Edited for Content

Edited for Content

By Andy Hayes

My alarm sends a jolt through my dream and pulls me back into reality. The memory of her face fades with each sonic pulse of the alarm. I’ll see her when I sleep next. I rise without hitting snooze and find the off switch on my clock radio. I stretch my arms to the ceiling and swing my feet over the side of the bed. The computer display on my end table says that I am 100% synced to this body and that all of my faculties and memories should be intact. I check my end table drawer, put on my watch and roll an old gold band ring between my pointer and thumb. Long worn away is the inscription, but I remember it, and that’s what matters.

I think I was in Tokyo the night before, but I can’t really remember. I move a few fingers across the display to find my record of resynchronization and see that indeed I was in Tokyo last night and the SyncWay charged me 1,000 dollars for a trip back.

I rub my eyes and give this new body a couple of quick run diagnostics. My arms work, my fingers work, my legs have feeling, my toes move. Everything is in order. Me, Tokyo me rather, was probably on its way to the incinerator by now. I tuck the ring into my slack’s pocket and dress myself in something that will allow me to move inconspicuously amongst the crowds. I opt not to take the SyncWay to work this morning and instead travel by bipedal motion.

Walking is something that is out of the ordinary for anyone with any sort of financial backing. I push the door out of my building and feel weak, sync sickness probably. My building is a mile and a half away; that should be more than enough room to get the bugs out of my system. I pass people on the street begging for change, physical money something that is quickly becoming antiquated. I drop them a few spare bills that I happen to have in these pockets and keep moving.

The doors to my work swing with more ease than those of my building, and I take that as a good sign. The girl at the reception desk looks surprised that I chose to walk and quickly rips off a formal greeting. I nod at her to soothe her unease. My boss wasn’t so easy. He steps out of the SyncWay already screaming. He wants to know who let the cat out of the bag about our newest project. ResurERECTION; a show about people avoiding sexual arousal on threat of death. I duck out of the conference room and into my corner office.

My walls are covered with posters with large title splashes on them; trophies from my war in prime-time television. We are immortal now, but I feel like that has just given people more time to watch TV. I go to the minibar in the office and pour myself a tall glass of whiskey from an ornate glass decanter. The set was a gift from my mother or some long-forgotten girlfriend. The whiskey was much less royal than its holdings let on, but it’s all in the presentation I remember being told.

The city is dead out of my window. The only people on the street are those panhandling for money and the few transport trucks that are used to haul fresh bodies from place to place. It’s odd how quiet it is now. Long gone are the car horns and general roar of people that was the ever present heartbeat of this great city a decade and a half ago. SyncWay trucks don’t come standard with horns, and the bums and beggars don’t have much to say beyond their repeated speech.

There’s a knock at my door and I turn to see my red-faced boss glaring at me through his beady little black eyes.

“Ratings are in,” he says

I just nod and finish my whiskey.

“Your raise in in the works,” he says

I nod again, and he leaves my office. He slams my black aluminum door to show that he might still have some power in this building. I call to my computer, and she responds pleasantly. I can’t help but think if media designed technology or if technology designed media. Voice activated and responsive computers were something you saw in futuristic movies, but now they were reality.  

The office is quiet and moreso, boring. I put the old gold ring into one of my desk drawers and ready myself to die. The SyncWay in our office has a line, so I use the my boss’s private chamber. The SyncWay’s booth opens and I step in, the large white doors seal and a pleasant arrangement of classical music plays. I close my eyes and relax until I feel the cold metal press against my forehead.

I wake up to a pleasant chime and the doors of this SyncWay opening. I step out into the sun and my eyes fail to adjust immediately. A familiar hand shields the rays from my new eyes, and all of my prewalk routines seem to check out. The SyncWay says that I’m 100% synced and that all of my faculties and memories are intact. I watch as people emerging from their white wombs do the same tests that I just completed. Contestants, hosts, set assistants, producers, directors, come out of these booths. My credit has been charged the same as theirs, but I can write my charge off as a business expense.

