The Chosen Lamb

A tale of desire, exclusion, and the strange hunger beneath perfect lives.

The Damsel

She spoke about the Tofurkey as if it were a sacred object.

“Are you coming? We’re serving Tofurkey. One bite will make you a true believer. Please tell me you’re coming.” Paige applied the gentle pressure of a friend.

The vegan Thanksgiving sounded less like a meal than an initiation rite.

Kym held the Aldo flats to the mirror, then the Weitzman heels, both pressed against Zara’s black scoop-neck dress as if consulting an oracle.

Would the tofu have an opinion? Would it care?

The dress was too short and too long, depending on the angle. She added black stockings to nullify the issue.

She added the brightest red lipstick she owned, a single flash against all that black.

She agreed to go only because Sam would be there. Newly single.

Life had rescued him from the girl she had never liked.

No one liked her, except Sam.

He was the object of too much adoration.

The lipstick was for him.

It had never come up. If he was vegan, he didn’t evangelize.

They always had colds, though. At the restaurant, the vegans were the canaries in the virus coal mine, first to get sick, first to get it the worst.

A witty observation, though the collapsing schedule made it less funny.

In her mind, she pictured a sickly, phlegmy lot gathered around the Tofurkey.

She pushed the thought away and stepped into the heels.

---

Paige owned a junior brownstone in Park Slope with her husband, Gabe.

Kym had met her five years earlier, when they worked together at a fancy French restaurant.

Since then, Paige’s life had taken off like a rocket, while Kym’s had stayed stubbornly the same.

The house was their child. They spoiled it with gifts.

Every object came with a story.

The Lindsey Adelman chandelier. The Studio Job furniture.

Nothing had arrived from Crate & Barrel.

Everything had been hunted down, the press-tin toys, the coffee table that had once been the hood of a Mustang.

Trips to the Hudson Valley, each one ending with a new prize and a new backstory.

Gabe joked the house was a fussy eater.

Each offering fed it a little more, pushing Paige and Gabe farther out of reach.

If the house had spoken, it would have had a slow, deliberate voice, the voice of something curating its keepers as carefully as its objects.

It was a whole universe compared to the tiny one-bedroom Kym had kept in Prospect Heights for ten years.

The sun had gone down when she arrived at the stoop. Dinner was served at five. The sun refused to accommodate them.

She could see Paige in the front window.

She was dressed in the white Alexander McQueen dress she told Kym she had just purchased.

“Another piece of McQueen,” she had put it to her, like it was a cup of coffee.

One of her hands gestured at the wall, a champagne flute in the other.

Kym put one foot on the step, knowing this was one less holiday obligation she had to endure.

Another Thanksgiving enjoying the warmth of strangers living lives she could not attain.

She only needed to endure an hour and check Thanksgiving off the list.

---

The front room was toasty warm, the chandelier casting a soft gold that livened everyone’s faces.

“Hiiiiii…” Paige gasped, surprised, despite having confirmed three times that Kym would come.

“Everyone, this is Kym.”

She announced her to a Sam-less room.

Every fashion choice Kym had made, the low scoop neck, the heels, the loud lipstick, felt irrevocably wrong.

Paige took her arm, gliding her through introductions to people she only knew by reputation and dietary restriction

“This is Darryl and Laurel. They have a farm in North Adams. They make the most incredible gluten-free bread.” Paige rolled her eyes in delight at the thought of the milled nuts.

“Kym’s not a vegan,” Paige said to the couple matter-of-factly.

Darryl chuckled. “No one’s perfect.”

He wore the shirt of a farmer but had the hands of an accountant.

A flute of organic biodynamic prosecco was pressed into her hand.

There was no dampening Paige’s excitement with each introduction, each name spoken like another heirloom for the house.

Each introduction made Kym more of a bauble than a person.

She pulled at the neckline of her scoop-neck dress, fighting a losing battle with her cleavage, wanting the fabric to retreat, the neckline determined to advance.

She finished her rounds and found herself orphaned at an unremarkable hors d’oeuvres table, the most normal-looking thing in the house.

Nothing on it insisted it was meatless or invited a lecture.

She picked up a napkin and a corner of peach galette with fig jam.

She turned back to the room and locked eyes with Sam.

