Bad taste in the mouth

"Have you ever seen something as a cop that made you vomit?" Walter, my friend, asked.

"Of course, I have," I replied. "Just thinking about it makes me sick."

A few years ago, my partner Mariano and I were ordered to find a woman for questioning. She lived in a large mansion within a gated community. The owner, a millionaire, had been reported missing. What made it strange was that the report had come from his business partners.

We arrived by car and announced ourselves at the electric gate. The automatic gate slid open in front of us, and we drove a kilometer through the garden to reach the sturdy wooden front door. We were greeted by a maid who guided us through the mansion, through a labyrinth of hallways, to a spacious lounge. The walls were adorned with taxidermied animal heads. The one that caught my attention the most was an antelope with an oversized rack and glassy, dark eyes.

Next to a stone fireplace, warmed by the crackling flames, lay the missing man's wife. She had ash-gray hair crowned with a diamond-studded tiara, reminiscent of medieval royalty. Her perfume brought back memories of my childhood and my mother's garden, the scent of geranium flowers. She was dressed in black, as if she had decided to mourn her husband's death prematurely, without waiting for confirmation from us. A veil covered her face, concealing her features.

At her feet, on a coffee table, there was a bowl of gelatin. Before we could begin the interrogation, she offered, or rather, forced us to accept some of the gelatin.

"Go ahead, agents, I made it with my own hands," she said.

She handed each of us a small plate and a silver spoon worth more than my own house. With a wave of her hand, she urged us to hurry and eat.

As I examined the gelatin up close, a shiver ran down my spine. It was an eerie gray color with strange reddish strands inside. I decided not to take a bite.

Mariano, on the other hand, started devouring it as if he hadn't eaten in days. He must have been really hungry. I asked him when he had last seen her husband and why she hadn't reported his disappearance herself.

"Did you know that you can make gelatin by boiling bones, tendons, and ligaments of animals in water?" she asked, her gaze fixed on the flames.

"What does that have to do with our questions?" my partner added, still with his mouth full of gelatin.

"Nowadays, everything is made by machines, but in my youth, we made it ourselves," she replied, her voice dry.

Her evasiveness led me to believe she was hiding something. Sweat beaded on my forehead, the antelope's eyes seemed to bore into me, and the crackling of the fire didn't help calm my nerves. I repeated the question, but instead of answering, she insisted that I try her gelatin.

"Go ahead, agent, you won't regret it. Besides, it's impolite to refuse," she said.

I didn't want to stay in that room a second longer, so I decided to indulge her. I took a piece, the spoon trembling in my fingers, and managed to get it into my mouth. The gelatin dissolved on my tongue along with my nerves; it had a normal taste, not excellent but not bad either; I swallowed it quickly.

At that moment, Mariano asked her a casual question:

"Does your husband enjoy hunting?"

"Indeed, it was one of his hobbies. But what drove my husband wild the most were women..."

She removed her veil, and the walls of my stomach collapsed; her eyes were like those of the antelope; they were empty. She contemplated it for a second and then gave us a porcelain smile:

"My husband never left. He's in this very room."

"What are you saying?" The question slipped from my lips, incredulous.

She stared at me, and my blood ran cold: "He's with us, and now he's inside your stomachs..."

Mariano and I locked eyes. I must have looked as pale as a corpse, but he had turned the color of one of those cartoons when they get sick, his face tinged with green.

Both of us dropped our plates simultaneously. The crash shattered the uncomfortable silence in the room. Mariano clutched his stomach as if he couldn't believe he was carrying life inside. He bent forward and vomited.

Almost immediately, I followed suit.