One of the many set assistants comes over to me to offer me a cool towel and a freshly squeezed lemonade. Long gone is all of the fanfare and pageantry of an executive coming down to mingle with the everyday. I take them both and thank her. As she turns I notice her tight skirt’s revealing outline, and I know why she got the job. My own tight-skirted secretary bustles out of a SyncWay booth and already has her computer chatting away in her ear.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Why are you here? The office is blowing up about the leak and you’re on set?” she says, her new hair falling over her face.

I ignore her and continue to walk towards our set. The show’s name is The Great Passing. It used to carry a number after it denoting whatever generation it was on, but after 10 they decided to to nix it in favor of the much cleaner title.

“You know, TGP can’t be your endgame. You need a new project. The ratings are constant but it’s only a matter of time...” she trails off when we get to the set.

She had been with me since the beginning, but the set still takes her breath away. Massive stone rollers covered in dried blood litter the lot like Easter Island statues; gas-fueled nozzles spray their payload in large towering flames; hungry metal jaws mechanically snap around loose limbs. Large bloody carts haul off corpses of people long passed on to their next respective body. People are shouting for certain camera angles and different obstacles to be set up. Contestants dressed in their bright jumpsuits with corresponding team names are lined up, tittering like they just got out of their first Sync.

A director yells at me, but I ignore it. He has a job to do, and I’m just an executive. I don’t have much to say about this everyday stuff. I take a long sip of my cool lemonade as I watch a man clad in neon green become impaled on a wicked looking spike. I can see from a nearby monitor an animated icon fade away from the upper left-hand corner. This green guy only had one life left before he would Sync back to the waiting room with the rest of the losers. My assistant finds her tongue again and starts up.

“This wave is great, and we’ve rode it for a good long time; blood, guts, mutilation are all well and good, but we’re only appealing to half of our audience. This new sexy show has tested well with both genders. Women love sex just as much as men, but dismemberment is pretty much penis-linked,”

She rambles on and on, because she knows her career is pretty much dependant on mine. I hired her for the same reason lemonade girl was hired. She wore a low-cut top and said all the slightly suggestive things I was looking for as a young exec. It was all a ruse; she is far smarter than that.

“We’ll make success, because that’s what we have always done,”

“We did it once,” she replies.

I hear screams of consciousness leaving bodies and the grind of bones under stone wheels. Young interns fresh out of film school rush to clean up the mop in their full rubber suits. This was their chance! Yeah right, I want to laugh in their faces. They’d have better luck running the Great Passing than they do cleaning up after it.

Suddenly whistles blow and explosions light the large warehouse in a flash. Someone has won. I stop and clap for the fellow before his dismembered limbs can even touch the cold concrete floor. Even in winning his body is mutilated, but when he wakes again it won’t be in the waiting room. He’ll wake in a cushioned room back at our office where we’ve prepared a lavish meal and a comically large check for his winnings -- all filmed of course. He’ll make a speech about the strength of God or thanking his parents, and then make the plug for SyncWay systems for making this change in his life possible.

The cue cards would stand no more than five feet away from him, so that even his new eyes can read the black type. Once we got the footage the check would be taken from him and the money would be electronically transferred to his account. He’d be shoved out into a SyncWay and wake up at his house. It was clean, it was ordered, and that’s the way it just was after however many years we’d been on the air.

Fingers snap in my face, I’d zoned out watching the next round of contestants compete against each other. This round played as teams with one group running the course at a time while the other team controlled the lethal traps. The studio is filled with pointless screams of bodies that mean nothing.

“Come on, office, now, go,” my secretary says through her red lips.

She looks at me unblinking through purely cosmetic glasses. People didn’t need glasses since we started being reborn with new genetically superior versions of ourselves every other hour. I agree to her request and watch as her perfectly shaped rear end leads me to the nearest SyncWay booth.

I wake up back in my boss’s office and he’s already mid-sentence yelling about something to do with my program. Something about having to make it harder because of all the winners we’d been having lately. I brush him off; winners made it real, and made it relatable to the audience. He leaves in a huff to go blow his little horn at someone he actually had a shred of power over.

