Tevun-Krus #100

27 - The Lucky Ones - @Di_Rossi - AfroFuturism

The Lucky Ones

By Berengaria di Rossi / Di_Rossi  

Liberia, 2300 AD

The dead dog lay between us. The ridges of its ribs and hip bones cast small shadows in the ghostly blue light from a Lunar Lamp, making it look skinnier and more menacing than if it were alive.

"You're going to do what?" Nali asked, his voice cracking.

"Eat it," Riabo said, calmly. "Like our ancestors did."

"That's disgusting. And illegal," I said, my eyes flitting from the dog on the paving of the alleyway to my friend's face. "You're pulling our legs. You're not going to eat it."

"Haven't you ever wanted to taste meat? The flesh of a real animal?" Riabo asked, as if asking us if we wanted to live in a mansion.

"No," Nali said, "not ever. Meat is dangerous. That's why it's illegal. And it's just stupid to eat it. You could die. And make other people die, too."

Riabo shook his head, clearly annoyed with us. "For thousands of years our ancestors thrived on meat. Hunting was what men did. Real men were hunters, not turnip merchants." He poked his finger accusingly at Nali, whose own father ran a vegetable stand at the central marketplace.

"Yes", I agreed, "and our ancestors had horrible diseases and suffered from epidemics. Ebola is real."

Nali shivered and I understood why. Our national motto and the old posters could still be seen on public news screens and in the booths at Hologram Centres all over modern Monrovia.

Ebola Is Real.

Plants Are Our Future.

Meat = Death, Plants = Life.

In school, they showed us washed-out, jerky footage of the great epidemics of the 21st and 22nd centuries.

We were taught in countless lessons that when science and industry advanced enough to make plant-based replacements available, and most importantly, affordable for all, meat was discarded for good. We had thrown off our shameful dependence on animals just as our ancestors before had thrown off the brutal colonial masters who had enslaved us and ruled us from abroad.

We should be proud of ourselves, we were told, and that we were incredibly lucky to live in the post-meat era. Liberians were now healthier than at any other time in our history. Why would anyone want to go back?

From the end of the alleyway, the typical five-note melody of a city bus chimed, alerting people at the next stop of its approach. I looked up and saw a soap advert written across the night sky in a bloody red before the ocean breeze dismantled it and blew it overland.

We were alone.

I gestured to the dead dog. "Where did you find it?"

"I killed it," Riabo said, proudly. "A real man should kill his dinner."

"You killed someone's pet?" Nali whispered in disbelief.

"How do you know it wasn't sick? Maybe it had a disease?" I asked, wanting to poke him a little with the fear both Nali and I felt.

Riabo snorted. "Stories for grandmothers. Meat isn't dangerous. That's all a lie. If it was sick, it would have died already. I am a real man and --!"

"Ebola is real!" Nali cried, then glanced around and up at the tall, sleek nanoplast buildings towering over us. I also hoped no one was peering out of one of the hundreds of balconies, their Micro-Bands filming the three of us huddled over the pitiful corpse and streaming it directly into the next police station.

I looked at the scrawny dog, at its short fur and rat-like snout, and then at Riabo. "And how will you eat it? Just hack off a piece and start chewing?"

"You think I don't know what I'm doing? Real meat is cooked over a real fire. I'm going to grill it, of course." He grinned, showing off rows of large white teeth.

Nali jolted to his feet. "You're crazy, Ri, and I don't want to know you when you're infected! I will tell everyone I have never seen you before!" He sprinted to the end of the alley where he stopped and called to me. "Baruk! Aren't you coming?"

I looked from one friend to the other and shook my head. "I'll stay with the crazy boy."

I wanted to see how far he'd go.

Nali stared angrily at me for a few seconds but then disappeared around the corner. I fingered the metal bar I carried for protection whenever I ventured down to the harbour quarter.

I felt safe enough.

Riabo rummaged in the pocket of his trousers, finally pulling out a stolen LaserLite. From a niche, he took out a rust-spotted hubcap in which he'd already prepared some rags and such. He smiled again as the flames the 'burn' setting produced took hold, looking almost as disturbing in the dancing light as the lifeless dog did.

I watched as he set the Laserlite to 'cut' and removed the dog's back haunch with a crack and a short jerk. Dark liquid seeped out of the gash. Riabo stripped the leg of skin, revealing the pale muscle and joints underneath.

I felt my stomach turn.

He placed the leg over the fire, setting it across two metal rods.

Soon I smelt a strange odour like none I had ever before. I can't say it was unpleasant, but the thought of where it was coming from made me cover my mouth and nose with my hand.

Even at that moment, I still didn't believe he would go through with it. I still thought it was a bluff and he was attempting to impress, like when other boys jump from the roofs of the floating hotels into the ocean to the ohs and ahs of tourists.

But he was not bluffing. Once the leg was sufficiently blackened, he bit into the hot flesh, ripping it away from the bone, chewing and chewing with those large, white teeth.

"Mmmm. . . this is what life is. Delicious." He took another bite, eyes closed in concentration. Or pleasure. It was difficult to determine which.

I watched him eat most of the leg, disgusted and fascinated at turns. Then he leveled his gaze at me and held out the bone with the remaining meat clinging to it in ragged strips. Out of a type of morbid curiosity, I leaned forward and pinched off a bit, inspecting it before I put the tiny morsel cautiously into my mouth.

It tasted awful. Like burnt gloves.

I spit it out when he wasn't looking. He consumed the rest of the dog himself.

That was the first -- and last -- time I ever tasted meat. Even later, during times when I was hungry and alone, I was never tempted to fall into barbaric ways. There were other, more impressive, methods to prove I was a man. To survive.

Sometime later, Riabo was surprised by a patrol while he sat consuming a snake he'd killed along the side of the highway that stretches from the capitol into the hinterland. They locked him away in a mental facility on the grounds that he was a danger to both himself and the entire nation.

I testified before the magistrates at his trial that he was and always had been.

Ebola is Real and we are so very lucky to live in the post-meat era.