary Review, Word Riot, The Town Crier, the Conium Review, the Canadian flash prose anthology Release Any Words Stuck Inside of You, Hobart (forthcoming), and others. More of her work can be found at kategies.com.