..iamstillhere..

AKA BRO, HOW MAX GOT HIS GROOVE BACK

It had been a long two weeks or so.

If you asked Max it all started back at War Games when he was denied his opportunity to kill Cecilworth Farthington. Since he had failed to wring the neck of the ringleader for the Gluemanati, his sunny skies had rolled over dark.

Weird collection of words in that last sentence, especially if you are unfamiliar with Max and his own overly dramatic circumstances. It can be a chaotic, confusing cacophony of collective conflicts but with a codified canon placed into continuity it can be sorted out.

Well, that’s the concept anyway.

Where were we?

Ah yes, Maximilian Wilhelm Kael: PRIME professional wrestler, former INTENSE Champion and deranged misanthrope.

He’d lost his smile after Daytona Diamonds and the Poor Whoresmen left him beaten in the center of the ring. Since then Max had quit social media and gone into a proper sulk.

Ya boi needed to get his smile back.

Unlike most of the Godless heathens out there, Max had recently become invested in His Light and Love. The business relationship he had with Don Winters and his church had proven to be more beneficial than Max Kael? himself likely anticipated..

It was in this time of great sorrow that a woman called Mary had offered a suggestion to Max.

The suggestion had been..

Scandalous.

Salacious, even!

He could never, he thought, once the details of the… experience.. were made known to him. He was a fucked up guy, for sure, but he wasn’t that fucked up, right?

Well as you all may know, the crushing weight of depression can drive an idle mind to seek out a distraction. Sometimes to a degree that leaves one, shall we say, vulnerable to their worst predilections.

After all, he was in FRANCE! This was about embracing a foreign and strange culture!?

La Maison des Goûts Interditstiques. 

The House of the Forbidden Tastes: The cafe’ for the cruel, a restaurant for the wretched, a gathering gruel for the grotesque gourmand. This was one of those places that wasn’t supposed to exist and therefore the greatest of discretion was necessary for patronage.

This intimate little nook lived up to the phrase hole in the wall. Tucked down an alley and behind a three hundred year old oak and iron door was a small dining room. Low ceilings and the soft light of candles gave the space a cozy, intimate feel. The walls were decorated with paintings of the local countryside adding splashes of vibrant color. While the space could hold up to twenty people, only three individuals currently occupied the room.

Max was one of those individuals, dressed in a black three piece suit and looking as gloomy as a midnight storm.

A Maître d' who herself wore an elegant tuxedo, white gloves and a facial expression that never seemed to break from breathlessly pleasant.

And lastly…

“{This is your.. Confidence boy.}” the Maître d' Frenched at Max with a flourish of her white gloved hand. “{Pierre. Say hello, Pierre.}”

Seated across from Max was a young boy, probably no older than six, with dirty blonde hair and impossibly blue eyes.

“{Hello!}” Pierre greeted Max with a happy wave of his hands.

The grimace that had been stretched across Max’s face since he woke up in the center of the ring without his INTENSE championship tightened with disgust. Chapped lips pulled apart into a sneer as his clenched teeth became visible.

This part of the experience hadn’t been.. Appropriately explained to him.

“...hello, Pierre..” Max snarls out. He spat out the Confidence boy’s name with the same offense one might expect from a racial slur. The child's cheerful demeanor was an antithesis to Max and he hated it.

The Maître d' bowed away, leaving the two together. Max’s attention followed the strangely polite woman as she left. Once she was out of view Max leaned forward, his eyes narrowed at Pierre.

“Do you know why the fuck you’re here?” the former INTENSE champion hissed.

The young boy stared back up at Max with those innocent blue eyes, confused as to why this disgruntled man was being so hostile.

Pierre didn’t speak English.

“{Hello Max!}” Pierre doubled down on the cute and innocent thing, smiling brightly. He even let out a chuckle, dismissing Max’s dour nature to a comical act. This is what happens when you’re raised in a culture that made famous sad Clowns. France and Italy, name two more evil European nations.

Actually, in reflection, probably don’t. That one is my bad.