My office is dull and lifeless, the stopper on my whiskey decanter was left open. I bet my father would have thrown at the whiskey left in the container, but I just drank another cool glass of “stale” whiskey. There’s work beeping in my ear, and I nod my head in confirmation. The voice in my ear kicks on with a soothing female voice. She informs me that the winner had successfully succeeded in overdosing on some sort of drug within the time it took me to get back to my office chair. He didn’t have a backup body, so he woke up in the incinerator room where his old body from The Great Passing was being cremated. That body didn’t last long, so he was currently just dead. The voice assured me that he’d be revived as soon as the SyncWay truck brought his new body to his home.

“Idiot,” I mumble.

“Yes you are,” my secretary says from behind me.

“You heard about our fabulous winner?” she continues.

“Yup,”

“It’s your 166th birthday next Friday, what are you going to do?”

“Get drunk and kill myself,”

She saunters over to my liquor and pours herself a glass. Takes a sip and makes a face like she just bit into a lemon.

“Stale,” she says finishing her glass.

I knew there was a reason I hired her. We move from day to day work in a daze. She’s always on my coattails nagging away about one thing or another. We finish, and go our separate ways. A courteous goodnight the only goodbye we afford. She takes a SyncWay and I take the ring from my desk drawer. I don’t want to leave my wedding band at the office, so I walk. The rain on my skin is glorious. The homeless around me scatter under what little cover the barren streets provide. There are no lamps because only the poor walk these streets now, and no one cares about them. Just high rise skyscrapers with straight, uncreative, uniform lines. Muggers and murderers don’t matter because all money is carried electronically and murder would just get me back home faster.

A few bodies splatter on a distant asphalt. Probably just some kids trying to get their kicks. There used to be the past time of running across streets in between SyncWay trucks, but that got old fast. Then they moved on to trying to get hit by the trucks. The trucks were installed with cattle catcher-like front bumpers that would still kill the kids, but would brush their dead bodies out of the way so that they could continue to their destination. This must be the latest craze, jumping from the skyscrapers and making messy piles of mush of themselves.

The hair on my head stands on end, and my arms feel lighter. I look up just as the lightning catches me. The bolt throws me a hundred feet back and into the hard asphalt. I can feel my organs failing and my chest cavity filling with blood. I can’t see, I can’t smell, I can’t hear. I’m dying. This is much more miserable than the simple piston through the temple that the booths take.  

I wake up and I’m not in my house. It’s not morning, it’s still night. I remember that I had used my back up body at my home to party in Tokyo. I curse my damnable desire for spontaneity. The truck didn’t deliver a replacement body I guess. I get out of the booth and run everything down. Everything works and I take note of where I am.

My office is dead quiet and the sound of trucks outside plays in the void left by the last conversation of the day. I take the stopper off of the decanter and pour a glass of whiskey. I sip it while looking out over the city. It’s so quiet, there are people on the sidewalks milling about looking for some place to hide from the rain. My old body still splayed out in the middle of the street with my burnt clothes clinging to my body. A truck rumbles by and stops at my smoldering corpse. Two men hop out and unceremoniously pick up and throw my body into the back of the truck.

Another long sip of my whiskey as I watch myself be compacted in a trash compactor along with a dozen other bodies. My secretary’s voice breaks my quiet sanctuary. She must have been notified of my unplanned death.

“Lightning eh? That’s a real shock,” she laughs to herself, and I can’t help but slip a chuckle.

My ring.

My glass falls onto the table; its contents pool around the unstoppered decanter and each of the glasses. I push my way past my secretary and head out the door without waiting to hear her gasp or her questions. She’s with me when I break out of the front door to the office building into the cold rain. She complains about her hair and her makeup, things that were done before she even lived in the body.

“My ring,”

She gasps and gone are her complaints I can hear the truck no more than a block from us. Bright spotlights shining from atop it to scan for bodies of kids who chucked themselves from top of these skyscrapers. Those kids were my only saving grace. Each time the truck would stop we would be able to gain a block or so on them. Then they’d start up again and lose us. We pant and moan, she lost her heels a couple blocks back and the rain is no longer piercing cold, but refreshingly brisk.

