Maurillo now lies on your operating table after the washing of his body. He lies there lifeless and pale. The cosmetic work is used to restore injured facial features, but for him that is unnecessary. You have already mixed 16 ounces of formaldehyde with 1.5 gallons of water. The only thing for you to do now is to embalm him– this is your specialty.

First, you remove all the blood and gases from his body and insert the disinfecting fluid. Then you remove the viscera, immerse them in embalming fluid, and then re place them in the body, where it is surrounded with preservative powder.

You remember how he had taken your wife and daughter away from you.

It all started when he invited your wife to his church. When your wife came back, she then tried to convert you too. Your only daughter, Beatrice came with her to the rituals. After several months of their worship, Beatrice was given the honor to be a candidate in the holy sacrifice. Your wife and your daughter agreed, but you tried everything to stop it since you had heard from gossips in your place in Sasa that the cult kills their sacrifice and eats them.

You turn your embalming machine on. You remember how you went to the SCJ Church to rescue Beatrice. Your wife explained to you that you will be blessed by God if you just let Beatrice go. She told you that they believe that the person who ate the corpse in the ritual would acquire the desired qualities of the person eaten, particularly her beauty, pure heart, and youth.

You agree that your beautiful Beatrice was perfect for their sacrifice— eighteen years old, kind, and loving. All that Beatrice wanted when she was younger was a Chupachups lollipop that you brought home for her after work. But when she grew older, no matter what you brought home for her, she would always be tagging along with her mother. She said that what she only wanted was for you to join them in the church because she wanted you to be “saved”.

You insert the trocar inches above the umbilicus. You start to clean out the hollow organs. After that, you remove the trocar, turn it around, and insert it into the lower body, aspirating the contents of the large intestine, and bladder. You remove the trocar again and are about to inject the cavity fluid when you remember what your wife said before the night the cult murdered her for trying to leave the cult.

“Adolfo, in few instances, the eating during the ritual might have been caused by no other motive than revenge. It is a belief in our church that an enemy’s spirit would be destroyed if the body were eaten, leaving no body for the soul to live.”

You take the cutting knife and then you open Maurillo’s stomach carelessly. He deserves that. Now, you think of taking his heart and sucking all the blood from it before you tear it with your teeth. But you are disgusted to do that, so you throw the heart, with his bladder and intestines to your hungry barking dogs.

Yet you are not even.