The elfling Lindir observed the pacing shadow through the gap between the door and the floor from where he sat in the healing rooms on the bed neighbouring the bed in which his cousin Melpomaen was currently lying motionless, Elrond and Uncle Erestor around him. He wondered if it was Glorfindel out there and if he should warn Elrond and Erestor of the possible close presence of the fellow that his uncle called a feral, crazed, malicious, psychopathic beast. When the shadows suddenly disappeared, however, and did not appear underneath the door for a time, he decided then that perhaps Glorfindel had gone away and that there was no point in alerting the adults beside him. He looked back at his cousin who was lying stripped naked face down on the bed with a great big hole running between his buttocks up to his lower back. Elrond, who was operating on Melpomaen, kept on bending down and sticking his arm right up into Melpomaen's body, and then pulling out halves of lemon and onion and bits of rice.
Lindir wondered if Melpomaen was dead. After all, he was not moving and his colour was very bad. Not that he had been moving much when Lindir had come, on Erestor's instruction, to read to him the previous day. He had been drooling and making strange sounds then. But now he definitely did not appear to be breathing.
Lindir wondered if it was a good thing that Melpomaen was dead... if he was dead. If he was not dead, then, well, that explained why Erestor and Elrond were still bothering about his body. Lindir wondered if a dead Melpomaen was better than a live one. He did not like his live cousin very much. Melpomaen liked to make fun of him and trick him with cruel jests that only he seemed to find funny.
Perhaps a dead Melpomaen was a good thing, he finally decided as he watched Elrond pull out a whole string of garlic. He sniffed. Certainly, Melpomaen smelt yummier now, if a bit too strongly of onion. Or perhaps it was the smell of antiseptic in here that was making his nose run. He sniffed again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Then he looked back at the door and felt his lips twist into a small smile when he saw the shadow of feet behind it again. It had to be Glorfindel out there. Perhaps the taxidermist was peering through the keyhole. Lindir looked back at the body on the bed and tilted his head to one side as he observed Elrond tug a bundle of carrots tied with string and covered in bits of rice out of the crack before placing it on the two-levelled wooden trolley beside him. There was not very much blood on the stuffing. Perhaps Glorfindel had squeezed him like one squeezed a scratch to make big red droplets ooze out. Perhaps super big red droplets had oozed out when Glorfindel had cut the hole in Melpomaen's bottom. Glorfindel had cut all the way up Melpomaen's crack - straight through the bone. Lindir wondered if he had used scissors. He looked back at the shadow under the door and then sighed and reached into his pocket for some sweets. The smell of Melpomaen's stuffed body was making him hungry. Hungry for meat, though he dared not mention this to Erestor and Elrond. He frowned when he discovered that his pocket was empty and that he had eaten all of the toffees that Erestor had given him in exchange for reading to Melpomaen yesterday.
He looked back at Melpomaen. This was getting boring. All this fuss over someone who was not even a friendly person, much less alive. Lindir looked back at the shadow under the door. After a few moments of staring intently at it, he finally pushed himself off the bed. "Uncle."
"Aye?" Erestor did not even glance at him. He was busy pulling the ends of the thick string that had been used to sew up the big hole in Melpomaen's rear out of the corpse's skin.
"I am hungry. I am going to get something to eat."
"Mm-hm." Erestor did not even appear to be listening to him. Lindir's brow knitted and he shot a quick nasty look at Melpomaen. Why did his cousin always get most of Erestor's attention? He scowled and turned away to walk into the storage room and out of the locked narrow door there that led into the gardens. From there he made his way to the kitchen.
As he went, he found himself sniffing. Not with tears or because he had an itch in his nose, but because he could not seem to get the smell of Melpomaen's stuffed body out of his nose. Really, Melpomaen had smelt rather delicious... he had smelt like the best chicken, like the most succulent pork just before it was to be cooked, and when Elrond had drawn the crack wide open, the insides of Melpomaen's body had looked oh so clean and pink and fresh. Melpomaen's flesh had looked like the best meat that Lindir had ever seen in his life.
He went down to the kitchen and looked in the larder. He sniffed at a whole roast chicken and wrinkled up his nose. He nibbled at a bit of leftover pork, then spat it out. Then he went out to where the cooks were cooking and sampled a little of the duck stew and fried beef that they were preparing for lunch. But although the cooking meat tasted like duck and beef, and the chicken tasted like chicken and the pork like pork, he still could not rid his nose of the smell of Melpomaen's freshly stuffed body and his desire to taste him.