My wife’s decision to kill herself was her own. She had lived 124 years and was ready to go. She’d complain about too much life, and about the loss of the transitional. You were never going somewhere, you were always here or there. In her later years she would walk everywhere. Take the long way to work and the longer way back home. She’d start off without even having a destination. She’d just walk. I watched the wrinkles develop on her face, the deep lines woven into her flesh that told stories about the laughs we’d shared. The marks around her lips were no longer permanent, but instead changed and moved with each day that passed. She was new in her old.

We never talked about me dying with her, but I felt like it. I wanted so bad to go with her, but I just couldn’t. I wanted to wake up and be 32 forever. I struggled over many glasses of whiskey and many more bodies. She never pressured me, and she went bravely into death.

My face is wet with a salty mixture of tears and rain. We catch up to the truck at the edge of the city after running five or so miles. We latch ourselves to the back of the truck unbeknownst to the drivers and suck in cold, crisp breaths that burn our lungs. Walking is a rarity and running is extinct. Our bodies are genetic masterpieces, but running unconditioned wears our engineered bodies still. We nod off with our heads rested against the worn steel runners of the truck.

We awake when the truck finally comes to a stop. We’re far out of the city and the sun’s rays are probing the sky as if seeing if the sky is prepared for the sun’s full force. There’s no gate or fencing and we hop off the truck without a word. We look a mess, so we attempt to hide out. The truck’s compactor opens and I see my mutilated body. The burned face stares blankly ahead. I’m so desensitized by now that I hardly care enough to exchange a second look. I pull through body parts like I’m rummaging through garbage. My pocket is mostly burned shut, but I feel my ring through the fabric. I rip and a tear and finally it’s free. I quickly shove it deep inside my pocket. We decide to look for a SyncWay back, and walk through an open door on the dock.

The hallway is well-lit and empty. The shift must have just ended. We move through doors looking for those signature white booths. We find none. A scream breaks us from our search and panic courses through our veins. We find a room that’s larger than any of the other rooms. It overlooks a painfully lit warehouse. Rows and rows of beds from wall to wall. Each bed with a bald, naked, pregnant woman strapped to it. Their eyes are shut with pupils racing beneath eyelids like insects trapped under the skin; their heads wired to monitors that read in fast numbers and stuttering lines. I see several births in the span of a couple minutes. People in white coats and masks move and take the babies immediately, and then later come for the mother. A new bed with a new woman is placed in the spot left vacant. This is where our bodies are coming from.

A gunshot catches my secretary in the back of the head, and I watch as her lifeless eyes stare at me as her body crumples and slides down the glass leaving a deep crimson trail. I duck and run. I hear voices and the sound of boots running on tile floor. I burst through door after door, not knowing where I was going. Dead end, turn around, dead end, turn around. The rooms are mostly vacant, this disgusting factory must be staffed by only a couple dozen people. Finally I hear the sound of rain on the side of the building and I emerge into the fog of the morning. I run for the second time since my wife died.

I fall into my bed exhausted, and place my ring into my end table drawer. They had no clue who I was, just some guy that looked like every other guy from behind. I wake up to my alarm the next morning after a sleep filled with memories of her. The SyncWay’s computer screen is still black. My body is sore and aches with each movement. I can feel the body attempting to repair tissue, something that I haven’t felt since I was mortal. I immediately find my ring and clinch my fist tightly around it. When I open it my palm is left with neat white ring surrounded by the pink of my palm. I call my computer, and she responds ever-so-sweetly. I ask her to contact my secretary and she does.

“Hello,” she says cheerfully.

“Where are you? We need to talk,”

“At the office,”

I hang up, get dressed, and walk to work.

The receptionist says her rehearsed salutation and I give her the most polite cold-shoulder I can. I find my office amongst the motion and commotion all around me and call my secretary in to see me.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“Find a new angle, blood and guts were the thing this past decade, but we need to think about next decade,” she replies

“Wait, no...”

