Meat

by Joseph D'lacey

  A fourth carcass shuddered and its ribcage expanded and contracted spastically. Torrance shrugged; it wouldn’t last long after the knife. Looking more closely he saw the damage on the reviving animal. Its finger stumps were black and red and castration could only recently have been performed. The heel tag still trickled blood back towards its knee. So, this was the Magnus delivery. The thing, neither Chosen nor human, began to struggle by pumping its pelvis backwards and forwards. It nudged the stunned cattle on either side of it causing ripples through the bodies. The swaying caused the body to turn on its chain and Torrance saw the thing’s face.

  He knew the man, of course, though it was difficult to place him now that he was bald. The hole in his forehead had bled freely so there was a slick of gore drying both above and below it making a mask of the face. Torrance thought back and remembered the rumours that had been coming out of the dairy for the last few weeks. Someone there had been getting a little too close to the milkers. Now he remembered. Greville Snipe; the best dairyman MMP had employed for years. Torrance shook his head to himself. What a shame the man had overstepped the boundaries. Devaluing stock was the stupidest, most dangerous thing anyone – MMP employee or otherwise – could do. It was suicidal. Snipe appeared to have found that out for himself. Well, almost; he wasn’t quite finished yet.

  Snipe’s shocked eyes focussed on Torrance but the slow spiralling of the chain twisted his strange gaze away. The sound of runner bearings sliding in their housings brought Torrance back from his musings. The bleeder was pulling Snipe into position. Snipe hissed at the man – it was Burridge on the bleed this shift – and Burridge drew the knife across his muted throat. Torrance watched Snipe’s eyes widen, white orbs surrounded by blackening blood, and the hissing became a bubbling. Burridge swung Snipe away to bleed out over the trough. There the motorised section of the chain caught hold of his loop on the runner and hauled him, gently swinging, onward. By the time he reached the scalding vats that would loosen his skin for removal, he would be eight pints lighter.

  His struggles continued.

  Fascinated, Torrance forgot his inspection tour and followed Snipe’s progress across the trough. What had begun as a gushing fountain was already slowing to a leak. Snipe’s body was as pale now as the milk of the Chosen. Steam rose and bubbles burst on the boiling surface of the scalding vats. Snipe’s eyes still swivelled in his head. The only place in his body that could possibly contain blood now would be his head. That, thought Torrance, was the only explanation for why Snipe was still alive. Could any creature – man, Chosen or otherwise – be so terrified of death that it would will itself to survive through all this? Snipe tried to bend away from the roiling water below him but there was no strength in his muscles.

  The automated runner dropped him headlong into the vat. Torrance stepped back from the splash. Four seconds later, the runner drew his body up again, the skin now reddened and loose. Snipe’s boiled eyes no longer moved in their sockets but here and there, his muscles twitched and jumped and Torrance knew it was no simple nerve impulse.

  The wide wound in his neck had congealed in the water, the blood turning grey and gelatinous. Snipe’s head flapped from the end of his body and the wound looked like the mouth of an inverted puppet.

  Torrance had stopped walking.

  Now it will be over. Now. Surely.

  Snipe had reached the spinning blade that would remove his head. Torrance didn’t care what kind of willpower the ex-dairyman had, when the steel slipped through the vertebrae of his neck that would be the end. Unusually, Torrance felt a wash of relief. He massaged his forehead with one rough hand and marched along the rest of the chain to make his hourly inspection.

  He found it difficult to concentrate.

  That night Parson Mary Simonson ate tripe to ease the pains in her stomach.

  For a while they abated but less than an hour after her meal, the stabbing returned. She felt that the Father was punishing her for something but she could not understand what it was she had done, or not done, to deserve his ire. She followed the flesh codes as written in the sacred texts; she enforced Welfare upon as many in the town as her working days would allow. It hadn’t been easy recently with rumours of a heretical messiah coming from every quarter. All this she did faithfully and still the Father sought to make her suffer. The pain in her stomach was a ball of jagged glass. Thrusting her fist deep into the flesh there seemed to quell it a little.

