Read Blood Lite II: Overbite for Free Online Page A

all,” I said, taking out the funnel pot. “It’s really not necessary. Just more dishes to wash!” I tilted one of the alfredo bowls, and creamy noodles sprinkled with green flakes exited down into the bag, landing with a loud plop. The second bowl’s contents sounded even wetter, since they splashed against even more fettuccini.
    “Ready?” I asked Bernice.
    She took off her face, then nodded. “Go!” she said, or rather grunted, since her tongue had no upper palate to make a g sound against. After her cleft-palate surgery weakened her nose and sinuses so much, the doctors just gave her a prosthetic. But it gets dirty when eating, so she snaps it off for meals. Having no upper teeth also means you can’t chew, and the lip fibroid made it easiest to just pour soft foods down her throat. She also popped out her lower bridge: the bottom teeth were cutting into her bare sinuses, so they had to go.
    I’ve gotten used to the sounds of Bernice eating, and the visuals, but it’s a little disarming to others. I hope we can get all the Alfredo down before any of it returns. I usually have to climb up onto the table at home to feed Bernice, but we’re at a nice restaurant so I make do with standing next to her.
    Starting the process, I hold the funnel pot at a tilted angle. (We don’t use the term feed bag; that’s for horses!) The alfredo begins a mudslide down the pot wall, then hits the funnel and begins to drip out a few at a time. Bernice waits patiently, mouth open wider than most any other human on the planet can be. (We’ve applied to the Guinness Book : they say it’s not a category they recognize.) She looks like Pac-Man, like a cartoon of someone with a mouth so open it would require a broken jaw.
    A gleek of saliva from her glands squirts out, then two more. The first noodles hit her mouth, and she slams her jaws closed on them like a bear trap. The sound, I’m a bit chagrined to say, is halfway between gutting a fish and breaking wind. I pour some more down her mouth, and she eagerly swallows it. At home we call it “feeding the baby bird.” This way food doesn’t lodge in any of the carved-out cavities that line her throat. She can do it by herself, of course, but due to some binocular troubles she can’t aim well enough to hit her mouth too often. I don’t mind doing this, though, if it gives her some dignity.
    Still, sometimes a hank of food will make its way into her sinus cavity, which I can see from this upward angle. Bernice snorts once, twice, then spits out the chunk of food as best she can into her hand. It’s yellowish-green now, from the protective layers that coat the sinus. She pops it back into her mouth two seconds later: five-second rule!
    We’re halfway through the alfredo when someone across the room vomits. Darn it! This always happens. And, of course, once one person vomits that makes a second person vomit, and then a third. And then Bernice feels bad so she gets up to go over and apologize. But she’s got a sensitive stomach, and when she sees people getting sick, she’s got the same gag reflex as everyone else. And up comes the alfredo, right onto the floor. And, since she leaned over rather fast to upchuck, her dress hiked itself up over her back, exposing her bottom.
    Bernice’s bottom is not her best feature. She’s a large woman, and large people have certain hygiene issues that people blessed with speedy metabolisms don’t have. She just can’t reach back there, people! Don’t expect every last bit of everything to be scrubbed clean! Plus, she had an asymmetrical cyst that the doctors said was benign but still weighed twenty-three pounds and hung off a delicate part of her. (This also made it impossible for her to wear regular, or any, undergarments.) She turned around to retrieve her dress, and had to turn around two or three times to catch it with her right flipper.
    There also was a smell, or rather a series of them. I prefer not to linger on the subject of