“No, don’t wait, right now!” she yells.

She doesn’t remember. I rush out of my office, my mind racing; our memories are data, and our data is controlled by those evil fucks in the white lab coats who harvest human children. I watch as my disgusting co-workers move in and out of those disgusting booths. SyncWay knows me, if they can alter what she knows, what she remembers, then they can figure out who I am. I need to make this public, I need people to know what I saw. The studio, but I have no clue how to get there by walking. It could be half a world away. There has to be a camera or some sort of link out of here; I hear the telltale whistles and explosions of someone completing The Great Passing, and it hits me, the winner’s lounge.

I wade and fight my way through the sweating boys and girls trying to catch their next break, and finally find myself with the guy holding the big check. Another winner, two in two days, my boss won’t be happy about that. The SyncWay booth opens and a lanky brown-haired man steps out with a smile already cracking his gaunt face. I see the transmitting light on the camera. This is live.

No one stops the executive from getting on screen. The director rolls his eyes at me, but I don’t care. I had him his check and smile some fake smile.

“Hello The Great Passing audience. SyncWay is a lie, they control your memories and are harvesting babies from millions of women to give you your immortality. Don’t die,” I’m tackled and dragged off screen. It went out though. The whole world saw it, and there’s no way SyncWay can edit that many memories in that time. A small smile cracks my face, my eyes wide with hope. I think of my wife, turning and smiling at me, begging me to catch up to her to catch the sunset over the green hillside. I close my eyes, and feel the gun’s barrel pressed against my temple.

My alarm sends a jolt through my dark dreamless sleep and pulls me into consciousness. I don’t hit snooze and rise immediately. I stretch my arms to the ceiling and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I check my status on my end table’s computer. I’m 100% synced, all of my faculties and memories should be intact. I open the drawer and pull out an old gold band ring.

“I wonder where this came from?” I ask to myself.

 

Dinner Party

Dinner Party

“I think a good citrusy Chardonnay would pair nicely; something that won’t overpower the spicing,” states a woman looking through petite half-moon reading glasses.

Her fingers run over dust covered labels, pausing every so often to further investigate a bottle. The wine cellar is dimly lit as to not prematurely age the wines, and there’s a certain chill to the room. She clutches her knit cardigan tight against her chest. Her gold bracelets clink against each other and against the antique bottles; the hollow clink reverberates against the brick walls of the cellar. A streak of artificial light breaks the dark and dust swirls in the wake of an opened door.

“Are you still choosing a damn wine? The meal is almost on,” a man shouts down the stairs

.

She runs her hands over the bottles in the row before her and finally settles on a bottle with a clear label; a citrusy Chardonnay from Domaine Corsin Saint Veran. Her feet shuffle and her joints creak up the stairs. The dim lights are flicked off and the door is closed. A wide mahogany spiral staircase runs up the rest of the floors like the spine of the house. She grasps the handrail with one wrinkled hand and cradles the bottle of wine with the other. Her steps are slow and measured. The sound of voices echo down the long staircase and the smell of roasting meat and vegetables follow.

The woman takes the last step off of the spiral staircase and enters the dining room. A long heartwood-cut dining table is dwarfed by the size of the room. Each seat at the table is ornately carved out of matching heartwood and accented with inlaid gold. No unnatural lighting was needed, but there is an equally majestic crystal chandelier above the table. The hall seemed more fit to gather a few dozen people rather than the five bunched at the head of the table.

“About damn time,” the man from the cellar says.

“Oh shush there Mr. Condor,” says a middle-aged woman in a conservatively cut dark blue dress.

“What is it you chose? Oh, the Domaine, what a great choice,” she continues with a matronly comfort to the much older woman.

“Don’t patronize the woman Ms. Puma; she’s been here longer than us all,” adds Mr. Bear from across the table.

