Tiny Bites

By Tucker Cummings

Tiny Bites is a collection of six very short stories, all linked thematically by food.

In "What You Eat," a man struggles with his compulsion to consume office supplies. In "Practical Tips for Hosting a Thanksgiving Feast," readers experience an alternate history where Thanksgiving has sinister origins. In "The Bombshell," a child's game inspires a tragic act of sacrifice. In "A Turn of the Stomach," an unnamed narrator comes to terms with a murder in an idyllic seaside community. In "The Ghost Who Holds Dinner Parties," a socialite's soiree ends with a bang. In "Consumption," an adventurous eater gets his comeuppance.

Running the gamut from magical realism to alternate history, each tale is stranger than the last. Not for the faint of heart, these unsettling tales will remain with you long after you've turned out the lights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tucker Cummings
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301126033

Tucker Cummings

Tucker Cummings has been writing strange stories since she developed sufficient hand-eye coordination to operate a crayon. Sadly, her handwriting hasn't improved much since then.Her work has won prizes in fiction contests sponsored by HiLoBrow.com, The Binnacle, and MassTwitFic, and she is one of the contributors to "The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities" (HarperCollins, 2011). Her publication credits include the anthologies "Grim Fairy Tales" (Static Movement, 2011), "Future Lovecraft" (Innsmouth Free Press, 2011) and "Stories from the Ether" (Nevermet Press, 2011.)

Book preview

Tiny Bites

Very Short Stories About Food, Fear, and Freaks

By Tucker Cummings

Copyright 2013 Tucker Cummings

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

What You Eat

Practical Tips for Hosting a Thanksgiving Feast

The Bombshell

A Turn of the Stomach

The Ghost Who Holds Dinner Parties

Consumption

About the Author

What You Eat

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.

- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Martin eats pencil shavings. He loves the slick, black taste of the graphite as it slides over his tongue in paper-thin slices. He loves the crisp crunch that the wood shavings make between his teeth. Most of all, he loves the way the shavings perfume his skin from within.

At work, when he thinks no one is looking, he leans his head to one side and stretches his arms over his head. He sniffs deeply from his un-deodorized underarm and relishes the faint odor of sawdust that rises from his damp flesh.

He never chews a pencil whole, or bites on the end while lost in pensive thought. They must always be shaved down into manageable bites, with one of the tiny pencil sharpeners he keeps tucked in his jacket pocket. He would never use a pencil sharpener mounted on someone's desk. Who knows where other people's pencils might have been? Nor would he ever use an electric sharpener: that would be like cooking a filet mignon with a can of Sterno.

Martin cannot remember a time in his life when he didn't crave pencil shavings, though his tastes have evolved over the years. In kindergarten, he preferred colored pencils, particularly the Crayola colors Pine Green and Cool Gray. In high school, he only dined on the shavings from Dixon-Ticonderoga's #2 pencils, believing they would have some shamanistic effect on his standardized test scores. These days, he orders Staedtler pencils by the gross from overseas. His model of choice is their Noris Club Jumbo: slightly triangular, with oversized graphite, bi-colored like a bumblebee.

Occasionally, as a treat, he'll allow himself to troll online auction sites, sometimes purchasing the odd vintage pencil set from the 1950s. He is always amazed at the variety of old pencils he sees for sale. But he is puzzled. He knows he must be the only person buying them for their taste. So why are so many other people buying these old bits of wood and lead?

He likes to entertain the thought, even if just