Tender Is the Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

His brain warns him that there are words that cover up the world. There are words that are convenient, hygienic. Legal.

Legalization occurred when the governments gave in to pressure from a big-money industry that had come to a halt. They adapted the processing plants and regulations. Not long after, they began to breed people as animals to supply the massive demand for meat.

Señor Urami’s words construct a small, controlled world that’s full of cracks. A world that could fracture with one inappropriate word.

“I know that when I die somebody’s going to sell my flesh on the black market, one of my awful distant relatives. That’s why I smoke and drink, so I taste bitter and no one gets any pleasure out of my death.”

“Slavery is barbaric.”

Amazing how THAT is barbaric but eating them is not.

There’s a TV on with no volume. It’s a rerun of an old show where the participants have to kill cats with a stick. They risk their lives to win a car. The audience applauds.

She’s gorgeous, he thinks, but her beauty is useless. She won’t taste any better because she’s beautiful.

He believes Esteban is a man trapped by his circumstances, by a wife who’s a monument to stupidity, and by a life he regrets having chosen.

“The government wants to manipulate you, that’s the only reason it exists.”

What he was thinking was that he wished the coffin were less conspicuous; he knew it was white because of the purity of the child inside, but are we really that pure when we arrive in this world?

“The human being is the cause of all evil in this world. We are our own virus.”