The lone tone of a sterling silver dinner knife striking a Swarovski Crystal wine glass interrupts all banter. All eyes turn towards the silent man sitting at the head of the table. He did not say anything more, just simply picked up his pure white napkin and placed it on his well-pressed right pant leg. Everyone sits up straight and slides their heartwood chair legs over the Persian rug as silently as possible.

Sullen men carrying covered large silver platters swoop in like a fleet of birds gathering on a carcass. They present the course and leave as silently as they arrived. Salads are the first course, some light greens with a light dressing. The guests drink a mineral water with lemon, and pick through the greenery that none of them really care for. They’re here for the main course. The men flock back in and present the next dish, and everyone gathers themselves for what they’ve been waiting for. Mr. Condor is visibly fidgeting and watching the head of the table’s every move. Waiting for him to take the lid off of his meal. The man begins, and everyone else follows suit.

Steam rises from the dishes like the warm last breath of a dying deer in the middle of winter. The meat is flanked by roasted red potatoes with a golden buttery glaze and flaked with herbs and spices. The green beans are still sizzling from the pan they had left, thinly sliced almonds top the beans, and the same butter sauce has been drizzled over them as well. The meat is choice cut. A deep brown crust covers the flesh from where the pan seared it. A light reduction covers the cut; made from the pan’s drippings with crushed garlic and wine. The meat is lightly seasoned and barely cooked to let the meat be the main flavor. A deep red pool forms with the first cut.

Eyes roll and mouths smack and churn without thoughts of manner or circumstance. Mr. Condor gulps his Chardonnay Domaine Corsin Saint Veran without the care that selecting it took. The older lady eats in contemplation; she closes her eyes and savors each bite, chewing completely before selecting the next morsel. Ms. Puma has already finished her serving and is tidying her make-up in a pocket mirror. The man at the head of the table is finished as well. Mr. Condor is picking at his teeth, and looking at the man across the table who is just now realizing there were sides to accompany his meat.

“I’d like to see the biography please,” says Mr. Condor, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

Ms. Puma looks disgusted at Mr. Condor as she smooths down the front of her dress. The man at the head of the table picks up a simple white card printed on heavy stock stationery paper and passes it to Mr. Condor.

“Brian Desmond grew up on a farm in Idaho. He spent most of his youth doing hard manual labor, and you can tell by the firmness in the muscle. Brian also played baseball and football throughout his middle and high school years, and lettered in both sports. His social standing there allowed him to enjoy the young party scene as well, and that shows in the divine ribboning in the flank steaks. His college life was typical mostly, and he underwent a rather harsh break up with his High School sweetheart which caused him to become sedentary for a year or two. This allowed the meat to properly marble and lace some of his hard working muscle with the fat needed to make it juicy. He graduated with a degree in Telecommunications and went to work in sales for a company specializing in selling window shutters; a desk job mostly, and there was a certain loss of fitness. He never married, and died of a heart attack in his kitchen while he prepared his dinner,” Mr. Condor reads.

Everyone relaxes and drift into thoughts of their own life. What they had done to where they were. They didn’t share this with their dinner party; they were just Mr. and Ms. Generic Predator here, and that’s the way they all wanted it to be.

“I always love the ones that died alone,” says Mr. Condor now chewing his toothpick.

“I just care if they were active at all,” says Mr. Bear patting his protruding gut.

He and Mr. Condor laugh.

“Don’t be so callous,” says the man at the head of the table.

Everyone sits upright again, except for the older lady who is finishing her last bits of Brian Desmond.

“We mustn’t forget our humanity,” he continues. He stands, and politely excuses himself.

As soon as he’s comfortably out of earshot, Mr. Condor stands and paces at the head of the table.

“Why’s he always the big guy around here. This is my house, for christ's sake. He brought in his own staff, used his own china and cutlery, and then dictates everything to us like we’re nothing,” he says, looking at all of his companions for something to build upon.

“He started the club,” says Ms. Puma.

Mr. Bear looks away, because he knows that without him there would be no dinner parties. Mr. Condor sees that there is no head of steam building, no desire for a revolt brewing, and sits down. The older lady finishes the last of her meal and looks over the biography that Mr. Condor left on the table. She doesn’t get far into it before the man returns and brings his fleet of servers. Dessert was served. The older woman and the man at the head of the table were the only ones to finish.

