In the Caves

In the Caves

How beautiful the caves were! Their hard grey walls and long, narrow tunnels brought a feeling of peaceful solitude to all who entered. Dozens of large, flat rocks littered the dirt floor, making it the perfect place for meditation. And if you listened closely, you could even hear the faint echoes of an underground stream mingled with the silence. For Smight, a young man of average height and lean build, this place stirred in his breast a grand sense of history. His father had told him much about what went on in these caves during the Great War which had occurred long before he or even his father’s birth. It was here in these caves that his people had flourished in secret, just out of the reach of man. For two hundred years they bode their time, finally bursting forth from the womb and overthrowing their human aggressors in a storm of blood. It had always intrigued him, what life in these narrow subterranean tunnels might have been like. Following his normal routine, he lay down on a flat rock, breathing deeply and lazily closing his bright yellow eyes. Gazing longingly at a primitive cave painting, he drifted to sleep, entering the theater of the past.

In his wishful dream, he lived during the prehistoric era, in the very same cave he had dozed off in. He shared this cave with his two army buddies, now ancient mutants like himself: Ripper, a tall, muscular mutant with hair the color of fresh blood and a pair of giant, leathery bat wings on his back, and Ether, who was a head shorter than Ripper, with shiny black hair and dark blue skin. They all dressed in homespun wool and crudely-made leather, a big change from the factory-produced clothing of the present. The three sat at a stone table devouring a meal of yams, bean sprouts, mead, and the main staple of their ancestors’ diet, human. The human they feasted on had originally been captured by one of the mutant patrols that braved the deadly outside world in hopes of bringing back human meat. Human meat, Smight’s father had once told him, had not always been the readily available commodity it was today; it was in fact a delicacy. Every mutant longed for the succulent taste of human meat back then, his father had genially explained, but most were lucky to dine on rabbits, mice, and birds. As it went in his dream, his friend Ether had purchased the human as part of a pair from a patrol in exchange for some homemade weapons; at first he had intended to breed the pair, as some mutants did, but ultimately he decided that it was too much trouble. Humans, like other animals, seemed constantly at the mercy of illness and parasites, so keeping them alive for too long could prove difficult and costly. After fattening him up for a few days, the blue-skinned one had slaughtered, skinned, and cleaned the male, the larger and deadlier of the two, in a small, secluded chamber in the back of their cave. Smight had watched his father do this as a boy, and had done it himself as a soldier. You simply snapped the neck, cut its throat, and bled it for a while. Then came removing the head and organs, and finally, stripping the meat from the carcass. And of course, you would always cure the meat before cooking to remove that awful gamy flavor. He could only imagine that his ancestors had prepared their meat in a similar way, though without the luxury of a modern stove. He could almost smell the scent of meat cooking over an open fire, so much so that a bit of drool ran down his lower lip as he slept.

Sharing their dream feast from a distance was the human’s mate, the female of the pair; she sat hunched over in a crude wooden cage near the back room where her mate had been killed. Nude and covered in filth, she was quite the opposite of the modern human female. Human women had been allowed into the city as far back as fifty years or so, when it was discovered they could bear mutant offspring, They were treated well, allowed to go to school and hold jobs so long as they agreed to marry a mutant. Smight’s mother was among the first generation of these women: quiet and sweet, willing to give anything to live alongside mutantkind. And yet, the female in his dream was, like her mate, really no better than an animal. She watched the three devour their meat, wide-eyed and oblivious to her fate. Ripper, just as bold and arrogant as his real-life self, spoke directly to her with his sharp country accent: “Oi! Maybe if you beg me enough, I’ll let ya have the scraps!” He gnawed noisily on a charred thigh, tearing the glistening meat off with a terrific growl, and threw the thick, greasy bone at her cage. It made a hollow “thunk” and bounced off the sturdy wooden bars, landing in the dirt in front of her. She nudged it with her finger and then shrieked, recoiling in terror like a child who had touched a hot iron. “That ain’t such a bad idea, giving her scraps. I mean, we’ve gotta fatten her up somehow, right?” Smight’s primitive self finally spoke, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of gristle, glancing over at the cage. Truly, he was not in his own body in this dream, but was more of a specter floating on the ceiling. He longed to enter his dream body, to feel that primitive instinct which had been siphoned out of his people and replaced with civility. Yet he couldn’t help but harbor a growing repulsion for his dream self and a longing for the same civility that had cluttered his world.

And still he dreamt on. They had agreed to feed the scraps to the female in the cage. When they had finished filling their stomachs, Ether reluctantly stood up and made his way to the cage, that same real-life look of grim duty on his face. Bracing himself, the mutant unlocked the fastening mechanism with a steady blue hand and the door swung open on crudely fashioned metal hinges. The captive peered out at the three, but shrunk back when Ether tried to grab her by the scruff of the neck. Lo and behold, she spoke the modern Mutant Dialect: “Keep away from me, you blue-skinned monster!” This anomaly shocked Smight to the point of nearly waking him. Only when they were allowed into the city did humans learn the Mutant Dialect, otherwise they spoke only the Human Dialect, a mishmash of grunts and squeaks that Smight had only recently begun to learn. Ether, being a hard-boiled military commander in real life, would never stand for anything like this. When they took human captives, his policy was to make an example of anyone who resisted by shooting them in the head. Obviously he wasn’t about to do that to the female and waste valuable meat, but still he retained that same uncompromising cold demeanor. “Don’t talk to me that way, human. I am your better, and I demand respect.” With sharp, calculated movements, he grabbed a fistful of her dirty, matted blonde hair and yanked her out of the cage. He swiftly shut the door to her cage, and dropped some cold leftover meat on the dirty ground before her. “Eat. Now.” Dream Smight rose from his chair, suggesting that they leave Ripper to deal with her and watch from a safe distance. He reasoned that Ripper, while intimidating, would not kill a human for disobedience, as Ether would, and this particular human needed to be kept alive.