  She lived alone, as all Parsons of the Welfare were required to do and so her evenings were her own to do with what she pleased. She liked it that way. Something about the idea of a man lounging in the house from night until morning and the incessant tug of noisy children made her uncomfortable. Better to be alone. Better to serve the Father in every moment that she was able.

  That night, instead of embroidering, she sat down with her books and read the scriptures. Perhaps, she thought, I’ve been embroidering too much after work and not spending enough time meditating on the sacredness of the flesh. Perhaps that is the reason the Father gives me this pain.

  She lit a small fire and pulled her hard wooden chair up close to it. On her lap she opened the Book of Giving and read aloud to herself from it:

  ‘The Father sent his own children down to earth so that we, his townsfolk, might eat. He made his children in his own image and laid down the commandments of the flesh so that we might be worthy of their sacrifice. Thus He commands us:

  ‘Thou shalt eat of the flesh of my children. My children are your cattle. Break their bodies as your daily bread, take their blood as your wine. By sharing daily in this bounty shall you be united with me.

  ‘Thou shalt keep my children silent by paring the reeds in their throats at the time of birth. Their silence is sacred and they must never speak the words of heaven.

  ‘Thou shalt keep my children from mischief by taking two bones from each finger in their first week.

  ‘Thou shalt keep my children from wandering by taking the first two bones from the first toe of each foot in their second week.

  ‘Thou shalt keep my children hairless by baptising them in the fragrant font.

  ‘Thou shalt keep the mightiest male calves as bulls, that more strong children may be born.

  ‘Thou shalt keep all other male calves chaste by castrating them in their ninth year.

  ‘Thou shalt keep their mouths toothless.

  ‘Thou shalt keep a sacred stock of male calves away from light and unmoving. These shall be my tenderest gift to you.

  ‘Thou shalt drink the milk of the cows and from that milk make butter, yoghurt and cheese.

  ‘Thou shalt allow all my sick children to return to their father but while they are in your care, thou shalt keep them from harm.

  ‘I sacrifice my children for each of you that none shall ever be hungry. Their flesh is sacred. Thou shalt not dishonour me by wasting it.

  ‘My children are divine. Thou shalt not lie down with them, neither taint their flesh with thine own.

  ‘By eating of the sacred flesh of my children, may all mankind be one day sacred themselves and join me at my table. The suffering of my children is as nothing when compared to the suffering of mankind. They give themselves freely, knowing they return to me.

  ‘Thou shalt, at the time of sacrifice, face my children East, that their souls may fly to the rising sun and so to me.

  ‘My children are your medicine. To heal your eyes, eat their eyes. To heal your stomachs, eat their stomachs. To drive out madness, eat their brains. Heal yourselves; my children are your medicine.’

  She sighed and pulled her chair closer to the guttering flames of the fire. There seemed to be no way to warm herself and she feared she was sickening with something. The reading she’d chosen for the evening gave her no comfort, certainly no answers to the conundrum of Richard Shanti. The child Richard Shanti had died and yet Richard Shanti the man was here in Abyrne. Alive and well, though painfully thin, and claiming ancestry to the old families. It was a bol
d statement to make. Not a risk he would have undertaken carelessly.

  There were only two explanations that made sense. He’d either lied, thinking that she wouldn’t be interested enough to check out his claims, or he really believed he was a Shanti from the first families. What was the truth? Surely he wasn’t a stupid man. Quiet, certainly, but not stupid. There was too much knowledge behind those eyes of his. She didn’t think he was deluded either. He had a wild look about him, the ascetic frame of a priest, but that was no reason to suspect he was delusional. No, she would bet anything that Richard Shanti believed he was the true son of Elizabeth and Reginald Shanti, that he had no idea anything else might be the case.

