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She knows this like the back of her hand, the cuts on them tell you so. Those were from before she learned to tuck her fingers in (learned the hard way) and to keep the blade sharp (also learned the hard way).
Now she slices quick; head to the tail, separate the top loin from the belly, the loin from the second cut. Lay out the pieces, go to the next. This one is a filet; remove the backbone, trim the fat until you are left with lean and thin flesh, put that to the side too, keep on going.
The knife cuts, say nothing of Sara, she is the knife now. And oh, she works for it. She feels the weight in her palm, slide through red and gore until you are left with neat, tidiness, the process of your work pushed to the side to rot.
You trim what is bad and keep what is good, what will fill the mouth and sate the hunger.
She knows this like the back of her hand. She knows this.
- - -
She’s squirming. She’s real, vivid, alive; scales and muscles, dangerous eyes. She glares, she bares her teeth, she fights to live as her death approaches in a white double-breasted jacket.
Sara stares, hands clammy in her pockets. Already, she traces the cuts. The line of the shoulder, the breast, the meat of the stomach and tail. Oh, she’s strong, her tail bashes against the glass of the tank in a way that makes it shudder, it threatens to give way and release gallons of water and an angry, writhing mermaid.
“Oh,” Sara says, it’s all she can say, her heart pulses in her chest, food processor steady, churning up her insides into red puree. Place that on a white plate, settle searing rare filet mignon on top with garlic, butter, thyme and rosemary butter baste. Serve.
The creature snarls, scratches down its enclosure, swims over to the far end and curls up into a ball, tail wound up in sinew and muscle. Sara’s knife sings where it sits in its block, expensive and oiled wood, its handle sticking out stark black from it. Sara wants to see the first cut, and in the next moment, runs.
- - -
She cooks adobo and mechado, boils oxtail for kare-kare, prepares bagoong alamang to go with it. She burns her tongue on it and her blade sings, ready for the next cut.
It’s fish.
Sara cuts with a mindlessness, fries it simply after letting it sit with rubbed-in salt. She moves on from that, she sours the sinigang broth with unripe tamarind and then adds the fish. She leaves the kitchen, she goes home, she falls on her bed with the collar of her chef outfit choking her, and dreams of mermaids with teeth that cut, teeth that cut her this time.
- - -
But she’s still there, waiting, eyes dark and watching. Nobody knows what to do with her yet, what wine to pair her with, what sauce would salt her, should they salt her, would sweetness match the fat that no doubt tenders her ribs and will render when the scales on her tail crisp in the oven.
Trim what is bad, eat the rest, survive with the blood still on your teeth, Sara knows this. She feels a kinship with the mermaid, because doubtless, she knows this too. She had lunged at the first (and last) worker who’d tried to remove her from the tank, opened him up from the right corner of his jaw to his clavicle, sucked on the meal of his larynx in her tank where nobody could stop her, nobody could do anything until they hid the limp body.
His throat was torn out, it was butterflied to perfection, meat flapping out and glistening. He was dead and they dumped him in the ocean after they gave her his hand, for fear of her still being hungry and finding out the question of how long she could spend outside the tank on her own.
Sara swallows. She leaves her knife, even though it calls for her, its comforting weight leaving her almost unsteady. It’s dark outside, the harsh artificial lights make the sickly pallor of the mermaid’s scales even more visible. Or maybe that’s just how she looks, pond green and vicious.
Sara presses her palm to the glass. Even with the strong lights, there is still a patch of shadow in the tank that the mermaid had taken to inhabiting, eyes darting at every movement past. She sits in the waiting room, ready to be called for death by a name that isn’t hers.
“What is your name?” Sara asks. She feels foolish, her cheeks flare hot and she feels her hair brush against the nape of her neck. She speaks to a tank that looks almost empty if it weren’t for the cat-like eyes that reflect light back at her, and Sara can’t leave just yet because she didn’t wipe the workplace counters down yet like she was supposed to.
The monster moves slow, threading out its territory, wary of another set of grasping hands attempting to knock her out, to cut her open. She’s in death’s waiting room, but they haven’t called her yet. They don’t know her name.
Her breath comes out heavy, a pressure on her chest, the tenderizing hammer meant to flatten meat. They are meat in a room together. They are cuts and marrow and feeble hearts.
The mermaid stares dead on, into her soul, reading every mistake and missed cut she’d ever done. She is a blade going through Sara’s ribs and twisting, she is devastatingly pretty, singing in a low growl trapped in her throat still, trapped in the tank, trapped in the room with Sara.
Sara understands sailors with a lightning bolt suddenness, driven to madness by sirens, because what if she climbed into the glass tank and let herself be eaten, trusted in this mermaid to trim her down and wet her teeth on her flesh and clean off her bones. Trusted in her to leave nothing to waste. Kinship in the violence they both wielded to survive.
With a webbed palm pressed to hers with only the glass to separate them, and if Sara held herself still enough she imagined she could feel her heartbeat even with the divide.
In a hiss, low and rattling, danger danger danger, she speaks, sibilant, smooth honey and barbed fish hooks; “Sirena.”