Author's Preface
Recipe #7
Dismembering Your First Victim: A Jointing Guide
Difficulty Level: Intermediate (requires steady hands and a strong stomach; the latter develops quickly :)
Prep Time: One hour to sharpen your knives, a lifetime to sharpen your resolve
Cook Time: Two to three hours, depending on your familiarity with anatomy
Serves: Several discreet disposal trips
Pairing Suggestion: Nothing. You won't want to eat. But a whiskey afterward, neat, hands scrubbed raw.
A Note from the Kitchen of Our Authoress
Every home cook eventually confronts the whole chicken. The plastic-wrapped supermarket parts are convenient, but they are also anonymous, expensive, and deprive you of the fundamental knowledge of how a body comes apart. A woman who has never jointed a whole bird is a woman dependent on the butcher.
Your first victim is like your first chicken: awkward, a little terrifying, and ultimately manageable once you locate the joints. Find them. Follow them and do not hack. Hacking is for slasher films and women who don't own the proper tools. You own a Dutch oven and a subscription to a culinary magazine. Act accordingly.
Necessary Equipment
A boning knife, flexible, razor-sharp
Stiff blades catch on bone. Flexibility finds the joint.
A hacksaw, newly purchased, receipt burned
For the places that refuse to yield to finesse. Wrap the handle in a kitchen towel. Grip matters.
Heavy-duty plastic sheeting, laid in triplicate
Drop cloths from the hardware store. Paint section. You're "redecorating the spare room." The spare room is your marriage.
Rubber gloves, elbow-length, surgical grade if possible
A cooler, large, lined with contractor bags
Not the one you take to the beach. But a cooler with a single, grim purpose that lives in the garage beneath the tarp and the unspoken.
Bleach, unscented
Scented bleach is for laundry. Unscented bleach is for forgetting.
A playlist of calming music
You will need it. Classical is traditional, but 90s pop provides a counterpoint rhythm that makes the work feel less real. Whatever steadies your breath.
Method
Step 1: Preparation of the Workspace
Choose your location with the care you once used to choose your wedding venue. Both were commitments that required an exit strategy. The garage is ideal if it has a drain. The basement works if it has a lock. The kitchen is too personal—you eat there, you laugh there, you will not remember jointing in the same room you bake sourdough.
Lay the plastic sheeting in overlapping layers. Tape the edges to the floor with painter's tape, which removes cleanly and leaves no residue. Even now, you are thinking about the security deposit.
Arrange your tools in order of use. Boning knife left. Hacksaw center. Bags right. A well-organized station is a prayer against panic.
Step 2: The First Cut
Breathe. The first cut is the hardest because it is the first admission of what you are doing.
Begin at the shoulder. Slip the knife into the armpit, where the skin is soft and the connective tissue is forgiving. Find the seam between the arm and the torso. It will be a whisper of here, here, here.
The arm detaches more easily than you expected. You will feel a surge of something—relief, horror, power, revulsion—and you will set it aside. You will move to the next shoulder to continue. After the fourth cut, you are no longer a wife. You are a professional.
Step 3: The Major Joints
The human body separates at predictable points. Shoulders, as above. Elbows, a simple hinge; find the hollow and cut through the tendon. Wrists, a slim joint that yields to a firm blade. Hips, more difficult, requiring the hacksaw for the dense bone of the pelvis. Knees, easier than hips. Ankles, like wrists. You learned anatomy in tenth grade biology, dissecting a frog.
Wrap each section in plastic. Then foil. Then plastic again. No leaks or scent.
Step 4: The Central Mass
The torso remains. This is the most difficult part, physically and emotionally. The ribcage is a stubborn cage as it once held his heart, which you once loved, which complicates things. Do not think about the heart. Think about the ribs, which need to be cut into manageable pieces with the hacksaw. The sound is unpleasant, so the playlist earns its place here. Let the bass drop drown out the bone.
When the work is complete, you will be surrounded by packages. The body that once occupied your bed now occupies your cooler. He has never been more portable nor has he ever been more cooperative.
Step 5: Disposal over Days
Never dispose of everything at once. This is an amateur's mistake. One piece per trip. Different locations and dumpsters. The construction site three towns over or the gas station with no cameras or the deep ravine off the highway. Spread him thin. He was never good at commitment anyway :)
Clean the workspace between each trip. Bleach. Air. Bleach again. The garage will smell sterile for weeks. You will tell visitors it's a deep-clean phase and you're taking up minimalism by letting things go.
Serving Suggestion
Serve nothing. This recipe is eaten alone, in silence, in the shower afterward, as you scrub under your fingernails for the seventh time and feel the water heat the skin he will never touch again.
Cook's Notes
Fatigue is your enemy. Work in manageable segments. There is no prize for speed, only for thoroughness.
If nausea overwhelms you, step outside. Breathe air he isn't in. Acknowledge the feeling, then return.
Disposal is covered more thoroughly in Recipe #10: How to Dispose of a Body in a Suburban Garden. For now, the cooler is your friend.