Meat

Eight

Maya stood at the bottom of the stairs and listened. The twins often played quietly together but the smell of food wafting up the stairs to their bedroom usually brought them down. She’d been cooking for half an hour and dinner was almost ready but there was no sign of the girls.

Their bedroom door was closed. They usually left it that way when they were playing and then begged her to leave it open at lights-out time. Maya could hear their small voices, a note of excitement in their whispers. But why were they whispering? And why did the door now seem closed so purposefully? She was probably imagining it but it felt like there was an invisible ‘keep out’ sign nailed to it.

Instead of calling them down to wash their hands before dinner, she began to climb the stairs. She trod to the outer edges of each step where there was less movement in the wood and therefore less noise. Reaching the landing, the stairs doubled back on themselves and continued upward. Maya was especially stealthy over the last few steps.

The voices of her daughters were louder now but still not distinct. She thought she heard the theatrical smacking of lips and the ‘mmms’ of someone enjoying cake. So, that was it. A dolly’s tea party. No wonder they were so engrossed. She’d played the game herself as a child and remembered how utterly diverting it had been. Plump guests, furry guests, shiny guests, wooden guests, each eating and drinking their fill, each complimenting the hostess.

She turned the door handle as quietly as she could, hoping to glimpse their play. She wanted a moment in which she could return to their simple innocence and in doing so briefly turn away from the realities of the town and her life with Richard.

She had a moment, a very full moment, in which to take in the game before the girls came out of their trance-like absorption and realised she was standing there watching. It was a party all right. All the toys had been invited: the blind, balding bear, the toy soldiers, several dolls and even a rubber clown that smelled of chemicals – a toy they rarely played with.

The guests were sitting around a makeshift table formed by an upside down biscuit tin with a white paper napkin forming the tablecloth. Each of the guests had a place laid for them at the table complete with tiny knives and forks, dinky plates and upturned thimble wine glasses. On each plate was a hollow portion of doll – an upper arm, a thigh, a calf, a foot, a hand. The torso had been cut into four slices like a small loaf. Hema and Harsha were ‘sharing’ them.

It was the attention to detail that stunned Maya. The girls had prepared the doll before butchering her for their distinguished guests. They’d cut as much of her hair off as they could. Maya could see how they’d removed two thirds of each finger on her tiny hands and clipped her thumbs off altogether. On the platters where feet were served, she saw that the big toe had been severed. The shaven head lay to one side but in the top ‘slice’ of the torso, she saw the neck and the puncture wound in the centre of it where they’d silenced the doll before slaughter.

‘Hello, Mama,’ said Harsha. ‘Would you like to come to the party? We’ve made meat for everyone!’

The day that Magnus’s boys came to get John Collins started out the same as any other since he’d fled to the Derelict Quarter.

He didn’t need an alarm clock. Morning was the most important time and he could feel it coming even as he slept. It was as though the light had a voice. The voice sang to him and, while he was asleep, he understood the language but the moment he woke all he could remember were the joyful, wistful harmonies of a million voices singing as one.

Often the first thing he noticed was that he was crying. Sometimes it was ecstasy, a residue in the emotions of the sweetness of the lightsong. Mostly it was frustration that he could not understand the words with his conscious mind. That day, the tears were a memory of sublime melodies.

The flat he lived in was small. Since he’d left Marie and the boys he had no need for space. All he needed was light and a place to catch that light in the morning. He’d taken a small bag and walked across the town to the Derelict Quarter where anyone could move in and make a home without the need for leases or rental agreements. There was no power, no gas and no water and that had come to suit him fine.

He stopped turning up for work in the gas facility and received neither letters nor visits from the management because he’d already moved away. Marie didn’t know where he was and couldn’t pass anything on to him. This, too, was a suitable arrangement. The less they had to do with him the better. They’d be wise to forget him, say they never knew him. It happened in Abyrne. It happened a lot.

Knowing John Collins was going to be difficult. Being John Collins was going to be worse.

He told no one where he was going. He was as good as lost.

