We are the Food.
The first Hellmaw book has been published by renowned author Ed Greenwood, so be sure to check it out, as he is the diabolical mastermind behind the creation of the world that I will be playing in for my upcoming novel.
As the autumn days die into the long dead nights of winter, we pick up on my last post, where I asked you: what if we were food? What if we were no longer at the top of the food chain and rather than the occasional shark attack, or lions, tigers and bears, we were actively hunted as food.
Let’s retreat from the nihilistic view of complete world destruction from a massive feeding frenzy, like we see on TV and in the movies, which are chock-a-block of zombies ambling endlessly after us in The Walking Dead, or more terrifyingly, swarming us at super speeds in 28 Days Later and World War Z.
Before the grotesquely dead hunted us in pop culture, we’ve long been stalked by seductively dangerous vampires, who are at their best when they are akin to serial killers, toying with us in 30 Days of Night, enslaving us in Blade, or outright farming us like cattle in Daybreakers.
Who can forget the vicious otherworld hunters popular two decades ago who pursued us so they could reproduce in Aliens, for sport in Predator, or duped us into thinking they came in peace during the TV series V.
The difference between these latter two groups and the current infestation of zombies, is a smart predator understands how to cull the heard without over feeding, because to do so would lead to starvation. The smart predator also understands how vastly outnumbered it would be if the herd suddenly transformed their fear into a desperate will for survival and turned on it.
As many of us who would certainly fall victim like lambs to the slaughter, given good reason, our fear of being hunted could easily flip to anger and a desire for revenge. Having been at the top of the food chain for all of our evolution, it would take very little to foment that fear of being the hunted and once again becoming the hunters. That would not bode well for our solitary stalkers at all.
No, this kind of hunter is far more insidious. It requires iron self-control and a deep understanding of the subtle balance between annihilation and starvation. Let the feeding get out of control and the “food” fights back, or disappears completely. It requires skill. It requires cunning.
These are the types of monsters I find fascinating. And scary. Terrifying really. That scene from 30 Days of Night where the teen-aged girl is used as bait to lure the remaining survivors out of hiding is utterly chilling. It was firmly etched in my mind the first time I saw it in the theatre, and still gives me the shivers.
That is the kind of monster that will be populating my slice of Hellmaw. Won’t you stick around and see who becomes the hunter and who the hunted?
Meat.
So let’s talk about food for a moment. Specifically meat. I think it’s one of the food groups that we completely take for granted. Like where it comes from—oh sure we have a basic idea, animals are killed for it—but unless you are a hunter or a farmer, I don’t think it’s something we give much thought to. We just trundle through the aisles of the supermarket, picking over the lovely cellophane wrapped pink and red squares, raising our eyebrows at the increasing prices, looking for what’s on sale, what a particular recipe calls for, or what we feel like cooking. Some of us go a step further by shopping organic, patting ourselves on the back, feeling good about animals raised humanely…but are they killed humanely? Is that part of the organic process?
Unless you have been hunting, caught something, shot something, tied it to the roof of your car and brought it all home, how familiar are you with killing something? A story for you: my sister, driving home one evening saw a young doe along the side of the road. She’d been hit by a car, which presumably had just driven on not too worse for the encounter, while the doe lay heaving out her last breaths. My sister, ever the animal lover, pulled over and comforted the poor thing during its final moment on Earth. When the ordeal was over, she felt the best way to honour this majestic animal’s passing was to not leave it for the scavengers, but to take it home, cut it up for venison and cure the hide as a token of this intense learning experience. So that’s just what she did.
Two things left an indelible impression on me after she shared this story with me a few days after it had all occurred: First, ugh, how could she eat road kill?! And second, she remarked on how much hard work it had been stringing the animal up, bleeding it out, butchering it and disposing of that which could not be salvaged as food.
How many of us have seen a large animal bleed out? How many of us have been the one to break its neck, slit its throat, string it up, gut it…you get the idea. There is a huge part of the process almost all of us have never given a thought to, never mind participated in. How nice for it to arrive at our store in these lovely little pristine white packages with the clear window or wrapped tightly in butcher’s paper.
Now I am not a vegetarian, never have I entertained the desire to give up meat—I enjoy it way too much! I had some of my sister’s road kill venison stew and it was delicious. She used to be a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian for over 10 years. Until one day she wasn’t. Funny story about that. It was the morning of a holiday—Christmas or Thanksgiving—and we woke to the glorious smell of coffee brewing and bacon frying. Mum and I were deep in our routine of quietly reviving over a cup of fresh java, Dad was yakking away and my sister came down, sat at the table and then yelled, “I can’t take it anymore!” and jammed a fistful of bacon in her mouth. That was the end of her meat shunning days.
Now to get to the “meat” of my post. We know, or choose to know, very little about how meat ends up on our table to be consumed. I myself have never killed anything. We are blissfully ignorant sitting at the top of the food chain, being good little consumers with a clear conscience. So my question to you, dear readers, is what if we weren’t? What if we were the food? How would our society change? How would we as individuals need to change if we were suddenly the meat being consumed?
I’d love to hear you sound off in the comments section below, or on my Facebook page dedicated to the novel. It’d be great if we can pick up and continue this discussion in my next blog post.
Your World is Doomed!
Tonight the Red Mage has thrown open the first of the gates, the one to Hellmaw!
I’m finally able to share with you a few details of the teaser I was dying to tell you back in September: I am part of Ed Greenwood’s creative universe, Onder Librum. And I have been contracted to do a novel in his first world, Hellmaw.
There was a great war. Those who were triumphant banished the vanquished through one-way portals, never to return home. They were sentenced to live out their immortal lives forever in exile. That world is ours. We are their food.
Ever since I met darkness I was enamored. A city at night is a transformed thing, a creature with a life of its own, denizens not of the day world. There are different rules after sunset and if you don’t know them, aren’t quick to adapt, more’s the pity for you. Nervous? Don’t be. Take my hand, I can guide you through the danger. You trust me, don’t you? I’ll show you things, things you never knew you wanted to know.
This is the place I’ll be sharing my writing, introducing my characters and revealing tidbits of my story. Some of it is going to be raw, naked, untested. A lot of it won’t make it into the final manuscript, so join me for the journey–I give good road trip.
Click the buttons along the right and follow me here, via Twitter and my new Facebook page that will be dedicated solely to this project.
See you where the sun don’t shine…
Jeff Harrison
Jeff Harrison 