  That cleared part of it up. But if he wasn’t in the lineage, if he wasn’t their son, then who was he? And was his identity an important factor in the Welfare of his children?

  The centre of her gut twisted and she almost punched herself there to push back the pain. Without any warning at all, she was nauseous. No time to make it to the lavatory. She knelt before the fire and rucked the undigested contents of her stomach into the brass wood bucket next to the hearth. Seeing half-chewed stomach lining sticking to the logs and kindling made it all worse. She heaved and heaved, trying to force the spiky knot of pain from her own belly but once the meal she’d eaten was gone, dampening and tainting her wood supply, nothing was left inside her but a lump of thorns.

  She forgot all about Richard Shanti.

  Seven

  ‘Let’s play the dark game,’ Hema said.

  They were alone in the bedroom. Their mother had a visitor and didn’t want to be disturbed. The girls didn’t mind; they never got tired of each other.

  ‘No,’ said Harsha. ‘It doesn’t work any more. Let’s make a new game.’

  They knelt in front of a shabby chest and opened the lid.

  The toys in the toy box were old and battered, as was the box itself. It contained the playthings of children that had long since departed the world. The box was just big enough for one of the twins to fit into if they took out all the toys, but they were growing fast and the ‘dark game’ was one they played rarely now. For years, they’d taken it in turns to shut each other inside the box and sit on it, competing to see who could stay in there the longest. The stints of sitting alone on the lid or inside with the hard-sided darkness grew longer and longer until there wasn’t enough time to both take a turn in one session. Their natural development had been the thing to make the game less of a challenge. It wasn’t the same when your shoulder was pushing open the lid and letting the light in.

  The box was wooden and handmade, probably by a well-meaning father with little skill. Each panel was covered, inside and out, with a layer of stapled-on curtain material. Inside, where items had been pulled out and put back in a thousand times, the faded drapery had torn and through it showed the plain pine boards that formed the floor and walls of the box. Some of them bore tiny holes where woodworms had tunnelled. The curtain material was silky with age and sometimes the girls spent a few minutes trying to stroke the wounds in the fabric closed for the comfort it brought to their fingertips.

  The lid of the box was curtain-covered too, but the top side was cushioned with an ancient piece of quilting. The material that covered the padding, although worn, had never ripped. The maker of the box had been far-sighted enough to use a triple layer of old curtain there. Three brass hinges that still looked new secured the lid but the hinges were loose and, though their father had promised to tighten them, he was always too tired to remember. The box wasn’t without its traps. It demanded an occasional sacrifice in the form of a cut from a rusty staple and it would, at times, impart a splinter to a careless hand.

  The box smelled of things from a past they had never seen or known. Both Hema and Harsha associated the smell with play and risk and fantasy. Opening the toy box allowed it to breathe and when its sigh came out, the girls entered their magical world; a world that was never the same twice. There was an old wooden train set with pegs on its carriages where carved, painted soldiers stood to attention. A miniature dinner set. Nine silver thimbles they could use as dainty goblets. There was an old teddy bear with stitches where its eyes had been and more baldness than fur. A draughts board with missing pieces. A tin spinning top, its paint all worn away. There were old silk scarves of many colours, a Trilby hat and a Bowler. Deeply suffused in their leather bands, the hats bore the thick smell of trapped, greasy scalps; of strangers the twins only imagined. Dolls, dice, darts. A strange cube of black plastic with nine squares to each side and squeaky, twisting facets. Marbles rolled around at the bottom of the box.

  ‘I know a game we could play,’ said Harsha, picking out a plastic female doll with long blond hair. The doll wore a pink, red and white outfit: red beret, striped pink and white blouse. A red mini skirt and red high heels. She had a red plastic belt and a red plastic handbag. Harsha looked at her sister and they shared a moment of silent communication.

  ‘We’ll need Mama’s scissors,’ said Hema.

  ‘You’ll have to be very quiet.’

