Joseph D'Lacey - Meat

‘Seeing as you’ve ruled this house without a thought for law or decency, I’m going to allow it to rule you in exactly the same way. I will accompany you to your basement where your female staff will be free to make use of you in any way they see fit. And I mean any way. I will be there purely to offer the succour of our God and to accept your conversion before the end of your life.’

The Grand Bishop tapped Magnus’s shin with the tip of his club. Magnus screamed.

‘I must say, Rory, I’m rather looking forward to it.’

The maids approached and the Grand Bishop moved out of their way. Magnus saw the looks on their faces. There was still fear there but they were rapidly overcoming it. When it flipped into anger, he would be lost.

‘Please go ahead, ladies,’ said the Grand Bishop.

Looks passed between the maids and they stepped forward. Hands reached out and caught Magnus by his hair and beard. They yanked and he screamed again. More hands took hold. They pulled him to the edge of the bed. As one, they hauled him off. His torn legs landed heavily and the screaming reached a new pitch. Magnus tried to make himself understood but no words would form through his agony. In this way, they dragged him along the upper hall, through his study and bumped him down the stairs. Each of the women grabbed tools from the walls and drawers.

They jostled to be the first.

She’d have slept badly anywhere in her condition but the wind at the top of the wooden observation tower, had troubled her all night. Cold and insistent it had whined through the gaps in the tower’s planks and chilled her back no matter which way she lay. She was grateful for dawn’s grey arrival; staying awake would be less of an effort than trying to sleep.

The pain and unsteadiness in every part of her body were constant companions now and she decided it would be safer to stay up in the tower than to try and come down. It had been dangerous enough climbing up there. The towers weren’t used or maintained much any more and some of the rungs were missing on the access ladder. She’d risked it because she realised there was no way she could get close to any of the barns where the Chosen slept.

When they sensed her approach, a rigid tension rippled through the herds. It passed from one field to another and through every barn until it was quite clear they all knew she was there. Ten thousand of them setting their minds against her. Perhaps they sensed her sickness and would not tolerate it. She believed that for a while. In time, though, the reality settled over her making her original assumption seem very foolish.

It was simple. They could smell the flesh of their own upon her gowns and probably from her very skin. They knew that she was one who ate them, one for whom they died. Why would they want her near? Why should they let her shelter with them?

There wasn’t long to wait now and she knew it. She had begun to look at things differently in these last few days. There had been time to think, time to be most terribly afraid of what lay beyond her physical end. She was separated from a God who did not speak to her. She was therefore cut off from every other Parson, even the Grand Bishop – this was not something that could be discussed with any of them. She was the natural enemy of Magnus and every MMP worker because she had religious power over them. She was the enemy of the townsfolk because she was an enforcer of the Welfare’s protection.

Surely now, as she finished her life, she could at least be honest with herself.

When the light was strong enough to see by, she stood and looked over the slatted wooden wall of the tower. Down in the fields a thin mist lay between the hedges. Above it rose the well-defined edge of every field and the walls of the barns. In every field around her, the Chosen began to leave the barns. They walked with a crippled gait, rolling a little to each side. Once outside they stretched and yawned. In every field the Chosen stood next to each other, touching. Some leaned their heads together. Some used the stumps of their fingers to rub at the necks and backs of others. This was the kind of contact she had never known.

But she did not envy them.

Here were creatures that spent their short lives herded and controlled by the stockmen. Naked and downtrodden they lived every day of every season outside or in a barn. They were mutilated from birth to suit the townsfolk’s purposes, to suit the laws in the Book of Giving and the Gut Psalter. Finally, they were systematically unmade to feed the hungry mouths of Abyrne. And many mouths there were. For generations it had been so.

Silent in her tower, she watched them as the sun came over the horizon, watched the way they faced it – every single one of them – and seemed to absorb its light. Minutes later, before the stockmen arrived, they broke into random groups or re-entered the barns, behaving once more like animals.

The Parson lay down again when the stockmen came. She didn’t want to be seen or challenged. She lay down on the damp, slowly decaying boards and wept.

For she knew her truth was no truth at all. No God would ever answer her calls. How could He?

The loss of a hundred Parsons was in part to blame but even with the extra muscle they’d have lent, it might not have been enough. The townsfolk were fractious and anxious. They’d been shocked by the blasts at the gas facility. The realisation that there was no more power in the town – not even for the wealthiest areas – had hit hard. Rumour spread from house to house about the struggle for supremacy between their Meat Baron and the Welfare.

Other stories made the rounds. Prophet John had a band of warriors and planned to starve the town into converting to his insane ways. The supplies of the Chosen were dwindling. Prophet John had friends at MMP who had already begun to dump meat by the truckload and bring on a famine. Other tales told of a mass slaughter that had begun; to reduce the Chosen and push the prices of meat up further. Abyrne would then be split between the rich and the hungry. Most of the townsfolk had suffered a little hunger from time to time; a week or two in a year when meat was in short supply. And it was true, a few people did live at the edge of starvation but there’d never been a threat like this hanging over Abyrne. The Chosen existed in huge numbers – God’s sacrifice for his people to live upon. If the numbers of the Chosen were reduced too greatly the whole town might face a famine.

The grain bosses heard the rumours too. They had their own spies and the stories they’d heard were closer to the truth. They couldn’t let the slaughter take place if they were to continue to supply grain in previous quantities. They didn’t care what occurred in Abyrne as long as the town survived. It was the grain bosses’ men, more organised than the average dwellers in Abyrne, who led the townsfolk in a column to Magnus’s mansion. Their demands were simple: No culling of the Chosen. No discarding of valuable, usable meat. A guarantee that Prophet John would be brought to task and executed.

It said much about the balance of power that they went to Magnus and not to the Grand Bishop.

The delegation started out as a few hundred of the more outspoken and courageous townsfolk. As they marched through the streets of Abyrne, their numbers swelled. People stepped out of their houses to watch them pass and when they learned where they were going soon decided to join them. By the time the front of the column reached the road out of the centre of Abyrne there were thousands of people in it.

When they found the mansion empty but for the stringy remains of Rory Magnus, they wrecked it. A couple of youths set fire to the curtains in the drawing room and the big old house began to smoulder. The defilers ran out and watched the flames take hold. When the house began to collapse in on itself, releasing huge upward gusts of sparks and flame, they took that fire into themselves and turned away.