“Well, look at you. Just when I thought I was going to drown in a sea of foreign faces and small talk. Kym to the rescue.”

“Look at you, Clark Kent.” She slid her hand along his arm and felt cashmere. “What makes you think we aren’t going to make small talk? Also, it is your job to rescue me. I am the damsel here.”

She did what she could with the line, clasping her hands behind her back, letting the cleavage find its target, flashing her brightest smile. Letting the ruby lips do their job.

The new glasses gave shape to his face, though the farm-boy rectangle was still there.

He’d come from somewhere in the Midwest, a town whose name suggested too much open space, before landing in the city for a tech job.

He’d worked with Paige and Kym for two months before finding the job he wanted. They’d had a sweet flirtation.

He was a few years younger, but chemistry let her ignore the math.

She’d been dating the sous chef. One morning the sweaty tattooed arm draped over her was enough.

Sam was already gone.

The restaurant group stayed in touch, Sam kept moving.

Other women, a small condo and eventually the beautiful, yet unlikeable girl from Spain.

News of their breakup arrived first-hand in her feed. A spark of hope in the gulf between November and New Year.

He showed up tonight dressed like an adult, none of the performative non-conformity her exes favored. A white collared shirt, v-neck sweater, slacks. Sam smiled with one corner of his mouth.

“Where did you go, by the way? You ghosted all of us.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

His wrist was chained to an expensive watch.

“Well, I think you probably heard by now. The old group talks. I heard about you too.”

There was a pit in her stomach.

“You guys never liked her, did you?” He gave her a knowing smile.

“Well, I only met her twice, but—”

“It is okay. You are preaching to the converted.”

“What happened?”

“She cheated.” He gave a shrug of finality. A wince flashed across his face before he killed it.

“I’m back on the apps. It’s… not optimal. Any pro tips?”

“Uh, well. All my girlfriends are what we call locavores now.”

“What does that mean?”

“We tighten the radius to two miles on the apps and never swipe right on Queens.”

“That works?”

“I’ll never tell.” She shrugged and pursed her lips.

Even as she delivered the quip, a flutter of nerves slipped beneath her confident interior.

“Okay, that’s enough about my catastrophe.” Sam leaned against the wall, folding his arms.

“I heard you quit acting. Is that true?”

The pit in her stomach returned.

“I thought this was about small talk and rescuing a damsel.”

“Aw, come on. I haven’t seen you in two years. Let’s get to the good stuff. I showed you mine, show me yours.”

“Well, you know. Not exactly. I haven’t been auditioning. It was easier when we met. Now?”

She shrugged.

“More competition, fewer roles. Half the room has plastic surgery.”

Her arms found their way around her ribs. “I am not sure my commitment to my craft runs that deep.”

“I never thought of you as one of those skin-deep actresses, Kym.” His face held a trace of a smirk.

“It’s easy to stand on principle if you don’t have the money, Sam.” Her eyes rolled into pointed barbs.

“Ouch, my feelings. I am still part of the lumpen proletariat. Everyone seems to think tech is a cakewalk.”

“Really. Is that where little Ms. Spain took a siesta?”

“Oh God, no. She, uh, got an upgraded model.”

“Ah, Sam. I missed you. I am sorry you are going through this, but it’s good to have you back. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.”

“Here is to liberation,” he said.

Their glasses clinked.

Gabe joined the conversation without warning. “Hiya, you two. I just got back from walking the dog. She ate a plate of deviled eggs. I will spare you the details. Have you tried the lentil walnut stuffed mini peppers? They are so good.” He raised his fists in the air as an exclamation of their goodness.

None of the questions required an answer.

“Sam, where have you been hiding?” Gabe had given Kym only the barest glance. Sam was the object of interest, as he inevitably was.

“You are at Google? Good for you. Senior programmer? That’s amazing.” Gabe put his hands on his hips and stood on his haunches, beaming a smile too similar to Kym’s.

“Well, I am a programmer. Don’t read too much into titles. I manage a small team. We do good work.

Also, it is a short walk to work.” Sam’s smile was more polite than Gabe’s.

“Oh, I heard about that. Congratulations on the condo.…”

Kym let her eyes trail off into the room full of strangers she had met and forgotten. Every one of them was engaged in communication that looked effortless. There were no lonely faces, and none of the eyes in those faces made any effort to catch her gaze.

