Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Seven: Plucked (Part 2)

"Smooth," she said.

"What are you gonna do with that video?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon, you gotta erase it..."

"I'm thinking school assembly, on the big screen, the whole school watching...."

"Okay, seriously...erase the video...."

"I'll definitely be the coolest girl in school if I show the kids this."

"Not funny, Emerald."

The two of them bickered and wound their way through the cooler, in and out between carcasses of meat hung from big iron hooks. The hooks were fastened to rods that traversed the ceiling of the cooler like a maze of highway. There were whole cows and fat pigs hanging from these hooks, the organs hollowed out of their bodies. The animals, stripped down to meat and muscle and bones.

There were also sheep like this and goats, all ready to be broken down into the kind of meat seen in stores, wrapped in plastic, sitting on styrofoam.

But Josie had a feeling this meat would never make it into the actual supermarket, which he figured was in the room next door. This was for Bangkok, and no one else.

"Nothing here but meat..." Emerald said.

"Yeah, Trinket's not here."

They moved in and out of the hanging carcasses. It was a forest of meat, each side of beef or hanging sheep was a vine, a branch, and entanglement of bushes, a thicket they had to pass through. They noticed the carcasses swayed a bit as they moved. They swung in a sweet mish-mash of movement, that made them feel like they were treading through a swaying, under-water kelp forest.

It seemed like they had been walking through the meat endlessly. They seemed to be going far away and nowhere all at once.

"We have to find a door," Josie said, "...a way to get into the market."

"There hasn't been one."

"Do you think we're stuck?...Maybe this is a trap."

Something didn't feel right.

The blue lights above them flickered. Josie squinted, looked around. That's when he noticed it.

"The meat...Look at it." Josie said, quietly.

He stopped dead, and held his arm out to keep Emerald from walking further.

And that's when they saw the slight rocking of carcasses become a little stronger, like it wasn't them pushing the meat around, but that the sides of beef had their own sway, like they might be alive.

"Ghost Meat," the name blew into Josie's brain, as if he had said it himself, but he knew it came from outside of him.

The Ghost Meat were part of Bangkok's minions. They fed him, they protected him. They sacrificed themselves for him, like members of a cult.

"Ghost Meat..." he told Emerald. "They belong to Bangkok."

"We have to get out here," Josie shouted, and they took off through the meat.

"There's a door!" Emerald yelled back at Josie, "Just keep going straight."

But straight was a hard thing to manage. The Ghost Meat swung harder, like angry clock pendulums, their hooks slid around on the rails, metal screaming on metal.

Emerald and Josie ran for the door. Josie reached for the handle. But before he could get a good grasp, a huge Ox carcass came sliding toward them. It was the size of two refrigerators stacked on top of one another. It was covered in a thick brown hide. It was headless, but the legs and hooves and tail were still attached and they flung around uselessly, like flapping tube socks.