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Chapter 1: Meat is life.

His name was Keith. He was born in a small town not far from where he was now. He doesn't want to remember the town. It brought him bad memories.

In his teens, his mother was a chef for a restaurant specifically for vegetarians in that little town. She would bring home large dishes of salads and saute creations for her son to digest. he was an only child and she was a single mom.

He would always throw away the vegetables when his mother didn't look, always giving it to the earth outside. Instead, he would secretly earn money at a local chicken dish restaurant and feed on the food offered there for lunch break. His mother was at work the whole time, so she wouldn't know.

His mother occasionally grew suspicious of him and asked him where he was earning his money. He would always reply, "I want to become a chef like you, mom. I work at a restaurant so I can watch the chefs do their job." She was pride of him.

Out of the house now, he goes to the grocery store to buy one thing only: meat. Shopping was not his thing, so he had to get a whole lot of that tough, juicy flesh of any animal, as long as it didn't go bad. He had a dracula stage play flyer posted on his bedroom door with the words 'Blood is life" printed largely in white over the background painting of an old Transylvanian castle. The word "blood" was crossed out with the word meat with a permanent marker. Large stuffed deer heads were hung on the cabin wall. Teenage rebellion doesn't seem to stop in the blossom of adulthood.

Today, on this very night, he was planning his masterpiece. He was going to roast an entire lamb in an oven and then fry some chicken in lard.

After putting the lamb in the oven, he started to cook his chicken. The lard sizzled and the natural scent of chicken swelled into the air with steam and a little smoke.

"Ahhhhh," he exhaled after breathing in the fragrance. The steam rose in huge puffs and shook the large butcher knifes that hung on the lamp above the stove. He never used those butcher knifes, they were only for decoration. He only had decorations such as these on the inside of his small home. His house had no lawn, no grass, no plants. The big city was cramped enough to elliminate them. He liked the city and the meat because they were both the farthest things from grown vegetables.

The meat was finished. He pulled the lamb out with the heat pads and sniffed it intimately. The sniff was like a drug, like sniffing crack. He skipped to the dinner table, carefully so as to not to drop the pan. His started to whistle a tune from his favorite band: Disturbed. He then set the pan down and gets the chicken, cutting it to bits and sprinkling the pieces over the lamb chunks. He set his fork and knife on the edge of the tender flesh. He licked his lips. This moment would pass by quickly, even if he took several hours to finish it.

It was morning. Keith woke up. He stepped off his bed and bent over to stretch his tired muscles. Turning around, he knelt down on his knees and reached under his bed for his slippers. But something touched his hand. It felt smooth, but jagged on the sides. It was kind of flexible but hard and rigid. Covering his entire two fingers over it, he pulled it out from underneath the bed.

He continued to stare at it. He knew what it was. It was a human fingernail, with blood clots on the edges.

He shoved it into his left pocket and got ready for work.

Keith arrived to work. He worked at a restaurant, the same one he was employed into as a teen. The restaurant's success has sky-rocketed since he started working there. Looking around, Keith entered his office and saw a plate of juicy beef sitting on the middle of his desk. It was beautiful. His employees knew what he liked.

He was the restaurant manager now. It gave him alot of pay, but he didn't spent most of it on the meat that stuffed his refridgerater.

Being a manager wasn't an easy job. But, he did his job well. But, how did he become one? Looking back into his life, we see him at the cash register. He is a fine young fellow, dressed nicely on the spot, while all the rest of the casheers are plain crap. We see him talking to the customers: a husband and wife, both from a low class. He tells them about how delicious meat is, especially the beef. He convinces them that it is, in fact, a gift from God himself (not literally, just an expression). He brain-washes them to believe in the superiority of meat over vegetables.

Now, some may wonder how it is that this man could convince such a ridiculous claim (from the point of view of those who enjoy balanced meals, of course). Well, one thing for sure was his claim that meat is organic (duh!). Another was the fact that it was packed with enzymes and protein, both necessary for the human body (but too much can lead to severe problems. The customers apparantly didn't think.) His other claim was that meat was stuffed with juicy flavors (as if meat is flavorable by itself). It worked! They came every day. They stopped coming eventually, of course. They live on the streets now.

His dirty schemes worked every time, promoting more customers and homeless people to increase in population. He was called to the office of the manager, who was just about to retire. The manager's wife didn't want children, so he left no heir. Now, he sits on the soft chair behind that polished desk. How much better can it get?

Copyright 2007 anthony cardon
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