It is no wonder that Glorfindel does not eat normal meat, he thought, No wonder he eats elf meat.
With this thought in his head, he turned and wandered back to the healing rooms. When he reached the stairwell landing next to the healing rooms, however, he noticed that Glorfindel was still outside the healing rooms. A thought entered his head and with a smile, he quickly and stealthily ran up the next flight of stairs to the next floor. He went into the storage room right above where Glorfindel was standing outside the door to the healing rooms, locked the door, and without further ado, set about lifting up a floorboard right above Glorfindel's head.
"Hello," he said, when he had done so and laid himself down on his stomach beside the hole, his head over the narrow gap.
The golden haired elf on the floor below started and looked up, his eyes wide. Then his eyes returned to their normal size and the tall cannibal rose and snorted and smiled and whispered, his eyes set unblinkingly on him, his hands lying slack at his sides, "Hello Lindir."
Lindir beamed back. He was used to Glorfindel's stares. "I have a question for you," he said. "Will you answer it?"
"Will you come down?"
Lindir giggled. "Nay, because then you will stuff and eat me."
"What gave you that idea?"
"You stuffed Melpomaen. He is my cousin."
"Did you see me stuff Melpomaen?" Glorfindel blinked slowly.
Lindir did not care to let Glorfindel lead him on a silly meandering conversation so he changed the subject and said, "Why do you like elf meat?"
"Why do you like toffees?"
"You know I like toffees?"
"You know I like elf meat?"
"Why do you like to eat elflings? Why not eat an adult elf?"
"Why do you like to eat lamb over mutton?"
"It is softer and sweeter?"
Glorfindel made an amused noise in his throat and took a step closer so that he was now standing almost directly beneath Lindir and gazing straight up at him. Lindir did not so much as blink. He knew he was too high up for Glorfindel to touch him without a chair on which to stand. "There, you have answered your own question."
"How do you choose your next meal? Do you choose the elf by his or her size in addition to their age?"
"Sometimes."
"By what else do you choose them?"
"I also choose them by how much anyone else will miss them."
Lindir nodded. "That makes good sense. So what is the best way to cook an elf? Do you fry him? Do you boil him? Do you bake him? Do you mince him? Do you put him in a pie? Do you roast him?"
"I change the cooking method depending on my mood and the type of meat. I like to fry the liver, certainly. With onions and garlic. Can you cook? If not, I will be happy to teach you."
Lindir just grinned and moved onto his next question. "You stuffed my cousin. Were you going to roast him?"
Glorfindel just smiled. "Why are you asking these questions, Lindir?"
"Were you going to roast Melpomaen and then eat him?"
"Are you alone up there?"
"I am not alone."
"You are lying to me, Lindir." In spite of the chastisement, Glorfindel's smiling expression did not change.
"I am not lying."
"You should not lie to me, Lindir."
"I am not lying."
"Do you know what happens to liars, Lindir?"
Lindir ignored him. "When you met me the other week, were you going to stuff and eat me? Or were you going to stuff and display me with the other creatures in your front room?"
Glorfindel just stared intently at him for a long time, an odd smile playing around his lips. Lindir gazed back, keeping his own expression carefully schooled in amicability, in echo of his uncle's own false expressions. His smile, however, faded abruptly when Glorfindel suddenly and silently moved swiftly out of sight towards the stairwell.
Lindir jumped back and turned around to look at the door to check that it was indeed locked. It was, so he looked at the window. That was also locked. Good. He breathed a little sigh of relief, then stiffened when he heard a little clicking noise in the lock below the door. His blood ran cold.
Glorfindel was picking the lock.
Eyes wide, he ran to the window and fumbled with the locks on the shutters. No good; they were old and rusted. He looked wildly about the room and the piles of dusty items about him. Then, when he heard the lock begin to turn in the door, without thinking, he ran to the most likely looking instruments to help him. As the door opened, he seized them, threaded the gleaming orc arrows to the bowstring, and turned around to send the three arrows flying true and hard and straight into Glorfindel's breast. THWACK!
The tall heavy elf fell with a loud thud to the floor. Lindir stared at his fallen body and shut eyes for a few moments, blinking a little in surprise. Then, after a few moments, when Glorfindel did not move, he smiled and gave a little giggle. He had done it! He had won!
