The mechanized killing floor lies poised, awaiting the shrieking cries of
the coming dawn. The tiles glisten. The ruthless automatons, suspended in
action, strain against their metallic joints in rigid anticipation of the
automated glory of the impending slaughter. The silver hooks beckon. The
flock arrives.
Bleating ignorance huddles in the pens, trembling at the
non-negotiability of evolutionary subjugation. The siren calls and the
fittest enter: a chain of jovial migrants glistening under the burden of
utility.
The siren calls again. The iron gates fly open and the flock surges
forward with the rapid abandon of absolute conformity. Innumerable hooves
timidly click beneath the heaving fattened shanks of premature animal
complacency. The masses of tattered wool push and nip to be the first to meet
its unforeseen destruction.
The gates slam shut as the whining cogs begin to turn. The belt begins to
move. The first of the blinking gaggle is mechanically lurched toward the
portal of its demise. The pistons hiss, the air sizzles, and the smell of
burning wool temporarily stings the nearest migrant worker's nostrils as he
drives the barbs into the brutish spinal column. The limp sheep slides down
the shoot.
The knife slides across the cullet splitting fibrous tendon and artery.
The bleeding animal is hoisted onto the first hook in the longs lines of
shining prongs that decorates the looming ceiling. Others follow.
One fresh carcass after another is strung up for disassembly. The engines
scream and the whole line begins to move. The swaying line of already cooling
flesh begins its march towards viable commodity.
First the skin is peeled away. The robotic claws strip it of in one fell
sweep from head to tow, like a footsie pajamas being torn from the body of an
infant, leaving the tender pink tissue underneath exposed for further
rendering.
The legs are neatly broken. The hooves, which danced in sheepish idleness
only moments before, are sliced off and discarded. Then the longs slow slice
from mouth to anus and the internal organs spilling forth to hang around the
flood soaked ears.
The thin films of flesh are cut. The quivering organs are torn out from
within the abdominal cavity to leave it a gaping, dripping maw. They are
casually thrown aside to be sorted later. Some of the more bulbous,
liquid-filled organs, like the bladder bounce feebly as the hit the cold
blood-splattered floor.
Then the skinless head is wrenched off the fast dissipating body. The
glassy eyes, frozen, still stare fixedly at the phantom assailant. The head
gets its own spike. The cheeks, lips and tongue are expertly removed.
The body continues on to be primly sliced and packaged.
When the quota is reached the floor lies empty once again. The jovial
migrants hurry home to wash the blood and offal from their skin, to squeeze
out the organic liquids of their victims that have soaked through their
saturated pores.
The machines are still once again. The day's massacre is completed. The
engines cool. One laborer tarries to unclog the drains around the
disembowelment station.
The florescent lights click off killing apparatus descends into obscurity
to await the morrow's continued perpetuation of man's frenzied carnivorous
consumption.
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