The Meat Room

Lapping, resonating after-thoughts of sound burrow deep into the pits, so when I lay my head against the frigid, solid floor of hell, I hear the faded spectres of a living upperworld. There’s the constant rutting of car engines, perverse against the split seam of the pavement, and the robotic chirping of the cross lights. Sometimes, on quiet days like this, I can hear the faintest murmur of human voice. Some are yelling slurs, but sometimes, like right at this moment, I can make out an allegretto riff of laughter. A woman’s laugh, just for a moment, caught and pinned in the brief soundless mora in the cracks of the city’s schedule. I feel numb hairs twinge, and a cold aching longs for that warmth above. This is a masochistic pleasure I commit, sifting through the sounds of that which I cannot live, remembering the old days…


Clang clang clang against the steely bars of my cell. A scrawny mutt of a man, barely an adult, pushes a tattered broom skeleton across the floor, sweeping paraphernalia into my space as though it were a dustpan. Clang, the broom head slaps against the bars. The boy-man has ruddy eyes and giant headphones curled around his ears; big, throbbing, silvery snails. I do not blame him for drowning out the noises of the Meat Room. Even on this relatively quiet (afternoon? Evening? Morning?), the sounds will curdle sparse blood. He shifts the broom shell morosely, peeling a flesh of dead matter in fraying patches, and shifting about the glassy pelt of broken glass. Clink, scrape, clank, clank. Backup rhythm to the song of the Meat Room.


I wish I could sink my head against the cold embrace of my floor again, but I’ve awoken to the hungry noises, and there is no escaping them. I close my stiff eyes, trying so hard to mute the raucous callings. There’s a feral grunt, growing with speed and starvation. Something pants desperately, another guzzles wet meat. I hear the sluice of tongue and teeth against something fetid, and my stomach turns. There are always the pleas of new Meat, and the snarling obscenity of the old, rotten slabs. Today (tonight?) there is a new jangle in the inverted symphony; a lone, constant growl. I am morbidly fascinated with its sheer repetition; this quavering moan seems to be breathless. It is a twanging bass line under song to the noise.


I want to fall back to the stony earth, and perhaps die some swift, albeit wretched death, but reality is not so kind. I half-walk to the twisted bars of my cell-cage, and trace a corroded finger pad down a rusty slope. How long have I been here? Days? Months? Eternity? How long have I feasted on random meals of sludgy, gray-hued ramen, thick with bland, water-tasting paste? How long have eaten their chalky pills, which I once struggled fiercely against? How long have I been… an animal?

Too long.

The caged crew of teeth-baring beasts here are as varied as their stories. There’s a few clones, either illegal ones caught and sent here, or ones created by a clever entrepreneur looking for a quick buck. The number of ghost-faces (mutants, I think they prefer to be called), who were unfortunate enough to get captured, have ended up in this pit. There are always a surly slew of prisoners, what with the prisons overflowing like mad nowadays, and even a few disturbing critters that the Labs reject. I’m not sure if these beasts, some of whom bear claws and teeth and many a limb, have been sent here as a sort of punishment for defection, or are throw into the motley mix for a bit of life. Those bastards bite hard, and the tattered grooves in my arm stand as testament to that.


There are others in the Meat Room, though, who are not mutants, freaks of nature, or murderers. There are shamed police officers, and a few enemies of the crime rings that run this. There are even some who are political prisoners, or who voiced their opinion against the winning government, or even those who dared to run at all. This is the bulging gut where all the waste matter is thrown to be digested. I can almost feel the fiery acids burn away my hair tips...


I have a small, misty shard of glass in my cage-cell, which I use as a makeshift mirror. They do not care if we end of miserable lives with a quick slit of the glossy cables. I’m sure they encourage it. Food for their Cerberus dogs is always welcome. I have no real desire to do myself in, however. The pasty-fleshed romantic smothered beneath jutting bone and wilting flesh still grasps a bit of hope and faith.  No, this glass shard is a gateway to my innermost thoughts. For the longest stretch of beaten-in-the-dark time, I saw not my eyes. I had been so used to seeing the little, hazel green peepers in the upperworld that the sudden incision from them left me longing. I now find innovation a key method of survival, and this groggy little plate of glass does the job. It is my drug. What else do I have? I stare at the gaunt, fearful image of myself, smoggy on the weathered material. Pallid flesh sags tired and sullen against tweaking facial bones, and my jaw seems to have drooped. Despite the lankness and freckle-corpses of my current complexion, my eyes burn ever so slightly, warming the weary flesh around them. This is all I have…


BEE---paBEEEEEP-aBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. I look up. The small monitor in my cell-cage, wrapped in odd elegance with jagged wire, oozes florescent light, and whines a sad whistle. The seedy green scalds the bleak air around it. “RA98c” it spells with blocky, wiry lines. My heart drops in the dusty wasteland that is my inner organs. I gasp, feeling the dry scrape of air against my arid throat. I’m up. I may die within minutes. I may be free, I may be damned. Either way, it happens now. Glancing at my eyes once more, perhaps for a final time, I detect a definite spark of fear.