“You don’t understand English do you? What the fuck are they teaching kids here in France?! Pierre, I don’t know why you’re at my table. I just came here to enjoy a nice meal and Mary didn’t exactly say.. Uh.. whatever you are quite like this.” the Lord of Kaelsalvania sighed, loosening the knot on his tie. He was suddenly interrupted from his grumbling by the sound of the kitchen door bursting open.

Several men in white chef coats wheeled out various action stations to the open dinning room. Pierre is quickly washed from Max’s eyes as his attention is immediately grabbed, the sneer on his face relaxed back into a dour grimace.

The Maître d' returned, this time pushing a cart with three golden cages placed on it. Moving to the table, she offered Max a low bow, once again with a flourish of white gloved hands.

“{We have three offerings this evening, Monsieur Kael}” the Maître d' said, her hands now dancing over the cages. Inside each cage sat a single Ortolan, each with its eyes covered, fat and plump from gorging.

Cocking his head to the side, Max’s dark eyes darted between the three cages with delight. He then looked at the kitchen stations set up around them.. Finally his eyes settled upon the young boy who sat across from him, bewildered and confused as Max had been moments earlier.

“{Birds!}” Pierre exclaimed excitedly as he bounced in his seat. “{Why are their eyes covered? Are they hurt? What are their names?}”

A smile broke the corner of Max’s grimace as the dawning realization of Pierre’s purpose was.

Wow, that Mary, what a woman..

“{We are not in the habit of naming them, Monsieur Kael. But you are free to name them if it pleases you.}” the Maître d' words were cold yet still pleasant. Pierre might as well not exist at this point to the woman as she completely ignores his line of questions.

Looking back down at the cages Max settles on what he supposes the fattest one is. The other side of his grimace cracks, the corner of his lips turning up as awful idea washes over him

“I’ll take the one in the center and..” He sits straight up, tightening the knot of his tie as a wolf’s smile pulls back over white teeth. “..let’s call it.. Emi.”

The gilded cage with Emi is left on the table table between Max and Pierre. The young boy continues to be fascinated by the Ortolan which wobbles around the bottom of the cage, blind and dumb. Pierre has more questions, more thoughts, more childlike observations made about the situation. To Max it’s just static noise, a far distant roar like running water or white noise on a television set.

Instead he focused on his heart beat, which had started to increase with excitement. He heard the blood flushing through his veins, the slippery wet sound of his tongue exploring the back of his teeth. The soft, gentle cooing of the blinded bird, ignorant of the danger it was in.

Max was drawn from his focus as one of the chefs approached, opening the cage door. With well trained and nimble hands he snatched up the plump songbird. With a quick nod to Max, the man turned on his heel and moved toward the first action station.

That shallow bowl of Armagnac.

“{What are they doing with Emi?}” Pierre asks, for the first time, a sense of.. Concern in the innocent young man’s voice.

“Oh, Pierre..” Max said, his lips stretched into a broad smile. “..Emi’s about to get fucked.”

-

For those who are unfamiliar with Ortolan and want to know how it is prepared, I highly suggest you look it up. That said I will not regale you all of the horrid details of this preparation here and now.

Just know that it is, in fact, white horrific and abominable.

To modern sensibilities the act of preparing Ortolan is disturbing and cruel. There is no place for it in today’s society.

But for those willing to risk it, they say Ortolan is a meal unlike any other.

For Max it had been an enlightening experience thus far. He certainly had never seen anything done quite like that. But more worth the savoring for Max than watching a small bird being forced to engage in a High Octane Wrestling death match, was seeing the innocences ripped out of Pierre.

But we were not yet done.

No, no.

For as bad as the preparation was, the actual consumption of the Ortolan was truly its own maligned event.

On a small silver platter, atop a bed of roasted seasonal vegetables, was a perfectly cooked, golden brown Ortolan. Had you scraped your fork across its immaculate skin you would have heard the tell-tale hollow crackle that held at bay a body full of meat juice.