From the hors d’oeuvres table, the bright living room framed itself against the dark shape of the parlor windows.

Beyond them, the night looked like a black hole, so complete was the small galaxy of contented faces feeding on each other’s warmth.

At gatherings like this, she felt like an alien. The sense of being watched made her feel cold as well.

Only here, she was the one who ate meat in a room full of native herbivores.

Sam’s voice pulled her back.

“Thanks for having me.

I brought a couple of nice bottles from the North Fork,” he said. “And a vegan maple walnut pecan pie.” The words jumbled out of his mouth.

“Though it looks like you already have a few.”

“Oh, no worries,” Gabe said, touching both their arms, they were in this together.

“Every year, the pie-to-person ratio ends up one to one.”

Pleased with himself, he smiled and drifted off into the crowd.

“You ghosted me, by the way. I texted you a few times.
Prior to the Spaniard, I might add.”

“Well, I tend not to respond to texts sent at one in the morning with the words you up?
It is part of locavore policy. First page of the handbook.”

His face dropped. “You know, I don’t remember it that way.”

“I am not surprised.” She parried and turned to face the room, having won a small battle.

“I seem to remember sending a few texts before ten p.m.”

“Well, if you did, I never got them.”

He threw up his hand in mock surrender.

“Do you know anyone here?” She saw him looking hard for a spot of familiarity.

They were both surveying the room. It had taken on a beautiful holiday murmur, one they stood perfectly on the periphery of.

“Did you go vegan too?” he asked. “I feel like if you had, Paige probably would have announced it to me.”

“Oh God, no. Carnivore through and through.
I have Slim Jims in my purse in case I have a meat emergency.”

She blushed and he laughed.

The Lamb

The clink of glasses came from the other room. The tenor of the ring announced the flutes were crystal.

“Everyone.”

Paige was standing in the center of the room.

On her head was a wreath of sage. The candles that adorned it were candy-apple gray.

Gabe walked slowly around her, lighting the candles with an old-fashioned wick. He was wearing a purple fez with a yellow tassel. An odd detail on anyone but Gabe.

The grin on his face was permanently attached.

Paige raised her glass, every flute in the room rose in unison.

Sam was a little quicker than Kym, arriving only a half beat to her full beat late.

“This is a room for the right people. The people who are family, who make little families and seek refuge from the ones they can no longer be with. Everyone in this room is the chosen family tonight.
You are here because you belong and were brought here.”

There were polite cheers from the crowd, applause meant for Paige as much as for themselves.

This was the right-looking room with the right-looking people.

The space pulled them together. They were on the periphery of the crowd, but now more a part of it.

Sam’s pinky touched hers. Their hands wrapped together.

The interlocked fingers created gravity.

She leaned into his shoulder and caught a whisper of cologne.

The fire from the candles on Paige’s head created long, wispy tongues. Fine tendrils of smoke rose from each flame and pooled slowly at the ceiling.

The smell of sage overpowered Sam’s cologne, pulling her out of him and into the room.

One thread of smoke drifted sideways toward Sam’s shoulder, the one she had not claimed.

The air shifted. The room breathed. The smoke peeled away from him and angled back toward Kym.

It rolled in the air like a lyric and passed beneath her nose.

Paige’s voice boomed. “Fire delivered us the first truth, stolen from Hephaestus, gifted to us by Prometheus.
Its smoke never lies.”

Kym watched the tendril drift away.

The room fell completely silent.

She reflexively reached to pull up the scoop neck, then froze when she saw the roomful of strangers staring at her.

Paige’s finger pointed directly at her.

Sam tightened his grip on her hand.

Gabe lifted his hand and removed his fez.

His head was freshly shaved.

On the clean skin, a purple arrow was painted as thick as her lipstick.

It pulsed, either with its own heartbeat or shared with Gabe’s.

Like everything else in the room, it was trained on Kym.

The smile disappeared from Gabe’s face.

She turned to Sam.

His eyes were locked on the room in front of them. His face was slack.

She tried to pull him in front of her.

He didn’t budge. She retreated behind him.

She wedged herself between Sam and the hors d’oeuvres table.

The shelves above the table had been lined with the hands of dolls.