                The Packers come. They are epicene, block-shaped beasts that march in glorified unison, even when they jet about the rusting corridors of the Meat Room. The one who finally come to my cage is perhaps a woman, and a miniscule woman at that, but with hair shaved to flaxen fuzz and a mouth so tight and grim you couldn’t crack it with a hammer. Like the others, she wears a sickly gray suit of stiff material, a belt full of nasty, torturous devices, and a matte-black set of sunglasses. She checks my glowing lights, marks a swift mark on her form she holds out, then yanks my arm out and flips it like a dying fish, to check the deep-etched digits and characters engraved in my white canvas. She checks another mark, and then pulls out a vicious-looking, serpentine rod. I know better than to fight; experience saves more souls than church ever will. The snaky head jabs against my frontal lobe, and I am momentarily paralysed. Even my blinking is arrested, frozen in a blissful moment of nothingness. Is death like this, a stage of blank looks that never cease? Is nothing better than anything, if anything is this?


The cage wails open with a cat cry, and in a dilapidated blur, the ashen handcuffs bind my wrists into some sort of awkward waltz. I’m dragged, pushed, and lead along, still rattled from the brain kick. Cell-cage bars leer and writhe and mesh under the heavy gauze of my mind numbing, and slowly paste themselves back to proper forms. Starved, zombie eyes strike from behind these thankless bands of metal, and the occasional hand scarts as we walk by.


The Meat Room goes on and on and on. Some areas wallow in moist darkness, while others shrivel in the throbbing pulse of fluorescent light. My pupils hiss and recoil at the sudden illumining. Some cages, though certainly not all, are being opened. Only those sporting glowing numbers are pounced upon. The Packers work without question. In a brief moment, I spot several Packers lunging upon a quivering mass of wound muscles, and cringe.


The whole trip is a slurred mess, and even when I am tossed like an old chicken bone into a foul-smelling unit do I start to remember my senses. Taste comes back to its full power, and the air in the tight, dark pimple is rank. My swirling mind finally churns its last churn, and I am left, half crumpled, in this new prison. This mockery of peace will not be for long, so I must enjoy every minute.


Finally, the unit shakes about like a louse-ridden dog, and climbs upward. It is some sort of elevator or lift, I think, and I see the occasionally blade of light through the skinny bars before me. The journey is slow, tedious, and barely seems to cover any distance. My fate is crunching up like a scared cat, hairs on end.


The door opens.


Light wades murkily in, diluted with dirty dust and cigar smoke. My unit churns, and I am vomited onto a gritty, tiled floor. The definite slope and my lack of balance cause me to slide down just a bit, and in that feeble time, the elevator-block slips away, leaving a fearsome wall.


I’m in an odd room, whose curved spine creates a downward slope that cripples the walls. It was once stark white, but now grime-stained a vile yellow-ochre. Coagulated messes still crust in some unlucky spots. It is not a large room, but contains a barred door, which now opens under the cruel grip of a Driller. He’s greasy to the bone, polished to a unctuous glisten of spitting pig fat, and wraps half of it under contrasting canvas cloth. The red bandana binds springy curls. He flashes a wet grimace, presents his humming cattle prod, and gives me a swing of his head. I know better than to disobey this man. He has sadism potmarked all over his face. I inch painfully forwards, then, repulsed at myself, stand as straight as my poor cadaver will allow. The prod jabs, still lifeless, into my back, as the Driller leads me into the wheezing light, thicker into the wafting smoke, and towards the jeering…


I don’t know how long has passed. I almost black out at times, and follow a mindless, zombie routine. I’ve found that fighting in a situation like this requires strategy, not brawn. It’s an enigma for the mind, not the fists. What I am about to do, however, is most definitely a fight of the fists, or, in the case of today, a weighty stick sporting a toothy nail. I’m in a waiting pen, and the lapping jeers and squeals from outside send cackling shivers down my spine. I grip, I bite my lip. I’m dressed in blaring yellow, to identify me from the others. Even my face is slathered in yellow, in case my colouring is torn from my body. I remember, for a moment, something my father told me. Yellow is an irritant, he said. That’s why he didn’t want yellow on his posters. A little was fine, but not as a dominant colour. Then he’d laugh, and joke about how pink was a calming colour, and how we needed to paint the world rosy.


I wish this room were pink.


The sensuous rumble of the bell melts into my ears, and the door creaks open. The jeers glorify into yells of passion, ululating skywards like wolf calls. I am pushed by the Driller’s grimy hands into the circle of fate.


I can’t even begin to describe this place to you. I can almost convey the rotting torture of the Meat Room, as that hellhole has some slim traces of humanity in the people with hope. This place, this nameless Hades, coughing scalding blood and scabbing nostrils, guts away any slim entrails of hope and faith and humanity. Here, you are an animal. Here, you gorge on the carved corpse of anything sane, and let the red water run down your throat and mouth and neck and deep into your belly and warm in pools in your palms, and you’re forced to enjoy it. There is no word for this land, and I am now part of it once again.


