slaughterhouse

We live like sheep in line waiting to be slaughtered in a slaughterhouse. We eat and laugh and fight as we see those in front of us fall to the knife

Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously. I place my boots neatly on the floor of the porch beside the other pairs in the shadows under the coats. Music drifts through to us from a distant room _ it__ the Beach Boys_ California Dreamin_. Dawn looks at me and I smile _ they__e put the record on for me. Dawn nods along happily. __ear you__e a surfer boy!_ she says and she mimics riding a wave.

Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!

A country where there is no security of life is certainly not a country but just a slaughter house!

One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog__ nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn__ done anything wrong, wasn__ even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn__ stop. And when I finally did stop, I__ expended all this energy and frustration, and I__ thinking what in God__ sweet name did I do.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.