Happy Friday the thirteenth. This is another image that I wanted to take metaphorically, but my brain has been frustratingly, ploddingly literal. As fall turns toward winter, let's look back to the summer and listen in on what someone might say around the grill at a midafternoon barbecue.
Conversations at the Grill
Burgers? I can tell you about burgers. Not that you'll believe me.
Last year I managed to get myself into the largest industrial meat farm in the country.
No, you wouldn't know what it's called. They don't really advertise. Each grocery store wants you to think that the plastic-wrapped packages in the little polystyrene half-clamshells are made special, just for them. If you think of it at all. Nobody wants you to think it all comes from the same concrete bunker in the exact center of nowhere in particular.
Why? Never you mind that. Let's just say it's a thing I did for some people I know and leave it at that. There's lotsa folk want to get the goods on a place like that. Animal rights folk. Investigative journalists. Competitors. Conspiracy nuts.
Oh, the conspiracy nuts would love this one.
Anyway, I'm good at what I do. Real good at it. Most it's plain social engineering - telling someone what they need to hear so the easiest thing for them to do is let you in. When that fails, there's other tricks. Picking-locks, hiding in shadows, move silently - you can say I have the whole suite of old-school Dungeons and Dragons thief skills.
Anyway, the point is that I got in. I always get in. It wasn't much to look at from the outside, and less from the inside. Cleaner-smelling than you'd think, without as much of that cowshit stench as you'd expect. Covered with this giant canopy roof to keep the animals out of the sun - and to keep overhead eyeballs away from the cows. The canopy gave the light a weird, greyish color, made the animals look strange too.
Ghostlike, almost.
Hey, don't look at me like that. We haven't even gotten to the weird bit yet. The bit that froze me til I got caught. I need another beer before this part. A year later it still gets me.
Well, the first thing wrong was easy. There were horses mixed in with the cows. Made me wonder - were we eating horsemeat? Is that the scandal? But no. That was nothing.
One of cows had human eyes.
Yeah, you heard me right. Not just eyes like people, but real people eyes. You could see understanding in them. Intelligence, maybe. Right in the middle of the big stupid cow face. I looked more and saws that lots of 'em were wrong. Noses, teeth, ears, most of them were right, but too many weren't.
And the ones that weren't looked like people.
I've seen lots of weird shit in my day, but never like this. I don't know how long I stared at the different freak-cattle, how long I was frozen there. I just know it was long enough that I finally got caught by a guard who wasn't dim for me to convince him that I belonged there. Especially since I was staring like I'd never seen a thing like it before.
As he lead me out, a human-mouthed horse called out. I couldn't quite make out what he said.
Anyway, I've read enough stories to know where this is going. They'd take me to the warlock or the mad scientist, to a magic wand or a piece of alien technology. They'd turn me into half-horse and make me live out my days eating grass until someone turned me into horseburgers. That's the way the story goes.
Yeah, you know it isn't. Because I'm still here.
Fact is, there is no tame godling or futuristic tech or ancient grimoire. At least not that they showed me. They have no idea why some of the livestock is half-human looking, but they know it's hardier, grows faster, that the meat is tastier.
They know they scream for help, but the profits are high enough that nobody listens.
So far as what they did to me? They wiped most of the pictures from my camera, left a few blurry ones. And then.. they let me go. Told me that nobody'd believe me, that if I talked I'd just end up in a looney bin. So I took the hit to my rep and told my friends I couldn't get in. Never said a word to nobody, except sometimes at a barbecue after a few beers.
Do me a favor? Cook my burger a bit more. I don't want to see any blood.
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