  ‘She won’t hear,’ said Hema. ‘She’s too busy.’

  She jumped to her feet in excitement and tiptoed to the door. Downstairs, all was quiet. She slipped along the hallway to the bathroom and took the nail scissors from the mug they shared with two emery boards and other implements for finger-and toenail grooming. The scissors had curved blades but she was fairly sure they’d work. Keeping to the threadbare carpet, she approached their bedroom.

  From downstairs she heard a noise; a chair moving, a cupboard being shut, something banging onto a counter? She couldn’t be sure.

  She stopped moving and listened hard. The silence was alive; like someone downstairs was listening for her, not the other way around.

  Then other sounds came, too indistinct for her to hear properly. The chair again? A voice whispering? She didn’t wait to find out. Even more carefully she crept the last few steps to the door, dodged inside and closed it tight and quiet behind her. She held the scissors up with a look of triumph and Harsha smiled back at her.

  The game could begin.

  They started by removing the doll’s clothes.

  There was so much you could tell about the townsfolk that came to the lock-up; so much you could tell about people. You only had to look.

  John Collins watched them all as they slipped through the doors of the lock-up, eyes furtive or assured, guilty or hopeful. What he saw affirmed his beliefs. People were animals of a kind, true, but they weren’t cattle. They were individuals and they possessed beauty and divinity by the very fact of their existence.

  He had been giving his talks in the lock-up every week for months now and some of the visitors had begun to use his teachings for themselves. They were different from the newcomers. Yes, they were a little thinner but they weren’t starving by any means. They had the aura. Collins could see it. He wondered if anyone else could. His ability to sense light had increased ever since he’d changed his ways. He saw disciples of only nine or ten weeks as having a full-body halo of soft light, a kind of luminous mist that surrounded them at all times. No one else seemed to notice. Certainly not the newcomers. Perhaps the owners of the auras didn’t even know they had them. It was a sign that what he was doing was right. Everything he did made him more certain of it.

  One October night a different kind of seeker came through the lock-up doors. Collins knew immediately there was something unusual about him. The man was pale-skinned; almost a yellow tint to his face, and his hair was black, thick and curly. It came to his shoulders. He had a beard that was even coarser and darker but it couldn’t hide the gauntness of the man’s face. Nor could it shield the gentle calmness coming from the man’s brown eyes. He wore an overcoat pulled up at the collars. It was a good quality garment – an unusual sight in any quarter of Abyrne – and Collins had guessed much, if not all, about the man before he’d taken a seat cross-legged on the concrete floor.

  A profusion of hair
was a fashion among the workers at MMP, whether dairymen, stockmen, herders or slaughtermen. Long hair set them apart from the smooth-skinned Chosen. A coat of such expense could only belong to a thief or someone who could afford it. Meat processors or employees of the Magnus household were the only people in the town with that kind of money. But the bony features, the suggestion of lean muscles and rope-like sinews beneath the coat were at odds with that. People that worked in Magnus’s factories were well fed. They were fat on high quality meat. The same went for the men and women directly employed by Magnus: the servants and maids, and his small army of guards and enforcers. This man might have been powerful enough to be an enforcer. His eyes were haunted enough, but they were far too kind.

  When the talk was over and Collins had told them all to leave for their own safety, the man with the gaunt face hidden by his mass of beard lingered behind. Two of Collins’s longer-standing disciples, Staithe and Vigors, picked as guards because of their size, tried to send him home with firm words. He refused to leave. The doormen looked to Collins for guidance; they weren’t in the habit of using force.

  ‘He’s fine. Let him stay a little longer. Make sure the rest of them have gone home and keep an eye out for anyone we can’t trust.’

  They left the lock-up and pushed the door shut behind them.

  Collins, shaved bald, his neck well muffled, and the hirsute stranger in his heavy coat were left alone. Collins smiled to put him at his ease but for a few moments more the man said nothing. It was as though he was embarrassed.