Each one was severed at the wrist.

Once attached to a tiny arm, now just another piece of the room.

The fingers on one twitched. Then another. Then another.

The shelf trembled with tiny spasms.

One hand toppled off the shelf. Its small fingers caught the threads of the Persian carpet and inched slowly toward her.

“The flame shows us the one among the herd…” Paige’s voice was closer now.

She heard the faint squeak of Gabe’s Vivobarefoot sneakers moving toward her.

“Come out, little lamb.
Little lamb.”

Her hand was still latched to Sam’s wrist.

Gabe’s face appeared around Sam, the one white thing in a sea of curated grays and black.

“There you are, little lamb.”

He was sweating. Purple rivulets ran down his face.

He returned the fez to his head. A tiny slice of dread was tucked back under it.

“No need to be scared, little lamb.”

The people gathered behind him melded into a composite blur of designer brands,
A menagerie of Ulla Johnson dresses, APC Hommes jeans, Paul Smith sweaters, and Todd Snyder button-downs.

They were no longer people.

A single floating mass that breathed together.

Gabe merged into it.

The room shifted and contracted, joining with the people.

Everything was a block now.

Everything except Kym and Sam.

Gabe’s face was the only discernible shape.

His grin returned.

Sam still hadn’t moved.

Kym pulled at Sam.

His arm moved. His body did not.

He was unaffected by everything around him.

“You up?”

The old humiliation landed hard.

Gabe’s lips moved, but it was the voice of many who spoke.

“Kym, you are so lucky. This year’s little lamb
So lucky.”

His face began rising through the block. His eyes stayed fixed on her.

The higher he rose, the lower his eyes traveled.

His face settled into the crease of a Balenciaga sleeve.

“We have so much to be thankful for this year.
We’re thankful for you most of all.
Well, you and Sam.
Cat got his tongue and every other bit of him.
Sam, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Gabe’s head shifted ever so slightly.

The yellow tassel fell across a Canada Goose emblem on the nearest torso.

“Not a word. Only lambs can speak here.
Sam has nothing to say. You will have to do.”

The last line was a chorus. It deafened her.

Her body reacted first.

She crossed her arm over her chest, grabbing blindly for Sam.

“What do you want!”

“I already told you, little lamb.
The house is a picky eater.
Every year it names a lamb.
Nothing fancy with mint jelly.
Mint jelly is loaded with lysozyme, by the way.”

Gabe’s voice led the chorus; behind it she heard wailing, thin and distant.

“Its tastes are simple.
It hungers for someone it can read.
Even someone like you.
In a cheap dress. And cleavage that mistakes attention for taste.”

It was her own private shame, said out loud

She took off a Weitzman heel and threw it at the face.

The mass rippled and slowly absorbed it.

The collective chuckled out of sync.

“A fine offering but not the one the house wants.”

She began to tear at Sam’s arm. Yelling his name.

She only wanted to run.

“SAM! SAM!” She planted her stockinged foot against his leg and pushed, trying to pry herself loose.

Her balance went, her bare foot sliding on the polished floor. She pitched backward, collapsing onto the hors d’oeuvres table.

Cold peach galette, fig jam, and creamy dips smeared across her back.

Beneath the food she felt something else. Something that wasn’t wood. Something not part of the table at all.

She pressed her hand down to brace herself and her fingers sank.

The table wasn’t there anymore.

She was falling inward, down through the slick surface of the hors d’oeuvres, into the mass beneath it.

A soft accountant’s hand closed around her free wrist and tugged her deeper.

She felt herself being absorbed, her edges dissolving, losing a little more of herself with every inch she slipped.

She could see the whole house in its entirety now.

No, that wasn’t right. She could feel the house.

Those feelings produced what she now saw.

It was a living organism Born of a particular appetite.

A warmth spread through her chest.

The terror evaporated.

Replaced by a smell in which everything smelled exquisitely delicious.

Sam’s hand pulling her arm out of its socket, barely registered.

The house elicited her sympathy as she sank, inch by inch, feeling by feeling.

She felt Gabe’s we’re all in this together touch on her arm, as if the house were offering it back to her.

The thought filled her body like syrupy chocolate.

Her entire body felt decadent.

Her periphery was fading, replaced by an emotion.

One that said: You belonged here.

