Guest Mozart by Jamie Grefe (Random Title #9)

Mozart was a bastard long before the fateful evening he used a cheese grater to slit Merv's throat in the kitchen over a tasteless pot of sheep brain stew, though we, my guests and I, did not raise a fuss, was just a manly spat, a mistake any of us could have made. And, as Fortune would have it, Merv's neck-spillage brought the perfect peppering of zest to our tongues. It perfected the dish. Plates were licked clean. Mozart, of course, took all the credit for this culinary turn of the screw. And Merv (we cling-wrapped his corpse to a stool in the corner) should have been deathly proud of the fact his passing was made meaningful by way of so many slurping mouths, satisfied farts, and the celebratory toast that ensued, long-winded as it was. Yet, all things considered, we did not expect Mozart, wretch among wretches, to do what he did after we supped and what he did cannot now be undone, can never be forgiven, I promise you, listen. This is precisely why I was compelled to use the butler's chainsaw to put a stop to his silly antics once and for all, for no one serves swine hooves in a wine glass for dessert, not at my manor, nor in my family's presence or the presence of my guests. And this is not all. If this would have been all, I would have let him eek by with a whipping in the henhouse or an old fashioned toenail plucking by pitchfork. But, I should have you understand the nature of our feast. We were celebrating my dear daughter Casey's first day back from the infirmary, after her horrible mishap in the wood shed with the ewe and the weld gun. It was a messy ordeal. The country doctor had to amputate her limbs, and so it went, limbs, that our guest, Mozart (the bastard), should never have fondled nor stolen, much less minced, chopped, bludgeoned and baked into a chocolate limb-cake and, on top of such a heinous deed, stuff himself (all three hundred pounds of his bastard skin) into the center of the cake, and order my geriatric maids, garbed in Uncle Dieter's military regalia, to wheel out the cake on a pallet into the dining hall, dim the lights, secure the winding of an ugly Bach fugue on the phonograph, and explode (as a joke, so he squealed) his bastard body, naked, from the cake coated in Casey's limb-sludge. It scared our dear limbless Casey to wail, throw back her wheelchair and crash through the second floor window, where she plunged, plummeted, splattered chest-deep, impaled through the ribs on the hand-welded iron fencing I had just constructed and fit into place that very afternoon. I can still see the blood gurgle from her lips, poor girl, darling girl, my only girl. I'm sure you will understand our fevered temper at the sight of such a disgusting and bastardly deed and when Johnson, the aforementioned butler, handed me the chainsaw, well-oiled and set to saw, I did not hesitate to bury its whirring blade in Mozart's flabby belly and rip, with the fury of a thousand limbs, up to his own sheep infested throat. His howls mingling with the saw's buzz made the most melodious symphony, an after dinner poem, and the night-wind from the broken window, against my back and the applause of the dinner guests, their howls like a train wreck, was mere tripe compared to the music that exploded from Mozart's naked body. Yes, that music made it all worthwhile and for the record, if I may be so bold, Mozart, the bastard, tasted just like sliced lamb.

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Jamie Grefe is the author of THE MONDO VIXEN MASSACRE (Eraserhead Press). His fiction appears in elimae, Birkensnake, New Dead Families, Untoward Magazine and elsewhere. He's online at: http://shreddedmaps.tumblr.com