Soul Food
A man wakes up in a terrifyingly unfamiliar world - and body.
When I woke up, I was no longer human. I shifted my six crooked legs, but they failed to lift the feathered bulk of my body and wriggled like snakes in the grass. The joints were weak – soft and wrong like rubber bands soaked in anesthetic.
My eyes sluggishly turned from the useless appendages to a bird flying overhead then down to another animal – fat and feathered like me. It stood in the sunny pasture on five stilt-like legs. Behind it, a rectangle had been cut out of the picturesque scene, leaving a black void.
I pushed again, the numb loosening from my joints like ice thawing in the spring. A hoof connected with the ground and held a modicum of weight. Another found footing, then another. The middle leg on my left side jangled awkwardly as I struggled up, the pin pricking lameness refusing to give me control. I knew if I could just get the others under me, they’d hold.
The last of the hooves slid around, found their grip, and I shakily stood like a newborn calf. Feathers along my undercarriage stood bent at odd angles. A gray and white smattering of them lay abandoned in the grass.
I drew air through the nostrils pockmarking my beak as the other animals circled. Their feathers varied in colors of white, brown, and soft blue. Each stood on a different number of legs – three, four, some five. In place of their missing legs lay swelled joints covered in scarred skin tanned like hide.
They regarded me with wide-eyed interest. Had there never been a six-legged animal like me before – is that why they stared in obvious fear?
One of them hobbled forward on two legs, entering the circle surrounding me. A crack ran along his beak where shattered slivers of keratin hung on scabbed flesh. The pieces pulsed rose and fell with each breath.
In one quick motion he unfurled four wings, his feathers stretched out in a ragged display of aggression. Though it was clear his wings were stubs of what they once were, ending at knobs of scar tissue sprayed chalky orange, he was majestic and terrifying.
Without warning he jabbed at me, gouging the flesh above my eye with his sawtooth beak. Blood popped from the wound and splashed across the grass, then trickled into my eye.
He let out a wretched caw. Even without words, I got the message – this was his territory. Satisfied, he closed his wings and backed away with the dissipating herd, leaving me alone.
I cowered in fear, wondering how the hell I had gotten here – how I had become this thing. Images of the night before ran through my mind: the boys fighting over the last slice of pizza, Marshall snatching it away from his younger brother and running his tongue over the crust, Garrett’s loud “yuck” as he left the table, lying in bed leaving space – too much space – between Leah and I, silently reading a book on couple’s communication until I fell asleep.
I would give anything to hear her now, to give her the ‘I love you’ she never got that night.
This was a nightmare, a gross trick my brain played on me while I slept – after all, these animals weren’t real. Not that I knew of, anyway. I would wake up, kiss Leah, and make the boys pancakes. But blood still trickled down my face, and Shatterbeak’s attack had been too strong to be anything less than real.
I stretched, the muscles in my back tightening until my wings unfurled and flopped against the floor. Over and over, I pulled at them, surprised by their weight, and my eyes caught the flash of paint at their snipped ends. The missing ends buzzed deep inside my mind like ghostly whispers.
A sliver of light split the void rectangle and grew, two panels sliding open revealing an audience of overweight humans. Their beady eyes glared at us, their wide smiles pushing up their chubby cheeks. They spoke excitedly, but no sound came through the window. They hovered in metal carriers snugged around their rotund bodies, and beneath them hung withered, rotten legs, blackened and dead.
The children, whose legs were only beginning to decay, rode in brightly colored carriers stamped with cartoon characters. They wore floppy caps with plastic horns and dumped neon-colored liquid into their mouths. The awed gaze of the adults made me feel rare and powerful, like a firework. The gaze of the kids, however, made me feel as common and unwanted as a penny kicked into a sewer.
Help me, I screamed, for God’s sakes help me! But all that came out was a strained bugle reminding me of elk hunting with my brother-in-law.
A chime jangled in the meadow air, followed by a booming voice. “When J. P. Doonan was born into a family of cattle ranchers, no one suspected just how influential he’d become to the future of bioengineering. Who knew the youngest of four would one day lead scientists to create sustainable, environmentally conscious, and most importantly, delicious animal products. Our genetically engineered chiquine have won awards for innovation in taste and have even gone viral online.”
“J.P.’s secret is in his recipe,” the voice continued, laying into the heavy southern accent. “A recipe he locked away in an airtight vault only he and his brother have access to. Though J.P. passed away in 4588, his tradition for fresh-cut chiquine steaks continues here at J.P.’s Family Farmhouse – where our farmhouse is your family.”
I ran, putting as much distance as possible between me and the window. Green hills sprawled out ahead of me and I galloped away from the chiquine herd. I would run and never look back, never return to Shatterbeak’s meadow or the window.
I crashed into something only yards from where I started, as if the hand of God himself swatted me across the beak. I dropped, stunned, the field swimming in my vision. As my eyes focused, I saw the grass had torn out in plastic chunks, the turf paint scraped away revealing concrete. The open plains ahead flickered, disappearing and reappearing in flashes of existence.