Not going to work did strange things to time. He no longer knew what day it was. Not naming the day and not knowing the hour made time stretch. Sometimes a single afternoon would pass like a week. Or it would refuse to pass. Collins, with nothing important to do would watch time from his balcony, watch the shifting grey skies and lose himself among shapes in the unbroken clouds.

Only two things punctuated his life; the arrival of dawn and the talks he gave that had started in the lock-up so many months before.

Bruno and his black-coated boys were still many hours from cornering him, binding him and taking him to the Magnus mansion in the parkland near the centre of town. He had no inkling of it, though he knew it was inevitable and might come at any time.

He let the tears stay on his face as he sat up from the bare mattress and swung his feet to the floor. The sun was still a long way from the horizon but he could sense the light in the centre of his head as a faint vibration. Naked, but for his scarf, he walked to the balcony, stepped through sliding doors from which the glass was long gone and spread his feet wider than his shoulders. He closed his eyes and raised his arms pushing the palms out in front of him as if gesturing something large to stop moving.

He breathed deep and slow. A warmth began in the skin of his hands at the mere promise of light on the horizon but it would be an hour or more before the sun came up. The world was no longer black, though. Light from far below the horizon seeped into the clouds. As the radiance grew he drew it from the atmosphere into his hands. The heat spread up his wrists. As the light below the horizon gathered, the vibration in the centre of his head, in the nucleus of his brain, increased.

The heat reached his chest and he breathed it downwards, deep into his abdomen. Led by the tidal rhythm of his breathing, his belly filled with light. There seemed no end to the amount it would hold; the light concentrated itself there, grew brighter. After standing and drawing in for a long time, he felt the power from the sun increase exponentially. Everything blasted white and the store of light in his abdomen released, flowing out to every part of his body, filling his organs, energising his limbs. Daybreak. As much light as he could take.

He let his hands down and placed them over his lower abdomen, holding in the warmth and nourishment. Opening his eyes he saw the outer dawn, a pale arrival cloaked by clouds that never left the town alone. It was another dull day outside, but inside John Collins the sun blazed through clear skies. He gave silent thanks and stepped into the flat to exercise.

Once fed by the light there seemed to be nothing that could tire him. He performed dozens of squat thrusts and star jumps – exercises he remembered from the Physical Education classes he used to hate at school. He started out with ordinary press-ups and then did them one arm at a time, pumping out fifty with no noticeable strain. Hanging from a doorframe he did pull-ups as though he weighed no more than a bag of sugar. There was a delight in being able to make his body work so hard without ever exhausting its energy.

He had lost weight, of course. People thought he was starving and often brought food to the lock-up for him – bread they’d made, some vegetables they’d grown. They were the ones who didn’t yet understand. The ones who didn’t believe. Once they’d realised the truth of his message, they didn’t bring any more gifts. So, there was no fat on him and the minimum of muscle. But John Collins was not malnourished. Nor was he hungry. He was lean and his eyes shone like solar fragments.

John Collins believed that when enough of the townsfolk lived the way he did, people like Rory Magnus would have to find new ways to make their money.

Each day at dawn Richard Shanti practised the exercises he’d learned from John Collins. It was difficult not to criticise himself for being so easily taken in but his desire was greater than his scepticism. Within a couple of weeks, he began to feel something changing in his body. The exhaustion that he felt throughout most of every day – brought on by the constant punishment he gave himself – began to lighten. The difference was so small he attributed it to a change of mood rather than something physical.

It was in those moments just before sleep and immediately after waking that he noticed it. Instead of plummeting into sleep the moment he lay down he would feel his body and mind relax and release. Then he would sleep. Before dawn he woke a little earlier than routine dictated and felt an eagerness for something he couldn’t define. The dread of his slaughterhouse duties plagued him as badly as ever but there was something more in his consciousness now than that simple trepidation. By the time he had risen, these tiny alterations in him were mostly forgotten.

But the time came when he could not ignore the difference in himself and he began to take the exercises more seriously.

