Joseph D'Lacey - Meat

They had agreed what would happen next. It was very simple. They would run out of the house and into the grounds where the trees and bushes would hide them. And every time they hid and people didn’t find them, they would run to another bush and then another until they reached home. Home would be safe. And mama and papa would come home and love them again.

In utter blackness, they squeezed each other tight.

‘Soon,’ breathed Hema to Harsha.

‘Soon,’ replied her sister.

The cell in the mansion was far worse than the one the Welfare had provided.

He awoke to pain in many parts of his body and the smell of shit and urine. He tried to sit up and smacked his forehead against hard wood. Stars spread across his darkened vision. His head was exploding. He lay back and felt with his hands. The cell was more like a coffin than a room. It was about two feet deep, seven feet long – so he was able to stretch to his full body length – and about three feet wide. Whatever he did, there would be no way to stand.

He imagined the pressure sores that would erupt on the bony areas of his body while he waited for Magnus to do him in. Perhaps Magnus was so incensed at all that he’d done that his end – removal from the box, at least – might come swiftly. In the next moment he was ashamed that his first thoughts were of himself and not of Hema and Harsha for whom he knew it was already too late.

He’d done all he could do for them. Perhaps with more time, with the chance to liaise with others, it might have been different but there was no point hoping to change the past. In the box, little more than an oubliette – and perhaps that was how Magnus had decided to dispose of him – he was alone with his memories and his fears. Desperation grew despite the impossibility of escape. If only he could get out, he might have the opportunity to prevent the damage to his girls from being too scarring. With fewer guards around the house and grounds perhaps he’d have one more opportunity to finish Magnus himself.

The thoughts would drive him crazy.

He wasn’t prepared to give in to his mind yet. He was still alive, that meant there was still some kind of chance. At the very least perhaps he might see them again. Have the opportunity to say he loved them, to apologise and say goodbye. Such pitiful aspirations. How the town and everything in it had reduced him. How evil his life had been. No matter how he’d tried to absolve himself, no matter how he’d tried to stay pure, he had committed endless crimes and brought the very worst upon his family.

Again, he realised, such thoughts were deadly.

There was one good thing in the town. One good person that had wrought at least a little change – John Collins. Prophet John. The man who had shown him miracles were possible, that there were other ways to live for those compassionate and loving enough to try. It was crazy, what John Collins had been teaching, but Shanti believed it. In fact, belief didn’t fully define it; he knew in his body that it was true and possible. He knew it because he’d begun the same journey himself and it had not killed him. He had not eaten anything but light and air for many days and he was stronger and healthier than he’d ever been. He’d noticed in the mirror that, far from emaciating himself since he had stopped taking vegetables and rice, he had filled out. Not much, but enough to notice. His muscles were larger, his chest more expanded and able to hold more air. John Collins said that one day, when enough wisdom and love had been acquired, even the need to breathe would become a thing of the past. People would understand they were immortal, that they had always possessed the potential without realising it.

Of course, if Magnus knew that Shanti no longer needed to eat to stay alive, he might keep him in this stinking hole until he drove himself insane.

No.

He had to survive and to do that, he had to think right. He had to prepare.

First he checked out the painful places on his body. His nose was broken – he was fairly sure it shouldn’t be as mobile as it was. A couple of his front teeth were loose. His ribs were sore on both sides and he remembered being kicked a lot when he regained consciousness only to black out again. His legs were fine but his hands and elbows were cut and bleeding where he’d made contact with the teeth of some of Magnus’s men. There was a lump on the back of his head and that, more than any other injury, gave him cause for serious concern. It made his whole head hurt inside and out when he touched it. There was a swelling there and he didn’t know what it was filled with. His fear was that Magnus’s blow had cracked his skull and that his brain was exposed below the skin. If that was the case, he knew he could die at any moment. And if he didn’t, and if he made it out of this box, he might not live beyond standing up.

Instinct told him that he should try to heal himself. Was it instinct or was it something else? He felt a small pressure in his gut, right in the very centre of himself. He knew what it meant. He would try to be ready.

Lying on his back in the stinking filth of Magnus’s primitive cell, Shanti drew the light stored in his abdomen and sent it up to his skull. He prayed that it would fuse his broken cranium.

Bruno led his unfit brigade of guards up the long driveway praying, yes praying, that they were in time.

They rounded the final bend in the approach and he saw what he’d hoped not to. Ranged around the mansion in twos and threes were Collins’s raggle-taggle followers. They were dressed in clothes that might have been worn for decades at a stretch. Torn, faded, in some cases patched, in others not. They were no better than vagabonds. Scruffy urchins that had escaped the town’s attention for far too long. He would have laughed at them but for three things.

He was so winded he couldn’t spare the breath.

He had seen what they’d done to the Parsons.

And every man he’d left behind to guard the mansion had fallen.

As he came around that final curve in the driveway, the followers heard the stomping footsteps of nigh on seventy men in hobnailed boots and turned to face them. No matter what happened now, Bruno and his men were committed. There was no need for a command, every black-coat could see the enemy; a force they outnumbered more than two to one. Bruno let the machete drop into his right hand and raised it in the air.

With what breath they had left in their lungs, Magnus’s men released their war cry and fell upon the acolytes of the Prophet.

When the growling stopped, they tensed and dug their fingers into each other’s skin. They bit their lips against the fear. They heard grunts and felt movement. Heavy footsteps dragged past them. The footsteps stopped not very far away. In the background they could hear shouting; a crowd of men swearing and pushing each other. There was a sound like their mother opening a heavy drawer of cutlery in the kitchen and the uproar from far away became much louder.

Then they heard the voice, the terrifying voice that wheedled and cajoled and commanded. The voice of the man that wanted so much to hurt them. In the darkness, still safe, they didn’t know what to do. Was it time to run? Would he hear or see them?

‘What should we do?’ asked Harsha as quietly as she could.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Maybe we should just have a look.’

Harsha went to push the lid of their hiding place open and Hema grabbed her arm.

‘It’s okay,’ said Harsha. ‘We’re only looking. We don’t have to run yet.’

As silently as they could manage they shifted around until they could both peep over the lip of their secret place.

They saw the hairy man, naked and yelling, with his back to them at the window. They looked at each other. Words weren’t necessary now. This was their chance to escape. They crawled up and out as quietly as snakes but Harsha, believing Hema had hold of the coffer’s lid, let it go. The lid slammed shut hard. The hairy man jumped and began to turn.