“I’ll be in touch,” says the man, and leaves once again.

Mr. Condor looks at Mr. Bear and rolls his eyes. Mr. Bear doesn’t respond. They all get up and leave without a word. Ms. Puma and the older lady neatly fold their napkins and place them on the table next to their dessert plates. Mr. Bear leaves his crumpled on his chair and pulls at the back of his slacks. They each have an individual private car that will take them to the airport, from which they will depart to different cities and live separate lives until they receive that crimson red envelope once again.

Mr. Bear is red in the face with a construction helmet squeezed so tightly on his bulbous head that it looks like it’ll be popped off like a champagne cork at any moment. He’s yelling at the contractors about the paving to be installed around his latest Honey Hickory Barbeque and Biscuits restaurant. It must be accessible by motorized scooter. It’d be discriminatory if it wasn’t. The contractor is remaining calm and outlining the changes he will have to make to accompany the wider handicap-accessible ramp. Mr. Bear regains his composure and apologizes. Maybe his blood sugar is low, he claims, and excuses himself to his truck.

His truck’s suspension groans when he enters and he’s breathing deeply by the time he’s settled in the driver’s seat. He fishes out a greasy brown paper bag. It sports the name of some local fast food joint, and he rips at it without thought. He eats, but he’s miles away. The flesh of cow and pig is just a tease, a hint of what he could be eating. This cow was raised and processed in a yard with a hundred other cows just like it. He finishes it with glazed eyes, and turns the key in the ignition.

His truck rolls into his driveway at his suburban home. It takes equal effort to remove himself from the undersized cab. He unconsciously kicks balls and toys off the pathway as he makes his way to the door. He announces his arrival and hears the pitter patter of human and dog feet alike. He walks to the kitchen with a child on each leg and a dog following in tow. He greets his wife, and cuts off mid-sentence when he sees the red envelope on the counter.

Ms. Puma rises from a bed that’s not her own, and is glad to see that the other occupant is long gone. Her corporate attire is still neatly folded on the dresser from the night before. She quickly dresses, checks her appearance in the mirror and heads out the door. It’s light out and people don’t give a second glance to the well-dressed middle-aged woman walking out of one of the city’s nicer apartment complexes. She turns on her heel and heads in a direction. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She looks straight ahead. She knows the telltale markers of a tourist, and she refuses to fall into those pitfalls. She is a stranger here, but that doesn’t mean she must look it. She lets her designer handbag casually swing from the crook of her arm. She calls the nearest taxi and hops into it. She states her destination in a calm voice without unnecessary courtesy.

The airport is rather dead today, and she sits and watches as planes land. She sits as close as she can to the terminals watching people being reunited with their families and loved ones. She shuffles through her wallet to find her frequent flyer card. Upon finding it she makes her way to the desk to schedule a flight, rolls down the departures board, finds the one closest to take-off and picks it. Her phone rings. Someone has sent her a red envelope. She cancels her flight.

Mr. Condor sits back in his leather office chair while one of the interns bobs her head between his naked thighs. Looking bored, he shuffles through his Blackberry and reads the latest stock exchange news in between rounds of Brickbreaker. Seeing that it’s going nowhere, he pats her on the head and tells her to leave. He stands, pulling up his custom tailored trousers and walks back to his desk. He shuffles through whatever papers one of his secretaries or underlings had left for him to review or sign or whatever. Nothing catches his eye, just white sheets of paper.

He yells out a name and a rather flustered looking woman in a tight skirt hurries in. He asks about a red envelope. He had monitored the other dinner guests’ mail and they had each received one. She explains that she had not yet checked his personal mail. There had been massive company-wide downsizing, and she has survived wave after wave of pink slips. Mr. Condor turns to her and looks completely through her. He fires her. She cries. He tells her to get out of his office. He calls his house and yells at his butler to check the mail. He has a red envelope.

