My Cannibal Lover

By Robert Jeschonek

Lupe and the mercenary crew of the spaceship Puerco track a shapeshifting killing machine on a planet of pure Hell. Their only food in the barren frontier wasteland:  Manny the Ration, a walking human foodstuff who makes Lupe sick to the stomach. As Lupe and her men close in on their target, the fugitive killer strikes back brutally, devouring her crew one by one. With no one else to turn to, Lupe must team with Manny the Ration for a death-defying chase through an ever-changing wilderness. In the heat of a race for their lives, Lupe finds herself doing the unthinkable: falling in love with Manny. But what will she do when her only chance for survival lies in eating the edible man she loves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Jeschonek
• Release date: Nov 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781452311265

Robert Jeschonek

Robert Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, essays, articles, comic books, and podcasts have been published around the world. According to fantasy and science fiction luminary Mike Resnick, Robert "sees the world like no one else sees it, and makes incredibly witty, incisive stories out of that skewed worldview."Robert's young adult urban fantasy novel, MY FAVORITE BAND DOES NOT EXIST, is due in 2011 from Clarion Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A collection of his fantasy and science fiction stories, MAD SCIENTIST MEETS CANNIBAL, is available from PS Publishing in England. Robert has written for POSTSCRIPTS, ESCAPE POD, DRABBLECAST, SPACE AND TIME, PODCASTLE, DAW Books anthologies, and many other publications.His credits include STAR TREK fiction published by Pocket Books. His work appeared in three volumes of STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS, winning the grand prize in Volume VI. He was also nominated for the British Fantasy Award for his story, "Fear of Rain." His story "One Awake In All the World" was called out in a Publishers Weekly starred review of the anthology DESTINATION FUTURE in 2010.His comic book work has appeared in JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 80-PAGE GIANT 2010 #1 from DC Comics. He has also scripted stories for various indie comics, including WAR from Saddle Tramp Press and DEAD BY DAWN QUARTERLY and COMMERCIAL SUICIDE in the UK.Jeschonek is based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. His website, www.robertjeschonek.com, features fresh daily updates on the world of writing and other alternate realities.

Book preview

My Cannibal Lover

My Cannibal Lover

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Pie Press

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

My Cannibal Lover

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

MY CANNIBAL LOVER

Copyright © September 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.bobscribe.com

Cover Art Copyright © September 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

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Also by Robert Jeschonek

100th Power Book 1

100th Power Book 2

100th Power Book 3

Blastoff!

Cosmic Conflicts

Gray Lady Rising (with Annie Reed)

In a Green Dress, Surrounded by Exploding Clowns and Other Stories

In the Empire of Underpants and Other Stories

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

My Cannibal Lover

Only as I devour the flesh of Manny’s finger for what must be the hundredth--and final--time do I finally realize that I love him back.

It truly blows my mind.  It’s one thing for Rations to fall in love with those who feed on them--it’s not uncommon at all--but who ever heard of a woman falling for her food?

This just might be a first.

Too bad no one will likely ever know.  Too bad both of us will die before long.

Manny will die from being eaten alive, and I will die of starvation when there’s no more Manny left to eat.

Have some more, Lupe.  He has one finger left, a right thumb, and he presses it toward me.  He has a smile on his sugar-white face with its tutti-frutti swirls like he’s a child offering me candy.

I shake my head.  I’ll be okay. My voice is hoarse.  Save it for later.

Manny frowns and opens his mouth like he’s going to argue.  Then, he smiles sadly and pulls back the thumb. Maybe you’re right.

Double damn skippy I’m right.  I force on a smirk of my own for his benefit.  The truth is, my stomach’s still rumbling something fierce, but my Ration’s got to stretch.

There’s always been plenty of Manny to go around, but not anymore.  These days, he can’t replace what I eat.

This time, when he’s gone, he’s gone for good.

Two months ago, when I first met Manny, I couldn’t have imagined feeling sorry about running out of him.  He was nothing but food to me then...food I wouldn’t eat, at that.

It wasn’t the taste of him that I hated, since I hadn’t actually tasted him back then.  It was just that I hated all his kind.

In fact, I just about shot him