It was a wall…no, a screen. There was no sky, birds, or fields, it was all fake. That was why the others huddled together so tightly. We were in a cell on display – on the menu.
Another chime on the speakers. “Please form a single-file queue behind the yellow line. Our attendant will take your order promptly. Be sure to ask about our family-sized discounts on leg and wing combo meals.”
Unsure of what to do, I paced in horror as the first family hovered forward to an attendant in an old-timey periwinkle dress and curled hair.
A boy searched our herd, eyeing each chiquine before moving onto the next. Then his eyes held on me. He thump, thump, thumped his little finger on the glass. Standing along the back of the cell, thick walls of metal and plastic separating us, I could still read his lips.
That one.
His parents looked at me with sick greed while the attendant tapped on a tablet. The boy and his family faded back into the dark, replaced by hungrier eyes.
More chiquine were excitedly picked. I watched the herd anxiously moved about – my God, they understood what was happening. The other chiquine were more like me than I realized, more human.
Seventeen customers, many of them families, spoke to the attendant. All seventeen groups had lingered on me at some point while choosing.
The last customer to move up hid beneath a hood shadowing their face. The attendant looked down to her tablet to take the order when the hooded figure pulled a pipe-like object from the folds of their jacket. The attendant never saw it coming. I could hear the skull crack echo through the barrier between us. Blood splashed over the window, sickeningly bright in the light of the neon screens.
The hooded figure hastily swiped a can through the air, painting words across the window: FUCK SOUL FOOD – FUCK J.P.’S!!
He took the pipe and struck the fortified glass, the clunk ringing out in the cell. The herd rushed around me, madly circling the cell. I had no choice but to follow them, afraid with every step that my lame leg would trip me. Another clunk and a web of cracks appeared beside the yellow words. My heart pounded in my chest as we sped up, but my chiquine body relished in the new pace – a pace that would have burned the lungs of my human body. The cool air I sucked in with each stride filled me with energy, driving me on.
Something thumped beneath my hooves, threatening to bring me down – but my legs clambered over it. Blood stung my eye from the cut on my head, and I shook to clear it. We circled the room, the obstacle banging against my shins again and again.
Several laps later, I realized the obstacle was a body – the blood in my eyes not from my wound but spray from the chiquine we feverishly trampled. I wanted to stop, but the herd moved autonomously, mindlessly. As my feet ground the battered remains into the concrete floor one more, I saw the lumpy remains of Shatterbeak passing below.
It was then the pipe broke through. A small hole opened in the cracked web where the glass folded back, held together by whatever reinforced it. With each pass the hole grew – the pipe appearing like a groundhog peeking from its hole. In the light of the window, I saw the customers rush and tackle the hooded figure. The wailing sounds of the fight slipped in through the hole, complimenting the chaotic drumming of our crazed galloping.
I tracked the breach in the glass as I ran. The hole – now about the size of a car tire – filled me with a courage I had lacked since waking up. We were no longer separated from the world. The door was open, there was an escape. All I needed to do was go through.
Finding a break from the herd, I quickly pressed into a corner away from the blind rush. I tightly circled the spot to gather traction, then charged through the herd. With every muscle I could gather I leapt into the air, crashing headfirst through the pane – the window shattering against the weight of my body.
I landed inside the dark room where hungry customers stared in horror. Shocked by making it through the window, I stared back. The body of the hooded figure lay discarded to my left, silent and unmoving.
Sharp pain emanated from my lame leg, and the feathers grew dark with blood in the cascading light of the menu overhead. Ragged piece of reinforced glass lingered in the frame, the window smiling at me with bloody teeth.
The attendant waved her arms at me as if that would scare me back into the cell. I would never go back there. I charged, racing headfirst past her and into the group. Customers whizzed their hover seats out of the way, others turned and sped out the door I ran toward.
I raced out of the ordering room and down a hallway. Clopping hooves echoed on the floor behind me as the herd followed. Dozens of ordering room doors passed me in a blur, the walls between them lined with screens. Promotional videos looped the evolution of J.P.’s from a roadside stand beside the Oklahoman highway to an internationally franchised chain.
My hooves screeched to a clumsy stop on the slick floor. Past the end of the hallway, I found myself in a warehouse-sized dining room. Within the multi-floored room, overweight humans gathered around hundreds of tables.
I huffed and caught my breath, searching for an exit through unsteady eyes – the world ticking back and forth in my vision. The glass had nicked something in me that wouldn’t stop leaking. The once minor blood spot on my hind now engulfed the rest of the leg, and a red trail traced my path back through the hall.
The herd dashed wildly past me, crashing through the room like a tidal wave. Tables toppled, plates shattered, and chiquine steaks spun across the floor. The hoverchairs couldn’t move the customers engorged bodies fast enough – the chiquine were mad with freedom, blindly trampling anything and anyone in their way. It took seconds for the herd to destroy the room, breaking through an exit at the far end of the room before disappearing.