Maya was occasionally feeding meat to the girls, sometimes in front of him and other times not, depending on her mood. Generally, though, since the Parson’s visit, she had been more easy-going about things and less accusatory about his way of life. He didn’t want the girls eating flesh but he knew that if he tried to prevent it, Maya would leave him and take the girls with her. He had no doubt that she would do it. Her singleness of purpose frightened him at times. She was like a wild animal protecting her offspring, fighting for them, hunting for them, defending the lair. He tried not to think about what Maya might be capable of if pushed to her limits. Since she had found a way of procuring meat for Hema and Harsha – no doubt wasting his wages in one of Abyrne’s butchers – she no longer used her body to inveigle him. Now that he had a tiny reserve of energy, he wished that she would. He wished, simply, that she would love him.

With work taking up so much of his thoughts and the running off of his misdeeds filling most of his free time, it was easy not to think about how things were at home. Sometimes, though, he couldn’t stop himself wondering about the ‘life’ he had outside Magnus Meat Processing. He worked and he punished himself and he slept. He hardly saw his wife or his daughters and when he did, they treated him as an outsider in their home; a tolerated stranger.

However, it was the thing he tried hardest not to think about and endeavoured most seriously to atone for that most haunted Shanti’s waking and sleeping hours: the lives of the Chosen. Abyrne was an aberration, he was certain of it. Somewhere along its history, the town had lost its way. The Book of Giving, the Gut Psalter, the control of the town by the Welfare and Rory Magnus – all this was a sinister misunderstanding of how things ought to be. What the alternative was, he didn’t know. He only knew that the town and everything about it was wrong.

But there was nowhere else to go. The wasteland surrounded the town and there was nothing out there. It stretched uncharted miles in every direction. Nothing could survive except within the confines of Abyrne. Hardest of all for Shanti, harder to bear than the misguided respect he was shown at work because of his skills, was the knowledge that there was no one he could talk to about how he felt. Maya would report him and make good on her promise to separate him from his family forever. To her it would be crazy talk to question a single aspect of how the town was run; the kind of talk that would put them all at risk of the might of the Welfare. She was right to fear them. The Welfare had the power to revoke status. When you ceased to be ‘townsfolk’ you became meat. The only possibility left to you was to run to the Derelict Quarter and hide. But out there, there was nothing. Nothing to eat, no running water or sewers, no power lines. Just blocks and blocks of crumbling, abandoned buildings and heaps of rubble. The Derelict Quarter was as unforgiving as the wasteland.

It was no secret that starving vagrants lived in the Derelict Quarter – people who had run there from the Welfare or from Rory Magnus. Were they fortunate to have made it to a place where they would die slowly of disease and malnourishment? Shanti didn’t think so. Better to meet the quick fate on the other end of his bolt gun and be released. He’d seen them fed into the crowd pens a hundred times or more, faced them through the access panel when he stunned them. Without exception they’d been begging for the end by then. He had faith that, with him dispatching them, his compassionate eyes would be the last thing they ever saw. The Derelict Quarter was no option for anyone. Besides, even if it came to that, Maya would never agree to go with him. He’d be cut off from his family and the loneliness would probably be enough to kill him.

No way out of his life that he could see. Sentenced to murder or dismember the Chosen every day of his life; that was his fate. No other way forward.

Except for the teachings of John Collins Shanti’s life was empty of hope. And so, before the sun rose each morning, he did as the quiet man had shown him.

Day by day, he changed.

‘Don’t hurt him, Bruno, you bloody lout. I don’t want him distracted. I want him focussed on what’s going to happen when he gets downstairs.’

Rory Magnus sat back in his swivelling, reclining chair and lit a small black cheroot. The links of gold on his broad wrist reflected yellow firelight, as did the gold lighter when he snapped it shut and dropped it onto his desk. He was freckled and massive. His mane was ginger, white at the temples and sideburns, his beard overgrown. There was a constant tension in his face and the tendons of his neck, a barely contained urge to leap forwards, to be first out of the blocks, to hammer someone with his fists, to place a kiss or clap a shoulder. No one could predict what the tension implied, only that it implied action.

Ten feet away on an intricately woven rug were two younger men. One wore a long black coat over the machinery of his muscles. He was the size of a door. His dark hair was permanently greasy and dandruff salted his parting and shoulders. The other man was naked and kneeling on the rug. His hands were secured behind his back with a leather strap, his head forced down by his captor.