The scent that arose from the bird rose and wafted into the nostrils of the Prime Minister of Maxopotamia’s prodigious nose was divine.

“{..they killed Emi..}”

Through a toothy smile, Max giggled, his hands rubbing together eagerly..

“Oh, Pierre, when it’s done for food it’s called slaughter. They slaughtered Emi. Heh-heh..”

He knows Pierre can’t understand him. He doesn’t care.

“”Can I offer you a towel, Monsieur?}” the Maître d' offered, a fresh, white towel in hand. “{..to shield you from the eyes of God?}

A sick, wet laugh escaped Kael’s parched lips. A wrenching, violent laugh, as though a stomach full of backed up giggles were suddenly forced out. Max rode the laughing out, pounding his fist on the table in delight.

His face was red and moist from the tears he shed through his horrible laughter. Between quick, exhausted gasps, Max waved off the towel.

“No.. heh-heh.. No, thank you.” the Lord of Kaelsalvania giggled while he pitched the bridge of his nose. “I’d LOVE them to see this. Pierre! They say you start with the feet.. Juicy.. Delicious.. Emi’s feet..”

Snatching the small bird up in his thin fingers, Max shoved the two tiny legs into his mouth.

It’s kind of like a scene from Attack on Titan. Max’s long, white teeth slowly tighten around the lower portion of the bird. The steam fills Kael’s mouth as his olfactory senses are assaulted with a savory aroma.

Saliva pooled in the back of his mouth, his throat eager to gulp down the forbidden flesh.

Max locked eyes with Peirre.

He sees parts of the boy’s childhood ending in this moment. He’d never considered where food might come from. Pierre had been a sheltered child, kept away from the ugliness of the world, the cruelty of “necessity”. Death held no meaning to most six year olds, that men were capable of such misery and viciousness in the name of… food?

That now an Unquestionable truth for young Pierre.

Max ripped into the Ortolan with the same gleeful aggression he’d use to rip away Santa Claus from an orphan.

He doesn’t expect the flavor to be so.. Rich.. He can’t decide if it’s the liquor the bird had been drowned in, the look of panic and horror in Peirre’s eyes or the feeling of the skin cracking and breaking away beneath his teeth he loves best. All of it together, he figures.

Oh my god, then the bones crunch. It’s a wet popping, satisfying Max on a primal level. The subtle flesh of the bird slipped over his tongue and was swallowed up by his greedy gullet.

There might have been a voice of objection from across the table but Max’s was lost in his own ecstasy. He had lost himself into the moment as his eyes closed, shutting out the visual world so he could pour all his focus into the ripping and the tearing..

It’s less than two minutes for Max to gobble down the entirety of Emi. It’s his first time and like all first timers, he doesn’t take the time to relish the experience. Instead he rushes to the finish line, consuming as much as he can until he’s spent.

All that is left of the bird are a few bones which Max has spat out onto the table, too tough to consume. Grease was smeared across his lips and chin. He stared off into space in a post-coitis like haze.

Finally the world rushed back to Max and he laughed again.

Not nearly as wretched and cruel, this laugh was more controlled.. A purposeful laugh as though the pressure valve had been released.

“Mary was right.” Max sighed happily. “She’s a magical woman, Pierre. With a real penchant for ruining young men’s lives, am I right?”

He sprung up from his chair, snatching a napkin from the table to clean away what remnants of the Ortolan from his face. Somewhere in the background “Je fais le mort” plays, a cheerfully little French bop that causes the Lord of Kaelsalvania to start swaying his hips.

Reaching into his pocket Max pulled a stack of Euros, tossing them to the table as he continued to dance.

“You know, Pierre, they say that I need therapy but I tell ya, nothing is more uplifting, makes the sour soul uplifted and feel good better than just fucking TRAUMATIZING the absolute fuck out of someone else. I don’t need my luggage to be lighter if I can just.. Make everyone else heavier, right?”

Swaying back and forth, drunk on the experience he had just had, Max dances past Pierre. He ruffles the young man’s hair before cheerfully slinking out into the French night.