I suppose it’s an arena, where they once fought foam-mawed canines or savage fowl, but it’s far bigger, and bound by spiked wire that stretches to a high ceiling. Flashing boards sport colours and numbers, and howling crowds, thrusting against the wire, toss about ebony liquor and frail bills. I allow myself to regress, to find the creature within. This is the only way to survive. I survey my quarry.


There are two women to my left, both armed to the teeth. One is thick-necked and short, with thinning blond hair and cat’s eyes. The other is a spindly harpy queen, mouth stretching off her slender jaw, and knife held close. There’s one man that has to be a clone, because they have him shamefully dressed in a top short enough to reveal his lack of a navel. Part of me wants to look into the audience, to see if his original is watching. What would the expression be?


There’s a tall, thickset man so glossy and dark he has a blue under-glisten, and teeth so white they seem to blind. Beside him, there is an endogenous ghost-face with one bulging eye, orange and plump as an owl’s. Finally, there is a Lab reject, thrashing about the ground like a starved coyote. Her (is it a her?) face seemed too long and lupine to be human, and the superfluous amount of teeth doesn’t help the image. She snarls and clicks her tongue.


We begin.


I don’t want to describe the actions of this place. I hear they call it the Hole. This is an apt name, even if it doesn’t grasp the true horror of it all. In this hole-place, we regress. It is as though it this lopsided oval is a streaming wormhole through time, slurping us back into the feral, immoral days. Ha ha, as if those days were immoral, compared to these? Maybe, in another situation, I would laugh at this, but at the moment I’m driving a nail into the ghost-face’s chest. The owl eye bulges one last time, then fades to a sickly pumpkin, rotting after Hallowe’en. Please, don’t make me say this…


There are rules here, you see. You kill, people pay, people bet on you. If you don’t kill, they drag you off, still living, to places you don’t want to go, and from where you don’t return. No one wants to go there, and everyone soon learns that the only way to survive is to put yourself on top. Savage, and horrible, and tragically true.


I remember my first fight, in the Hole-place. I didn’t want to fight, until the ex-con with a bludgeon proved otherwise. It’s amazing who you kill in a moment of panic. This place sucks all questions from your mind. That’s the worst part, I think. Only the small shreds of hope, deep within, fuel this ferocity. Do I still honestly believe he’ll be here, to save me? How deluded am I? Why do I still hope? No, forget it, keep fighting…


Down goes the Lab reject, squirming desperately like a salmon pinned on a hook for a moment, with every movement becoming more laborious. Finally, the tense limbs cease quivering. I’m draped in sheets of blood, both from my veins and others. Please, please don’t make me realize this…


The crowd cheers. The crowd dances. Some boo, some wail in victory. More warm liquor and pasty bills slop around. The screen burns yellow. I burn yellow under the oozing carmine. The crowd burns yellow, shouts yellow and grins yellow. Yellow is such an irritant. Yellow, yellow, yellow…


Bodies, everywhere. How did my poor cadaver do all this? How did it survive the tumultuous aching flow of claw and nail and tooth and weapon? How does it still limp, half erect, in the Hole-hell hellhole? My mind slurs thoughts drunkenly. Blood seeps from me, and into me. Macabre blood transfusions slop their excess onto the mutilated floor. No, don’t be human. Don’t cry. Don’t let yourself realize this is real, Eric, don’t let yourself wake up. You’re still in bed, still under dad’s safe roof, still planning to go to the hinterlands with the guys, for a gush of beer and other cheap swills. You aren’t a damned soul because of your lineage. You aren’t a hostage, thrown to the dogs after your father dismisses you as some goddamn causality of political uprise. You aren’t alone, you aren’t scared, you aren’t a human, dammit! Let GO!


Yellow makes way for red. Deep, sensuous, bloodletting red of the deepest, richest, hungriest shade. They let it in; a beast I’ve never seen before, only heard about in the feverish nightmares of other Meat. They let in the Cerberus dog from another doorway; science went wrong somewhere, and let this leviathan breath sweet earthly air. Blood-shot eyes melt under shaggy, matted jungles of fur, and the head is mal-proportioned to say the least; only a tree-trunk neck keeps that meteor jaw from plummeting to the earth in a fiery heap. Golden teeth, some scorched black as night, gather sweat and spittle as the thing lurches towards me, tensing its muscles. I’m not but a rabbit now, under the embracing, umbrageous shadow of the inflated dire wolf. Soon, my blood will be one with his, and a bat with a nail can’t help me now. This is my fate.


   They will take you down, you know. I remember, once upon a time, being an idealist. I even wanted to be a leader, maybe breath some life into this bland little world. Oh, there was always fear, and monitoring, and regulation and censorship, and maybe I even saw it in my own father, but one never wants to believe it. The world is what we let it become. Should we let evil people drain the evil from us by being our thoughts and movement, or should we live our lives as free, evil people? Is there really a solution? I wonder now, on my violent deathbed, why I find so much peace. I wonder what became of my father. I wonder if he found out what became of me, or if he came here to see his son disintegrate, or if he even cared? I wonder if he is in power now, ruling these little Meat Rooms, as the head Butcher of them all, letting his son bleed to nothingness. But I’m dead by now, and happy, because I don’t have to wonder anymore.