032017

Only the White Meat

If sharks flew they avoided the mutant forest, where phage-ridden former humans vied with giant pitcher plants for the few morsels that entered there. Out of the forest the river ran red with blood, always, and sometimes you could fish out humanovegetal larvae, drowned and spinose. Yes, the country deteriorated rapidly after the gene factory was hit by free-something terrorists during the early days of the Collapse. Things are better now, and you hardly ever see blood in the river. No one enters the forest still, but aeronautical sharks (if they ever existed) are gone. It’s good they’re gone, and it’s good the humans are gone.

No, I don’t call what lives in the forest human. It’s sessile, for one thing, and reproduces by budding. Not human at all. Me? Why I’m no more human than you. Little hardwood sap in my veins maybe, and the rest pure Felis domesticus. No, they’re all gone, or if they’re not, they as good as are.

What happened to the dogs now, I like that too. It’s fitting that they should now be small, shelled, and six-legged. Eight would be better (more to pull off) but I’m not greedy. If there was a god, that god would be a cat. And that cat would be me.




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