Sporked by Jason Pearce

Prompt: that is not what they meant 

​There wasn’t much to go on. One dead Terran, male, of the Caucasoid persuasion. No external trauma markers. All signs pointed to natural causes. Thomas wanted to leave it at that, but there was still the pesky matter of the weapon.

​He scanned the artifact against the Terran Archives. The results were disappointing. The database matched his scan with something called a “spork” but gave no indication of its primary function. It looked sharp enough to inflict damage if directed at soft tissue with the right 

amount of force. No visible sign it had been used, but the lab would confirm that. Then there was the yellow rectangle.

A second scan identified the yellow rectangle as a “Postie Note.” The Postie Note was smeared in that garbled Terran form known as cursive. Thomas always got these cases due to his talent in deciphering Terran writing. He was able to read just enough to match it with the Terran slang bank. For all his confidence in his decoding, it was far from helpful.

“Forking before spooning,” the Postie Note said.

Clearly a sexual and/or romantic reference. Thomas liked to consider himself more the cuddly type, so he didn’t agree with the note. He was more a spoon first, fork later, then spoon some more kind of guy. But evidence was evidence, and his personal lovemaking habits had no bearing in this case. He turned to Lewis and cleared his throat.

“We’ll need to get this over to the sex crimes unit,” he said, slipping his pincer into his jacket pocket and pulling out two evidence bags.

Lewis shuddered. “It’s worse than you think. We’re dealing with a real sicko here.”

Lewis extended his top dorsal appendage out in front of him. A third artifact dangled from the tips of his pincer. Paper like the Postie Note, but white and much thinner. Wispy, catching a breeze too subtle for Thomas to feel. It looked soft in that way only things on Earth could. Thomas wanted to reach out and touch it but knew better than to contaminate an exhibit. Clearly, this was the killer’s calling card.
If the caricature on the white paper slip was even remotely true to life, they were looking for an elderly humanoid with vision correction wear and silver facial hair sprouting from the end of their chin. The brief manifesto inscribed under the caricature made all three of Thomas’ blood streams run cold.

Finger Lickin Good.

“A cannibal who favours appendages?” Lewis asked.

“I’d like to think that’s not what they meant, but my senses tell me otherwise.”

Thomas followed his partner’s gaze to the flies buzzing over the littered table. Bones the size of Terran fingers, decayed flesh clinging to what looked like ball and socket joints.  Thomas swore under his breath.

​“For the love of Sha Rem Drahk! Just two orbits before my vacation, and now I have to deal with this.”

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Jason Pearce is a Toronto-based fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Grain, Knucklehead Noir, Solstice in Purgatory and Wondershift: Stories of Transformation and Change. In addition to AWCS, he is active in the Audible Indigenous Writer’s Circle and Toronto Writers Centre.