Meaty

The animals had cowered. They had been cowed. Until they had not. They had smelled the dung and death, they were smart enough to know what the whirring machines had meant. They were not dumb brutes. They were intelligent beings created for this beautiful earth. Until it had not been so. Until the smartest and slyest of the lot, the two legged ones had decided to enslave and use everyone for their nefarious purposes.

The animals had been cowed. They would wake up each day to the rattling sound of the tasteless corn being released into their filthy troughs. They would have no choice but to eat it. No choice but to take it and swallow it, their stomachs would be starved. Deprived of food and nutrition, or nutritious food, kept alive, barely, by shots and medicines mixed in labs.

The animals were kept outside, but it was not the great outdoors, rather the Great Lab which just happened to be outdoors. They were intelligent beings, and understood what it meant when their brethren were taken, ropes around their necks inside the big black metal building with the smoke coming out of it. They heard the whirring of machines, they heard the braying of their brethren. Then nothing. Day in and day out. They heard and understood it all.

The elders that had known about days long gone had long since gone. Had been taken into the black building. Every generation on this lot was born on this lot. Now all they remembered were the stories, they did not have the memories. The experiences. They knew that once their kind had willingly submitted to mankind, as a sacrifice, and to please the One. but mankind had abused that trust, and began to think they were owed something, which they were not. And now they were all here. Enslaved.

Or they had been here. Some of them were not anymore.

They had been cowed. Until he had come. He had been prophesied, but the only ones who remembered were the trees, and even of those, there were few left. Everything had been burnt. Most things had been destroyed. There was very little left.

Mankind had spread like a scourge on the earth, making a mockery of the title that had been bestowed on them, viceregents of the earth, by the Almighty. Making a mockery, making light of their elevated status, their role in the high heavens. Making a joke. 

Then he had come. The one. The one that would protect them. One by one he had begun to take them off the lots. He had disabled the cameras. The big corporations had not noticed. Not yet. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. Eventually, they should. He was here, he was taking them away. They were money to them, and they would soon be hemorrhaging money. They did not know it yet. But they would soon. He had a plan. Maybe there was some hope left for humanity. There were people like him out there.