Nasty Bits

Based off of a writing prompt. Too much horror for a crime/mystery flash fiction?

 

"On the thirteenth alligator gizzard she opened with her scalpel, out poured a dazzling array of cabochon-cut star sapphires, mingled with mud, grit, and a rotting human finger."

It wasn't the first time Angel had found a piece of something formerly living inside a gizzard. Nasty bits, Grandmama Leclare used to call them when Angel used to helped her prepared for the meat for the fryer. Gators collected all sorts of debris from ballast stones to half-digested animal parts. People weren't much more than animals that had managed to crawl out of the swamp anyways.

Working as a veterinary technician in Bon Ami, Louisiana, Angel had confirmed the death of more than one four-legged companion by gutting the gator a grieving owner was convinced had done the deed. She had never found anything of value among the grit and mud until she started baiting her own lines.

The sapphires were muddy pools of tears caught the light from her headlamp. Jerry was going to be pissed she'd found them. Those pretty little gems where supposed to be his ticket - their ticket - out of the swamps. Instead, they had sunk Angel's dreams of a better life for the three of them.

Angel stuffed the cold stones into the pocket of her blood-covered apron. She picked up the small finger and examined its disintegrating flesh and glistening white bone. It was nothing like a cat or dog leg. The joints curled around her own finger, a disembodied muscle memory.

First she would strip and dry the bones before adding them to the box that held Charlie's baby teeth. She have to set more traps, but at least she knew she was trapping in the right area. In a hundred days, even the larger bones would be completely digested and she would give up. Angel considered using bigger chunks as bait, but there was only so much of Jerry left.