I followed, but only made it midway through the room before my body – sluggish and woozy – forced me to slow down or pass out. My hooves clacked against the lacquered floor, echoing in the room where those who still clung to life cried out for help. They looked up at me, the hunger in their eyes replaced with fear.
No longer was I trapped in a cage until they wanted to consume me. I was terrifying, stronger than they ever wanted to know. Now, walking through their remains, they knew.
At the exit, automatic doors lay ripped from their tracks, twitching as the gears tried tugging them back. There was no going back, or was there? J.P.’s would fix the door, clean up the blood, dispose of the bodies. J.P.’s would reopen, and we would be back on the menu.
Outside the door the world bobbed, floating in a vast ocean of neon. Screens covered the sides of rundown skyscrapers that disappeared high above in a sickly brown smog. Chub-faced residents peeked out of the tightly packed windows or hovered on small balconies. Their outlines were lit by the ads on the screens, some featuring fresh-cut chiquine steaks.
Car horns blared from a street ahead where the herd had run through. In the distance, the wail of sirens and gunshots penetrated the hum of the city. People hovered in alleys and against buildings, waiting to see if there were more of us.
My legs shook, kneecaps turning to rubber. I extended my wings as far as I could, feeling the breeze flutter through my feathers and hair. The cool air reminded me of summer nights on the farm as autumn crept in. I closed my eyes, replaying the memories of those nights when Leah and I drank sweet tea, the boys played in the fields, and we’d soak up the last rays of summer sun. Then I opened my eyes, and it was all gone – my family, the sun, my life.
The gunshot echoed in the valley of the screens, the dart piercing my shoulder. In seconds, the spinning world turned black.
I was flying. I kicked the daze from my limbs, trying my best to scrape the coated flooring but never quite reaching it. My legs spilled from holes in a canvas reinforced with chains that ran to the ceiling. The room was clinically white except for more chiquine held in similar hoists.
A newly lamed leg dangled below where the dart had hit me. I knew this feeling; it was the same lameness my other leg had had, and I finally understood – they drugged me to get me into the cell before I gained consciousness. That’s why the leg had never recovered feeling.
To my horror, the leg on the other side that bled out was missing. A spot marred the knuckle where my leg had been taken and the wound cauterized.
Two men hovered beside me, wearing coverings that left only their faces visible. The younger of the two stared at me while the other swiped on a tablet, his leatherlike skin accentuating the wrinkles stretching across his forehead.
“You take care’uh the next one,” the old man said, never looking up from the tablet.
“But, it’s- it’s awake,” the boy stammered. “What if it feels it?”
“They don’t pay us enough to give a good God damn what it feels. Orders in, meat out, an’ if you ain’t fast enough they’ll get rid of you. Ain’t enough time for me to care.”
“They say it’s souls, you know. They make ‘em with dead souls to taste better.”
“You one’uh them soul food activist assholes? They’re why we got that mandatory time off. They’re why we didn’t get paid again until yesterday.”
“No, sorry,” the boy said. “It’s just… scary. What if they use me after I die.”
“Ain’t worth worrying about what you don’t know. That’s why they call it a secret recipe. All’s I know is chiquine come in on the truck sleepin’ like a baby, and when they’re picked, I get to cuttin’.”
The boy stayed silent. In the closeness between us I saw the fear in his eyes. In that moment I wasn’t sure who was worse off, the chiquine or the humans.
“Alright now,” the old man continued, “you’re cuttin’ R3. Corporate wants all employees to try the new dry rub – guess so we can tell customers it ain’t shit when they ask.”
He pulled a metal rod from the side of his cart and handed it to the boy. The boy looked at him and hesitated, then walked toward my left side.
“Other side, R3!”
The boy hurried to my right and turned the rod on. A beam sputtered along its side, buzzing like a hummingbird. He gripped one of my legs and at the touch I kicked, my hoof connecting with his leg and sending him stumbling backwards.
The old man laughed. “She givin’ you hell, eh boy?”
The boy gathered himself, then returned with anger in place of his fear. He pressed the beam against my skin, and I howled in pain as he got to cutting.
I’ve lost count of the days. I would count them when the employees close for the night, but over time I stopped. My body is getting older, my mind is too.
They’ve eaten my legs, those hungry people who picked me. Of my six legs, only one good one remains, and one lame. I’ve learned to prop the lame leg beneath me – a fleshy cane that helps me shuffle. It has rotted and shrunk over time, and when the window opens, they see it and quickly move on.
Like Shatterbeak, I’ve become the last of the old batch, so the other chiquine leave me alone. Every day new chiquine appear – the eyes always find them first. Most of them rarely last a day, couple days tops.
I used to bark and screech when they’d appear, begging for them to pick me, but they never will. I wouldn’t be alive had I not broken out of the room and scarred up my leg, I would have been fully consumed. So, now, I spend my days lying in a fake meadow, watching digital birds fly past, knowing death would have been the better end.
Original and chilling!