The older lady was never given an animal name, because she had never wanted one. She would have gladly given her real name if anyone had asked. She led her dogs to the front porch and instructed them to sit while she worked off her dirty gardening shoes. She patted each one on the head and smiled. They wagged their tails and waited for the door to be opened. She kept them sitting while she took a handkerchief out of her back pocket and wiped down each paw. The door opened slowly and the dogs waited patiently for her to go through before bounding in.

She doesn’t mind the pile of mail that had gathered on her welcome mat. She steps over it while humming a nameless tune. She goes to the kitchen and boils a pot of tea. She looks on her counter and ponders what to eat. A light salad with a light dressing. She eats no meat in this world, and calls herself “vegetarian” to others. The sound of the wind through the high canopy of the forest that surrounds her house is her background music. She starts a fire in her fireplace, changes out of her dirty gardening clothes, lays down to sleep, and dies.

The head of the table also never took an animal name. Some had called him Mr. Lion, or those with deeper senses of humor Mr. Human, but he had never adhered to them. His keys jangle in the small bowl he’s designated for them, and the single coat hook on his wall now sports his black trench coat. He walks into the section of his one room apartment which he has decided to be the kitchen and fills a glass with water. There is no refrigerator, and there is no seating. He sits on the floor and stares off into the distance. His figure is thin but not malnourished. His eyes still have the youthful optimism of a child. He has the eyes of someone who has seen no true evil in this world. He has never killed anyone in his life. The gray walls are bare, and there is no furnishing. He is surrounded by red envelopes, dozens upon dozens of red envelopes. They explode out from him like a supernova, and pool in the corners of his apartment like blood.

“I’d like to see the biography card,” says Mr. Condor, finishing up his last bite

.

“I’d like to read it this time,” says the man at the head of the table.

“Julia Linsby grew up in upstate New York, and her parents were professors: one of Physics and one of the Fine Arts. She was an introverted child, spending much of it indoors behind a book or at the piano. The lack of physical activity in the formative years has allowed her flesh to become almost veal-like in tenderness. In grade school she quietly skipped several grades and moved onto college at the age of sixteen. She studied Environmental Science and Ecology and graduated in three years. The lack of any party scene beyond the local wine-tasting club can be seen in the lean cuts and pure flavor in the meat. She went to graduate school in Maine and spent most of her time there with her soon-to-be husband. They amassed riches in their creation of an indoor hanging garden and donated their vast fortune to charity. Her late years in the mountains allowed her to trek up and down giving the flesh some of the gamey lean flavor profiles of bison or buffalo. She was a vegetarian by most accounts, and you can seem to taste the lack of mixing. Her husband died last year, leaving her alone in their Maine house with her dogs. She died of a stroke in her sleep.”

Mr. Bear, Ms. Puma, and Mr. Condor all look at the empty seat and put down their forks. The guests don’t even feign caring about dessert. The man at the head of the table eats it in its entirety. They sit in stunned silence, fiddling with their napkins and sterling silverware before the man finally excuses himself and they get are allowed to get up and leave.

Three years pass before a new red envelope comes to each of their residences. Mr. Bear nearly broke down in tears. Ms. Puma was touring Europe alone and booked a flight back to the States the day she got the word. Mr. Condor had fired twelve assistants in the three years, and had an ulcer the size of a nickel that constantly harassed him, and got the letter the day he stood on the edge of his high rise office balcony.

“I’m glad to see you’ve lost weight,” says Mr. Condor patting Mr. Bear on the back.

“Har har,” Mr. Bear responds, the fake laugh resounding in his still very prominent gut.

“Boys, I can’t say you’ve all worn your years well,” says Ms. Puma.

A knock on the door shocks them into silence. The man at the head of the table moves to open it. A middle-aged man stands at the door with a bottle of wine held nervously in his hands. He moves to awkwardly shake the man’s hand almost losing the bottle in the process.

“Here, I uh, didn’t know what paired well with uhh...” the newcomer pauses and counts the seams on his shoes.

“Human flesh,” the man finishes.

“Yeah, human flesh,” the newcomer echos.