3rd Sunday Write on 4th Sunday for February

It was that time again, or technically exactly one week later, for the Bloomington Writers Guild’s Facebook featured “Third Sunday Write” (see January 25, December 19, et al.). So today, one day more, comes my response to the second of four prompts offered, but one a bit unusual too as it’s really a melding of “inspiration” with part of a story already written.

But one that came to mind for a reason, as will be explained at the very end.

A favorite meal — all the details.

(This is cheating, actually, in that the following passage is already written. It’s from a currently unpublished story called “Good Taste,” about a ghoul — a creature that feeds on corpses — who’s been struck by lightning and, his brain thus scrambled, has gained the sensibilities of a gourmet. His name is Jethro.)

(from “Good Taste”) . . . never before had he differentiated between smells of rot as he did now. His ghoul nostrils quivering. Focusing, that is, on separate stenches.

This one an Italian, before he became deceased. See — smell the garlic tang, subtle yet present. While this one, so high-spiced, must have been Hispanic.

This one perhaps English, a bland, boiled aroma. This one a lady, the perfume still on her, mingling its sweetness with that of decay. This one a. . . .

Jethro was thrilled! His appetite grown huge to match his new senses, he did not know where to start. Finding a grave-rag to use as a bib, he bit first into French meat — he knew it by residues left of red Bordeaux it must have had with its meals. That is, when it still lived.

A heady flavor.

Then this one, dead longer, was blended as if a stew, juices and rotted flesh salmagundi-ized, served cold as if a sort of meat salad.

An appetizer.

Then this, whiskey-pickled, perhaps a transient —

He reveled. He gorged. Never before had he had such a banquet, that is not in quantity — cemeteries, in these latter days, often were flooded out. Ghouls lived for such moments. But in variety — Jethro had never known meals served in courses, as rich humans ate them. Some of their corpses, too, made Jethro’s banquet. Nor had he before cared, his taste and smell so focused on different flavors. On shadings of texture, the crunch of the new dead compared with the creamier, almost custard-like smoothness that came with more protracted aging. . .

(This came to mind now because, just Saturday, I received word that “Good Taste” has been short listed — a finalist as it were — for publication in an anthology tentatively called GHOULISH TALES. Will it make it? Who knows? But if so, perhaps not for a month or so though, it will be announced here.)