Summary: A letter is handed over to the New Hanglia police. The dark hidden history behind the Nourishment company, told by a former female employee who is either dead or on the run.
[Letter handed over to the New Hanglia police after being found in a post office box by a grandmother who ended up in the hospital. Reading this letter gave her a heart attack. Fortunately, she pulled through.]
To whom it may concern,
If you are reading this, I am either dead or on the run, but the world needs to know. It needs to know what is going on at Nourishment.
Nourishment, for the public at large, is a private company that feeds animals in people's homes. You might imagine that the employees feed the cats and dogs of rich people while making a lot of cash. Far from it.
In truth, this company, run by a man named Mark, feeds unusual animals with very peculiar food. Such as human corpses for a huge anglerfish hidden in an abandoned swimming pool. I'm not joking. I used to work there. I know what I'm talking about.
My name is Elizabeth but the various partners I had at the job called me Liz. I'm mute and I have a criminal record which helped me get hired. Of course Nourishment only hires criminals. That way, if an “accident” happens, no one will come looking for us if we disappear.
My last partner was called Chloe. No last names at Nourishment. Only our first names to identify ourselves. Chloe and I had to feed Teethy, the anglerfish that has grown so large we wonder how it still has room to swim in the abandoned pool where it lives. I can't tell you the exact location of the pool but I'll give you a clue. Region 32, latitude 43, longitude 20. *
* I don't know anything about maritime coordinates so the result may not make any sense. At the same time, this story takes place in a fictional city in the USA.
While I cleaned up and threw away all traces of our presence in the entrance hall and surrounding rooms — a company rule for every employee who retires and those who make the mistake of leaving traces are never seen alive again — Chloe went to fetch Teethy’s “meal,” the fresh corpse of a man. He was almost naked except for his boxer shorts.
Neither of us knew where the bodies came from and it was better that way. Most of the bodies we receive are men. Sometimes we get dead women but the time Chloe came out of the company delivery truck with children's bodies, I wanted to scream and my mind was made up that night. I had to bring Nourishment to justice, hence the purpose of this letter.
Chloe and I went inside the pool. Since it's impossible to cross to the other side normally, we have to use a large sofa as a makeshift raft. Before crossing, I should look for the chemical mixture to season the corpse when we get to the other side. It's in a small room.
Chloe had told me it was yellow. The problem was that among the colored bottles of chemical mixtures, there were three yellow ones. Taking the darker yellow bottle, because that was usually the right one, I knocked over a red one and its contents splashed all over me. If I had a voice, I would have shouted a swear word. Before leaving the room, I find a gun and take it with me.
I return to Chloe and we cross the pool. After turning off the building's electricity — Chloe has made herself a pole lamp on the sofa so we can see where we're going — she asks me to season the corpse. I emptied the dark yellow bottle and the man's corpse burns, his skin turning black. “Fuck, Liz, what have you done?” Chloe had shouted. “You took the wrong chemical mixture!” However the last time I used this bottle, everything was fine. The corpse had become appetizing to Teethy.
Chloe spent the next few minutes whining about me, citing my disability as a weakness; then she apologized. “I'm sorry, Liz. Well, there's nothing more we can do. Let's go back to the company and explain everything to Mark. He'll understand, right? It was an accident.”
We throw the charred corpse into the pool and cross back over but halfway through Chloe speaks to me. “No, it's not going to work. Remember when Mark told us about another team that had to be ‘erased’ because they left a stupid pair of shoes behind on the job? Damn it, Liz! We don't even know where all these bodies are coming from.” Without warning, she points a gun at me. “The customer is always right, no matter what!” I took out my gun in turn. I point it at my partner. “The corpse you screwed up, Liz, needs to be replaced. I REFUSE to die because of you!” Before I can shoot, a bullet lodges in my shoulder. I fall into the water and into the pool.
Normally, I should have died, eaten by Teethy, but the chemicals I splashed myself with saved me. It was a mating chemical. Teethy then see me not as prey but as a mate. A female fish. Enraged at the idea that someone had hurt his future mate, Teethy rose to the surface, banging on the couch. Chloe fell into the water. While the huge anglerfish devoured her, I managed to get back to the surface. I climbed out of the pool. Holding my bleeding shoulder, I returned to the delivery truck.
I don't know how I managed with only one hand and my shoulder bleeding but I was able to return to the company. Mark asked me for a report. I told him there had been an accident and that Chloe had died. He didn't ask me for more information. I was free to leave for my “well-deserved” retirement after seeing the company doctor. Yes, Nourishment has its own medical team.
After they treated me — they removed the bullet that had lodged in my flesh — I took a taxi home. That was the end of my job at Nourishment. I wrote this letter immediately and will leave it somewhere to make sure it is found.
May justice be served, may Nourishment fall,
Elizabeth