He hummed to himself and rose to go over to shut and relock the door. Then, on hearing a gurgle behind him and the sliding of limbs on the floor, he whirled around to observe Glorfindel struggling to get up. Blood was dribbling from the wheezing elf's mouth. Lindir shivered at the cold, maddened expression in the elf's eyes and looked wildly around once more. His eyes fell then on a heavy, adult-sized flute in the corner. He ran over to it, seized it, then ran back to Glorfindel, lifted the instrument high over his head, and brought it down with all his might across Glorfindel's face. CRACK! Then he lifted the flute once more and brought it back down. CRACK! Then again! CRACK! Then again! CRUNCH!
CRACK! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRACK! CRUNCH! CRACK! CRUNCH!
Glorfindel collapsed back to the floorboards and once again, stopped moving, but Lindir did not cease hitting him. He hit him until Glorfindel's nose was flattened right into his skull. He hit him until the elf's eyes had split. He hit him until there were no lips, no nose, no eyes, no forehead and Glorfindel the taxidermist's head was staved in so far that Lindir could see his brain and his remaining back teeth and through the gap in the floorboards, he could see blood dripping down onto the floor below. Then, at last, he stopped, breathing hard, his shoulders shaking, his chest heaving, his eyes wide, splatters of wet warm blood covering him from head to foot. Then, finally, he dropped the flute and straightened and out stretched his arms towards the ceiling and did a little stretch.
On relaxing, he left the room, careful to close the door tightly behind him, and went down to the healing rooms to collect some towels. It was an easy task as Elrond and Erestor were still ignoring him. With the towels, he mopped up the blood on the floor outside the healing rooms. Then he went back upstairs to set them down on the big puddle of blood that was pooling around Glorfindel's head. He jumped on them a bit to make them hurry up at the task of soaking up the blood. After a while, he went back down to the healing rooms to get a few more towels, a saw, a big needle, a roll of thick thread, and a pair of scissors. On his way out this time, he also took the two-level wooden trolley on which Elrond had been dumping all of the foodstuffs with which Melpomaen had been stuffed. He wheeled the lot out of the healing rooms, up the ramp beside the stairs, and into the storage room. Then he shut the door behind him and set to work.
First he chopped off Glorfindel's head. It was very ugly to look at now and Lindir did not fancy eating it any more. So he sawed at the neck and then, when his arm grew tired and some of the bone at the back seemed reluctant to split, he seized the head by the ears and tried to pull it off. That did not work, so he tried wrenching it from side to side. That still did not work so he settled for turning the head round and round and round in his hands until at last the bit of bone split and the head popped off. Lindir rolled it into a corner of the room where it bounced before coming to a halt beside a box of crockery. Then Lindir set about tugging off Glorfindel's clothes. Then, on not finding the task of turning Glorfindel over and poking around in his naughty hole with the tips of his scissors particularly appealing, decided to just snip open his skin from the base of his penis right up to his neck and peel it back. Once that was done, he set about removing all of the elf's entrails and placing all the nicer looking ones on a clean towel to one side. The ones he thought ugly, he tossed in the direction of the severed head.
On ripping out the intestine, he wrinkled his nose.
It smelt like a fart now. He tossed aside the intestine and the rectum and then reached in and snipped a big bit out all around the elf's rear end. He did not want any of the elf's icky stuff in his meal. That was unhealthy! He tossed these parts aside to join the other unwanted entrails and the head. Then he picked up one of the cleaner towels and set about patting dry the insides of the elf. He resumed humming as he did so.
Suddenly, he heard a shout from downstairs; from directly beneath the removed floorboard. "Lindir, are you up there?" It was Erestor's voice.
He froze. "Aye," he called back.
"Why is this floorboard missing?"
Lindir looked at the gap in the floorboards. Then he looked back at the body that he was just about ready to stuff. Then he looked back at the gap and slowly rose. "Aye. I will put it back." He crawled over to the gap and set about putting the floorboard back in place.
"You should not play around with the house, Lindir," Erestor lectured from beneath him. "What is that liquid splattered on your face?"
Lindir hurriedly stoppered up the hole so that Erestor could not see him any longer and he could not see Erestor. "It is nothing. I went outside and got a little mud on me," he called back.
"I see. Well go and have a bath and then come back. I want you to help me dress Melpomaen for his burial tomorrow.