Magnus looked at him in silence for a long time. Then he took another puff on his cheroot and exhaled two streams of smoke from his nose.

‘How long have you been preaching your bullshit now, Collins? A year? Two?’

The kneeling man didn’t respond.

‘What’s it achieved, eh? Anybody really listened to you in that time? Anybody “changed their ways”?’ He made more smoke. ‘Let go of him, will you, Bruno? I can’t see his bloody face.’

Bruno released his grip. The naked man’s eyes met his and held the connection. The look took his attention from the scar above Collins’s weedy sternum. The eyes of a man with nothing left to lose. Magnus had seen this kind of bravado before.

It never lasted.

‘Didn’t your parents teach you any manners, son? It’s rude to stare.’

Collins, kneeling exposed and helpless, didn’t speak. He didn’t look away.

Rory Magnus inspected his cheroot, rolled it between thick fingers and nodded to himself at the quality. Perhaps the nod signalled some inner decision. He let a thin stream of ochre mist exude from the corner of his mouth.

‘I’m going to let you keep your eyes, Collins. Until you’ve watched everything we do.’ He paused to lend his words weight. ‘Then I’ll have them cut from your head and pickled. I’ll keep the jar right here on my desk. That way you can give me your lover’s gaze forever.’

Words were the first weapons for breaking a man. Sometimes they did the job long before the knives. He watched Collins’s face for traces of fear. A flicker of his attention, tremors around the eye muscles and lips. Tears. Sweat. There was nothing. He shrugged inwardly.

First there would be reasoning, man to man: slow-down-and-let’s-be-sensible-here bargaining. Magnus didn’t make deals when deals were already done. Pleading then: mentions of the widowed wife and orphaned children, all the things left undone in life, just one more sunrise with the loved ones. Rory Magnus’s fatherly response: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of them’, was never misinterpreted. Tears then: ‘Please, Mr. Magnus, please. I know I made a mistake – a huge mistake – but I don’t deserve this. Not this.’ A shrug in response, an I-don’t-give-a-rancid-kidney-about-you shrug. Followed by his businesslike defence: ‘I can’t be seen to let people mess with Rory Magnus. I can’t afford to look weak.’ Anger of course: ‘Fuck you, Magnus, and fuck your children forever. I’ll see you in hell, I swear it. I’ll come back and haunt you to your dying day.’ Blah-de-blah. But Magnus would end up fucking their children if the mood took him, saw his victims in hell long before they died and had never seen a single ghost. When the anger was all gone, they wept and blubbered like children. Hot-faced, red-cheeked, snotty-lipped babies.

Magnus knew a little psychology. Dying was a process that everyone had to go through. Rage, denial, acceptance – he understood the general idea. And it was true to a degree. People with the canker had time to work it all through at leisure. People in Magnus’s basement didn’t have that kind of opportunity. But they did come to terms with death. Almost all of them. What they couldn’t handle, what none of them had ever handled was the pain of their systematic destruction. The unmaking of their bodies with knives while they yet lived. They all broke in the end.

All of them.

Even Prophet John Collins here on the rug, so defiant in these first moments, would do the same.

There were Shantis all the way back to the creation of the town but it quickly became clear from reading the records of their births, marriages and deaths that she was going to find little of any bearing on Richard Shanti. She followed his bloodline from seven generations to the present. Everything was in order except for the death of the child named Richard Shanti. But if Richard Shanti’s records were false in any way, if he did not possess true status as one of the townsfolk, then every generation that followed him must also have no status. The beautiful twin girls, children any family in the town would be proud of, and even his wife, because she’d taken his name; they would all face his fate.

She found herself not wanting that because she had been so fond of the girls. Maya Shanti she could take or leave; she was like so many of the women of the town and the Parson could smell the deceit on her. Mere deceitfulness was not enough to cause loss of status, however. Being the wife to a non-townsfolk bloodline, a defrauder of the Welfare and abuser of the faith on the other hand was the thing that would finish her and her daughters.

