7
After the Transition, he’d always spend the night in the city, in a hotel, whenever he was on the meat run, and then the following day he’d go to the game reserve. That way he saved a few hours on the road. But with the female in his barn, he has to go back home.
Before leaving the city, he buys balanced feed specially formulated for domestic heads.
When he gets home, it’s night. He leaves the car and goes straight to the barn, cursing El Gringo. It had to be right now, right in the middle of the week he’s on the meat run that El Gringo unloads this problem on him. Right when Cecilia isn’t around.
He opens the barn. The female is curled up on the floor, in the fetal position. She’s asleep and looks cold despite the heat. The rice and water are gone. He prods her a little with his foot and she jumps.
She protects her head and curls up further.
He goes into the house and gets some old blankets, which he brings back to the barn and places next to the female. Then he picks up the bowls, fills them and returns with them to the barn. He sits down on a bale of hay and looks at her. She crouches over one of the bowls and slowly drinks some water.
She never looks at him. Her life is fear, he thinks.
He knows he can raise her, that it’s permitted. He’s aware there are people who do so, and who eat their domestic heads alive, part by part. They say the meat tastes better, claim it’s really fresh. Tutorials are available that explain how, when and where to make the cuts so the product doesn’t die early.
Owning slaves is prohibited. He remembers the allegations against a family that was later prosecuted for keeping ten female slaves in a clandestine workshop. They were branded. The family had bought them from a breeding centre and trained them. They’d all been taken to the Municipal Slaughterhouse. The females and the family became special meat. The press reported on the case for weeks. He remembers there was a sentence that everyone repeated, horrified: “Slavery is barbaric.”
She’s no one and she’s in my barn, he thinks.
He doesn’t know what to do with the female. She’s dirty. He’ll have to wash her at some point.
He closes the door to the barn and goes over to the house. Inside, he takes off his clothes and steps into the shower. He could sell her and get rid of the problem. He could raise her, inseminate her, start with a small lot of heads, branch off from the processing plant. He could escape, leave everything, abandon his father, his wife, his dead child, the cot waiting to be destroyed.