"Aye." Lindir cursed Melpomaen, then turned and trotted over to the trolley. He wheeled it over to Glorfindel's gaping abdomen, knelt down beside them both, and began to fill the emptied space with the vegetables. When he had done so, he sewed up all the cuts in the skin with his needle and thread. Then he slowly heaved Glorfindel's carcass onto the lower level of the trolley, plopped the towel with the entrails on the upper level, opened the door, and without any further ado, wheeled the stuffed elf slowly out onto the landing.
He paused to close and lock the door of the storage room behind him (he would clean up in there later), then slowly pushed the laden trolley down the corridor to Glorfindel's rooms, which were just around the corner. No one met him and this did not surprise him; Glorfindel had eaten most of the people on this floor.
He pushed the trolley into Glorfindel's rooms and through the front showroom of stuffed creatures on display: past Nimrodel, past Maglor, past Gil-galad, past someone that looked somewhat like Elrond, past a big white horse with ruby eyes, and into Glorfindel's vast kitchen.
It was blazing hot in the kitchen; the large open oven that took up one wall was already lit. Lindir grinned at the tall flames and wheeled the trolley up to the edge. There he stopped and carefully removed the towel of entrails. He placed these on a nearby table. Then he went over to search the cupboards for a time before returning to the trolley with a jar of salt, a bottle of dried tomatoes, a pepper grinder, some vinegar, and a big pat of butter. He sat down beside Glorfindel's body and proceeded to rub all of the ingredients deep into Glorfindel's skin.
Then, when he was done, he rose and with a great grunt, shoved the trolley into the fire.
He enjoyed the scent and sound of sizzling meat for a time before turning and going over to the sink to wash his face and arms and take off his outer robe. Then he wiped his shoes clean of blood and, after checking his appearance in a nearby mirror, went back downstairs to help Erestor dress Melpomaen in Melpomaen's best clothes.
A few hours later it was noon and the lunch bells were ringing through the house. They had almost finished dressing Melpomaen now; Erestor was just straightening Melpomaen's collar, so Lindir rose. "May I be excused for lunch?" he asked.
Erestor looked at him. Then he frowned and said. "What were you doing in the storage room above the healing rooms?"
"I was playing with the flute there," Lindir replied. "So may I go to lunch?"
"You should be careful when you go on that floor of the house," Erestor said then. "Glorfindel lives on that floor."
"I know."
"Have you seen the trolley, by the way?" Erestor asked then. "We looked around for it not long ago, but could not find it."
Lindir shook his head. "Nay."
Erestor looked at him closely. Then he nodded and smiled and said. "Well, go to lunch, darling. I am afraid I will not be joining you today. I have no appetite after this incident."
Lindir looked at Melpomaen's corpse in its lacy gown for a few moments without saying anything. Then he nodded and turned and ran out of the healing rooms and back to Glorfindel's rooms. He went inside, shut and locked the door, then went to the kitchen. He put a tablecloth on the little dining table there and set a place for one with a big plate, a table knife and fork, a big drinking cup, a jug of water, a napkin, and a little vase of flowers that he had taken from Glorfindel's showroom. Then he went over to the fire, which had died for the most part, put on Glorfindel's big oven gloves and oven boots, and went into the coals to grab the sizzling body oozing with juices by the legs. He dragged it out onto the stone floor beside the fire. Then he grabbed a big fork and knife and poked and prodded at the cooked flesh to check that it was cooked all the way through and that the juices were running clear. Then he cut a big chunk from the flank, carried it over to the table, and set it down on his plate. Taste test time!
On sitting down, he inhaled deeply and sighed and grinned and giggled to himself. He pulled off the gloves, took up his table knife and fork, cut himself a little slice, and forked said slice into his mouth. He chewed and chewed and then smiled broadly. The meat was moist indeed. The meat was tender indeed; it was melting in his mouth. And the meat tasted delectable. He swallowed and smacked his lips slowly and loudly, still smiling broadly.
Elf meat was most definitely the best meat that he had ever tasted in his life.
As he stuffed his next forkful into his little mouth, he turned his head and looked at the rest of Glorfindel's cooked body. Suddenly the body looked rather shrivelled and small and Lindir found his thoughts shifting irresistibly to the elfling corpse lying in the healing rooms downstairs. He tilted his head thoughtfully as he shovelled his next forkful into his mouth.
Glorfindel had said that the meat of elflings was tenderer and sweeter... and it was not as if anyone cared much about Melpomaen now. Not now he was already dead. Not after his burial, certainly.