Not to the house, Gabe, Paige or even Sam.

She belonged to everything.

Inside everything, time would save her, preserve her and everyone.

This was her escape velocity, the doorway into the life she had always dreamed of.

The thing she’d been orbiting for years, finally pulling her in.

To be chosen.

To be kept.

This was salvation.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

She was no longer ascending.

She felt architecture reconstituting itself.

Through the sticky wetness of a Fiesta ware plate full of spinach dip, the house pushed her away.

The edges of her body snapped back into place with the voices of every small cruelty she’d endured. Every relationship where her name had never been spoken with affection. Every time she’d been the rebound, never the beginning. Every careless voice that said she looked good “for your age.”

The house held up a mirror: the dress no longer fit the way it once had; she wore makeup not to stand out but to look “naturally” acceptable. The mirror whispered about a new line, an old scar, the blunt reality of the bathroom scale, the effort to maintain what was already falling apart.

It fed her back to herself in reverse

The villi and microvilli of the house’s intestines worked in reverse order.

All the beautiful smells were replaced with bile and bitter acid.

The house had rejected her. It was throwing her up.

She slipped onto the floor.

Her hands slid uselessly through the spinach dip, its slickness giving her nothing to push against.

Yanking Sam’s arm every time she fell down again.

Sam’s wrist twitched and then his hand moved.

The house began to shudder. Then began to shake.

Thirty assimilated bodies rippled like a bowl of viscous fluid and began to fall apart.

Impacts on the floor. A series of wet, heavy impacts.

Gabe’s head slid free from the Balenciaga sleeve and tumbled across the boards.

Unmade body parts followed: a delicate foot lacquered in deep emerald polish, a sculpted bicep etched with Nordic tattoos; each piece slithering past the head, searching for the right designer label that would make it whole again.

Sam’s hand closed around her arm and hauled her upright, turning her toward the wall, shielding her.

She looked up through the warped reflection in his glasses and saw the room reassembling itself, heard the suction, the cracking, the wet pops as joints and limbs sought out their original owners.

Wherever Sam had been, he had missed the scene.

He walked into the horror movie at the end.

His whole body jolted.

“What the fuck is going on?” He pulled her tighter in. She felt the force of the words pass through his chest.

Gabe’s head rejoined its neck. A thick gelatinous snail trail ran diagonally up his vintage Pierre Cardin sweater.

His fez was gone, a face smeared and dripping with purple.

His voice was his own now. Resonated only by his own shock. “We chose wrong.”

The words arrived as if such a thing was never possible.

He said to the room of people whose bodies were slowly receding from every disturbing angle.

Smoothing themselves back into people again.

The eyes which had once been trained on Kym fell to Paige..

“You know it only wants grass-fed meat.” The words tumbled out in normal domestic annoyance

Kym thought of the plate of deviled eggs.

Gabe’s eyes were trained on Paige’s.

Her wide eyes glimmering with guilt, caught between a lie and its consequence

The white McQueen dress covered in smears of viscera.

“Gabe…” It was all she had

“Jesus, how many times have we been through this!”

Every finger in the room pointed at Paige.

The house’s delicate geometry unfolded again.

Its tentacles came close enough and with a sharp jerk pulled herself and Sam to the front door.

No one took notice of them. Every warm body they rubbed up against felt like steel.

They ducked under outstretched arms that would have clotheslined them.

As their hands touched the doorknob the human melange formed again. In the vestibule, pops, the sound of air escaping and suction as the ritual began itself again.

They ran down the stoop. Kym could feel the cold masonry through her stockinged feet.

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the same way she had when she arrived.

They could both feel the house’s disinterest, it was completely separated from them.

The parlor windows were black from the outside. The black holes were inside now.

Like all digestion, what happened behind the windows was invisible to them.

Kym moved from foot to foot. Warming one while the other froze.

Sam pulled out his phone and ordered an Uber.

He pulled her into his arms so she could stand on his shoes, soft Ferragamo Oxfords polished to a quiet shine, until the car arrived.

She could do nothing but put her arms around him and breathe into cashmere. The bile was replaced again by cologne.

The car whisked them home to his condo where they spent the night and the next morning together.

After Black Friday, she never heard from Paige or received a late-night text from Sam again.