Richard Shanti held for her a certain respect and fascination. He was a man whose work kept the town of Abyrne alive. He was an MMP legend. The Parson did not consider herself without sympathy for the Chosen; while it was a divine privilege to give flesh in the name of the Lord, she realised that the Chosen suffered in order to do so. Men like Richard Shanti understood the Chosen the way most could not. Because of this he reduced their suffering and, at the very same time, provided the high chain speeds that supported the town. She truly did not want to find this man lacking in such a fundamental aspect.

It was a matter of religious duty, however, and she would see it through.

Rawlins brought her a glass of milk and though she’d seen him step with due care along the central walkway of the archives, there was a gritty film of grey particles on the surface of the milk by the time he arrived. She thanked him anyway. The milk relieved the pain in her stomach for moments only. She would have asked for another if the thought of drinking it didn’t make her feel so nauseous. The quivering of her fingers made the dust rise from the old record boxes and files no matter what she did.

The Shanti files exhausted from creation to present day, she went to Richard Shanti’s file, checked the year of his birth and his recorded, if not actual, death and began to scan the files of every child born that year. Her plan was to cross-reference with orphaned children and look for possible switches. She was certain now, that if there was an infraction, it was down to someone taking the dead child’s place rather than an incorrect entry. The adult Richard Shanti was someone else’s child and had been taken in by the Shanti family.

All that remained was to find out whose child he was.

‘Don’t you know anything about evolution, Collins? I thought you were educated.’ A wet, lippy suck on the cheroot. A swill of clear, fragrant vodka. ‘Food chains. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. It all makes sense, you know. More than this religious crap the Welfare put about. The strongest, smartest animal is at the top of the pile. Take this situation here; the hunter catches its prey. The hunter eats the prey. The hunter survives. The bloodline of the weaker animal is thus removed from the equation. Surely even you can understand that.’

Collins didn’t respond. He looked into Magnus’s eyes. There was silence in the room but each man heard the sound of breathing in their own head; Magnus’s harsh and loud. He was used to it and it seemed normal. Black-coated Bruno’s breath was rapid and shallow, his adrenaline high, impatience making his heart beat fast. He shifted his weight from foot to foot wanting violence, wanting dismissal, wanting anything other than this silence. John Collins could hear his breath but it was a distant thing, not like the waves on a beach; slower, like tides. He controlled it and everything else became calm.

After a couple of minutes, Magnus laughed. Bruno’s bunched shoulders dropped an inch or two. Collins continued to stare.

‘Your problem is that you still think you’re my equal. Bollock-naked and on your knees, you still believe your life means something, don’t you? You’re finished, Collins. You may not know it yet but your life is over right now. You have no more significance in this world.’ Collins’s voice came in some perfect nano-pause when neither Magnus nor Bruno were completely focussed. It made them both jump. His composed tones didn’t belong in the room. Magnus recovered himself first; in time to take the words in:

‘It isn’t of any concern to me,’ he said, ‘but my life is significant and will continue to be so, long after I die.’ He kept his eyes on Magnus. ‘You, on the other hand, while you may be remembered as an aberration, are already nothing more than a walking, talking carcass of fat and meat.’

Magnus’s face heated up but he kept himself quiet. It wouldn’t do to let either of these men see him rattled. Instead of shouting, instead of mashing Collins’s pathetic testicles in his fist and putting out his cheroot in the scrawny man’s eye, he forced a chuckle. He finished his vodka and dropped the cheroot into the damp dregs where it hissed and died. He stood up and his full height became clear. He was a giant. Two metres of bulk and muscle. He had a paunch, but his chest was enormous and his arms bulged beneath his suit. His thighs were like the trunks of small trees and his neck was as wide as his head. Bruno felt the physical threat rolling off him in pulses and wanted to step backwards. He stayed where he was.

Magnus walked around to the front of his desk which already stood on a plinth. To keep eye contact, Collins had to stretch his neck upwards. The movement was enough to cause Bruno to respond. He pushed Collins’s head down until he was bowing before the Meat Baron.

‘You’re a far weaker man than I,’ said Collins towards the rug.