His specter self watched as Ripper placed his boot on the girl’s head, carefully pushing her face closer to the chunks of meat. “Eat it.” The real Ripper would’ve acted the same, although he might’ve been a little sweeter to her if he thought he could get sex. Smight had been friends with the country boy since they were children, and had seen his voracious appetite for human women. The winged mutant had said on numerous occasions that they were only good for food and sex, and Smight had long since learned to accept his friend’s backwards country sentiments rather than letting it affect their relationship. This Ripper, however, seemed even more primitive in that he only saw the girl as a source of food.
“I can’t eat this! I-it’s my h-h-husband!” Husband-- Smight had heard that word before, from some of the human captives. According to Ether, the women used it to describe their mates. His mother had never used that word, in fact she had only rarely spoken her native tongue around him. All he had learned of the Human Dialect and the word “husband” had been from listening to the women they captured, women very much like the one in this dream.
“Meat is meat!” Dream Ripper announced to her, as if she could not see the brown, greasy chunks of cooked flesh on the ground before her. “Eat it or I’ll MAKE you eat it, you fucking human!” Still she sat there, looking up at the menacing mutant with eyes like a trapped animal. Suddenly a powerful hand shot out and wrapped around her throat, forcing her head back with a single brutal jerk; Ripper in his haste and rage began forcing the meat into her mouth. At first she resisted, gagging, trying to spit it out, but he shoveled it in so quickly that she could only swallow or choke. Thinking the ordeal had passed, Ether and Dream Smight walked back toward the dining area. They froze in their tracks as the captive began dry heaving, deep retching sounds emanating from her throat.
“Get her on her back so she can’t force it up.” Ether shouted at Ripper, perfectly content to let the winged one handle their unruly prey. Ripper pushed the woman onto the floor and held her down by the neck. With his free hand, he began massaging her spasming stomach, perhaps to aid digestion, Smight presumed. He had never seen this done before, except once in a military hospital where a sick woman refused to eat. Still, he imagined that a human used for food would be force fed just like any other animal.

Warily the others ventured over next to Ripper, forming a semicircle around their captive. His dream self stood over her, a hint of pity in his soft voice. “Look at how scrawny she is. It’ll take at least a few days to fatten her up.” And truly, Smight did pity this creature. Being someone’s meal didn’t seem like very much fun, but she was a human after all, and they were mutants, and they had to eat. Ripper laughed that cruel, sneering laugh of his, holding her head to the ground.
“Do ya hear that, human? Yer gonna need to be kept nice and full so we can eat ya later.” In his dream, Ripper’s country accent sounded far more menacing than quaint.
“I don’t want to be eaten!” This single utterance struck his specter self with a sharp pang of guilt. It wasn’t even the words, but rather the frenzied terror with which she spoke them.
“It ain’t so bad, ya know. Quite natural, really. You humans feed on animals t’ survive, an’ we feed on you.” In one fell swoop, Ripper sterilized her passionate plea for survival with cold, brutal logic. And then she began to weep, hot tears streaming down the sides of her dirty face.
“Oi! Stop that or you’ll make yerself sick, human!” Ripper released her from his grip and stood up, preparing to return her to her wooden prison. She only cried harder, though, causing Ripper to give her a sharp kick in the side for her disobedience. This did not surprise Smight: the real Ripper had seen his family killed by humans as a boy, and had harbored a deep-seated hatred of all humans ever since. Why should Dream Ripper be any different?
“I SAID, knock it the hell off, ya hear?!” The winged mutant heaved her limp, shaking body back into the cage as if she were an oversized sack of flour, slamming the door in her face. Ether remained silent, but Dream Smight thoughtfully reprimanded his friend’s outburst.
“Come on, Ripper, no need to be so harsh. She’s just upset.” This was indeed a true reflection of real life: Smight was always the nice guy, and Ripper the eternal hothead.
”I don’t give a shit. She needs to learn to accept her fate.” He then turned to her, berating her in a deep, husky voice, his country accent now more apparent than ever. “We mutants’re the lords of the earth. Yer fate as a human is t’ be eaten, girl!”

Smight bolted upright, his yellow eyes popping open, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. Scratching his head, he could not help but reflect on the stark cruelty revealed in his dream. He left the caves in a stupor that day, devoid of the usual proud sense of history that the visits instilled in him. Instead he carried with him a vague, inexplicable feeling of shame; a heavy feeling that whispered in his ear the hideous, brutal side of his beloved history, the history of his father and of his ancestors. That day he left the caves, never to embrace their peaceful solitude again.