CANNIBALISM ALLOWED, BUT ONLY AFTER DEATH
I look at my hypoglorant TV and watch as the crowd of people increases. Anxious men and women stand on the lined pathways; hurling curse words at the lawyers and the girl rushing into the Court room. The media are unfortunate victims of the crowd’s wrath. They are wished dead, a malicious insult at a time like this.
By the side of the street lay a beggar squeezing out the remnant of flesh from the brain of a dead corpse-his saliva is mixed with old and festering blood. This is a world you could never have imagined-a world you could never have dreamt even in your worst nightmares. Cannibalism, yes that is the eating of human flesh, has been legalized. But on only one condition-the human has to be dead to be allowed!
This world creeps with hunger and decay, every one, his neighbor’s enemy. In 2209, the AntiOx- Association identified a toxic chromosome into the skin of every creature. Both man and animal were contaminated, but somehow humans lived. We survived. But the animals-their sight was horrid. Red minute chromosomes bulge out from their eyeballs and flesh, burning them, but still not killing them. Plants remain the only sane source of food. But only man remains the safe source of meat!
I glance back at the TV as Dane Havana approaches the bench. She raises her wiry hands and pledges to say the truth and nothing but the truth. But I don’t trust her. The defense lawyer moves towards her. He has a grin on his cheek and it is sickening. He nods at Ms. Havana, then throws her a question, “Tell me, Ms. Havana, how old your mother was when she passed away?”
She begins talking, but I glance away. A tattered newspaper catches my attention. It’s so old, dated over 200 years ago- when the world was still overtly intrigued by minute developments. I find a lady holding a banner, that screams, “I am not just a piece of tissue” A baby’s skull is shown mingled in blood and fragmented to many pieces. It is such a pitiful sight. I nod my head in disgust. Such inferior times. Now we have much urbane alternatives to that horror.
I look to the other side of the tattered newspaper, and see a throng of people shouting for their rights to be observed, “It’s my choice!” they scream, “Keep your beliefs off my biology”, and “It’s just a freaking blog of tissue!”
This photo takes me back to the time Cannibalism protests were made. Our slogans were not very different. We cried, “Dead, isn’t it?”, “It’s just some sham of skin, empty of life!”, “How dare you judge?, “He would have approved!”
I bet anyone reading this will think us evil and sick, but I’m not sure that will be the truth. In fact, I don’t think we’re so different from each other. All we had to do was validate it in our minds, until our hearts accepted it- just like the incident in this story. It’s not an attribute new to man.
So, Cannibalism was legalized on December 15, 2220. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I watched, at the age of 12, my departed aunt carefully stewed in a pot. It was appalling, yet it was justified. wasn’t really her, they said, just her blog of skin. Unfortunately for people like my mother, they were labeled contemptuous and disdainful simply because she refused to concur to such a lifestyle. I fear I have not been as strong.
For months, however, everyone was content. But as the days went by, and weeks turned to months, it seemed as though people were not passing away as needed. Funerals were not sufficient to keep a growing population, satisfied. We needed an alternative. It was at that point that the incident happened.
A young girl looked to her mom, as she was dying. Her eyes glowed with sympathy, but yet with hunger. She was starving, and desired her preferred option. But it was taken a little too long.
When we heard it, we screamed with disgust. How could she do that? How could she begin eating her mom while she was still alive? Lawyers sprung all over the place. After the Minnesota state court charged Havana with 1st class murder, the case reached the doors of the Supreme Court. Today is the court date.
I look to the Tvee and I can see people standing outside the court room. Many self righteous cannibals claim it was never the plan-such crude and uncivilized act of eating humans. But even in the midst of such claims, there were pleas for more allowance. After all what are they to do when people are taking too long to go unto glory?
As Ronald Dollis, a lawyer with dirty blonde, approaches the bench, my heart begins to beat. He is supposed to be the opponent lawyer but I fear he is not opposing enough. He cleans his damp forehead with a handkerchief, and with the other hand holds a thin file, “Ms. Havana, what was your mother doing, the night you –“his voice cracks, and he frowns, “-- ate her?” He was one of the few people who hated Cannibalism and for that he had a lot of enemies.
Dana looks down, but her face is impenitent, “Her eyes were shut. And I assumed she was dead.”
“So how did you, Ms. Havana, result in a bruise on your eye and mouth?”
She tries to explain, mumbling gibberish for her reasons. But by the end, it was obvious that at the last few moment of her life, her mother had struggled for life.
After the opposing lawyer took a seat, the defense lawyer stood up. He had a cynical grin on his face, as he called upon late Havana’s doctor, Dr. Stud.
“Dr. Stud, can you tell the court, Mrs. Benita Havana’s state of health before she died?”
“She was totally emaciated, utterly pitiful,” said the doctor, with cold dark eyes, “Her liver and lungs had failed. She was but, a living vegetable.”
“So would I be wrong, Doc, to say that Ms. Havana did her mother, perhaps, a huge favor by bringing her death to a closer end?”
People in the audience, began cursing but the judge calls for order.

The defense lawyer grins coldly, “Does it really matter what stage or time a living person guzzles a dying breed? Should it be a crime to savor a person whose very ounce of living causes them great pain? He brings out a document of a test that shows that people who are dying, experience little to no pain when compared to the excruciating hurt of failing organs. Rather they glory in the knowledge that they shall no longer be unwanted or a burden to those they love.
I look to the paper and I think he has won. Tears begin to fall for my cheeks now. His words remind me of the similarity. He said, “Rather they glory in the knowledge that they shall no longer be unwanted or a burden to those they love” Isn’t that the same as for aborted babies? Isn’t that why they aborted?
The court leaves for a break and I am frightened like never before. But it’s not because I cared so much about those who were being stewed after they died, or about the morality-or immorality-of eating dead people. But it was because my mother was dying.
Tears fall from my cheeks as I catch her, watching me closely from the doorway, “Oh mother!” I scream. I run to her and she kisses my tears away. I cannot tell the agony she is going through, but I know she is strong, so strong and true to her faith. So untouched by the world, like a child. An unborn child.
The tattered paper catches her attention and immediately she understands. A moan escapes her lips. She is scared. This past world, so inferior to ours, is yet so similar. They ask: What stage is it okay to kill an unborn child: at conception, a month or two? And we ask: At what stage is it okay to devour a dying person: at death, a day before or two?
I watch as the court comes back to session, but I am terrified. The judge picks up a document from the table, and then he begins, “On December 15 2220, the Amendment was rectified to accept the consumption of deceased people. We identified the need to be free to feed however way necessarily, but we, as the United States of America, shall not agree to any uncivilized display of this amendment.”
I feel my heart brightening, but I am still scared. In the world I read about, things don’t go this way. I looked to the newspaper and read it slowly. The court ruled, in their world, that the privacy and right to terminate an unborn child was protected by the constitution. How farce!
But as I read, yet listen, my heart stops. But it’s not because I care so much about the past or the death of little babies, but because as I lay there, reading yet listening half heartedly, my world made their final verdict. In the world where I live in, Cannibalism was legalized few hours before death.
I stare at my screen but I can’t cry. Dragging my mother into my arms, I cling to her for her life. She holds me tight and kisses me, tenderly. I can see her agony, I can see her pain. I can see her being torn in shreds, while she is still living. But like many other innocent souls, like that of unborn children, my mother will be a victim of a violent world.