‘I could snap your neck with one hand,’ said Magnus.

‘You could do anything you want to me while I’m tied up like this. Anyone could. That tells me that you’re afraid. I wonder why that is, Magnus. Why would a man as well put together as you be afraid of a thin little man like me? It’s because you’re frail inside. Your will is frail. Your mind is frail.’

Bruno looked down and away, embarrassed; scared of what would come next.

‘You talk of the strong surviving but you could never fight a man like me and win, Magnus. You don’t understand what it takes to be truly strong. True, I’m an easy catch for your gang of thugs. I can’t deal with the numbers. But one-on-one you wouldn’t have a chance against me. You know this and that is why I’m kneeling naked and bound on your carpet instead of talking to you man to man. You’re afraid of me.’

Magnus knew what Collins was up to. He was the cleverest and the bravest yet. Or maybe just the stupidest. He considered his options. He could take Collins downstairs now and finish him at leisure; one piece at a time. Hell, he could play his ace; cut off and eat Collins’s genitals while he watched. But he wanted to prove to Collins who was the stronger man. Make him admit it before he finished him off. No, it didn’t really matter what Collins thought once he was gone. And Magnus knew who the stronger of them was without having to prove it. But Bruno was here. If Magnus left it like this, there was a chance that Bruno would mention it outside the office. Strength was everything but the rumour of strength and ruthlessness was even more important. If people outside thought Magnus was letting people get away with insulting him, it would be the thin end of the wedge.

No. This was an opportunity to burn his supremacy into the minds of all those who thought to undermine him in the town. He’d bring in some of the others and humiliate Collins in front of them all before he took the wretch downstairs into his private abattoir. But there was plenty of time for that.

‘So you want to fight me, is that it?’

Collins said nothing.

‘Let go of him, Bruno.’

The heavy hand released his neck again. Collins raised his head and met Magnus’s gaze with steady eyes.

‘When a weak man and a strong man come to blows, it’s not a fight,’ said Collins. ‘It’s annihilation.’

Magnus pressed his lips together. He was meant to be a serious man, a man not easily amused. But he couldn’t help it.

He chuckled. He snorted. He laughed.

Soon Bruno was laughing too.

Seeing the misplaced smile on Collins’s face made him laugh harder. It took several minutes to get control of himself. After a few final, disbelieving chortles he said, ‘You’re a fucking piece of shit, Collins. You’ll get your come-uppance. Right after I thrash the smile off your face forever.’ He chuckled again. ‘But there are a few more things I wanted to talk to you about first. That’s why you’re still up here and not… downstairs.’

‘I don’t want to see you playing games like this again, understand me?’

‘Why, Mama?’ asked Hema, ‘It’s just pretending.’

‘Your father wouldn’t like it. Besides, girls, what makes you think you can go cutting up your toys like this? Where do you think you’ll get another doll?’

‘We can make one,’ said Harsha. ‘We make dollies at school all the time.’

‘Not like this one. These smooth-skinned ones are hard to find and they’re expensive too. I won’t be getting you another.’

‘Can we play the meat game if daddy’s not here?’

Maya stood with her arms folded and looked from one pretty face to the other. She could see no harm in them at all. She’d told them their father wouldn’t approve and that was an understatement. If he caught them playing the ‘meat game’ it might turn the tables; instead of her leaving, he might kick them out. The excuse she’d given wasn’t really anything to do with Richard though. Watching her own children play at butchering and serving up the Chosen turned her stomach. It made her feel uneasy.

It was particularly true today when, instead of blowing south east, the prevailing wind had reversed and smells from her husband’s workplace were carried back towards the town, back past their house. This was the second time she’d found the girls serving ‘meat’ to their toys and she wanted it to stop. If not, she wanted not to see it. Ever.

‘I’ll make you a deal. You can play the meat game. But you must never get caught doing it – either by me or your father. That means it’s a secret game. You never talk about it to anyone. All right?’

The twins looked at each other and made no attempt to hide their delight at the idea of a secret game. It was even better than the original.

They both nodded as if pulled by the same strings.

‘All right, Mama.’