In the dark warehouse, the assembly line worked furiously. Tired workers bent over a long, black conveyor belt, which was bursting with fresh pink meat. Each worker wore a mask that had been painted with a beautiful face. These masks were company precautions to protect the product. Corporate had warned the local mangers that no one wanted to eat a piece of meat that had been petrified by the worker’s jealousy and age. Anyone who allowed their greasy bitterness to drip from their faces and onto the meat would be immediately fired without even the privilege of collecting their pay for the rest of the month.
On the conveyor belt, infants cried and screamed, their faces turning red and angry. The workers tapped their feet on the ground. This helped them keep up their rhythmic assembly line without being delayed by the noise. Every single employee had been trained to overlook their compassion for the newborns. The men and women had been told that a wonderful way to keep from admiring, loving, caring, and/or loathing the babies was to concentrate on the beauty of the masked faces that worked beside each of them. This had been proven quite effective. Some of the employees had even taken the liberty of assuming the attitude of a beautiful person. They would strut around the factory with assertive grace, hoping that with each elegant step, their actual facade would begin to mimic the one on their mask. However, once the mask was collected at the end of the work day, each of these employees would fall into a deep depression, which they could only be pulled out of once they returned to the factory and reclaimed their company-owned comeliness.
The babies on the assembly line moved further and further along. The workers monitored the infants, letting them pass after making sure that each possessed no imperfections. If even one faulty product was allowed the right of passage, the company would be faced with a giant lawsuit. Infants were poked and jabbed until they were cleared to make their way to the grinder. Each baby was dragged through the machine, sinews being ripped and stretched until they composed a figure which was long and lean. Out of the grinder, each baby emerged a child.

Now on the belt, a ticklish girl with curled lips, passed between the line of workers. Air rushed through her lungs and she appeared healthy. Workers pinched her shoulders, oily hands patting down hairs. The girl just smiled at the ceiling and let the people touch her. Sweaty men rubbed her skin raw with salt, eventually massaging a secret blend of spices into her pores. Once her complexion had been irritated to the point of resembling bloody sandpaper, the conveyor belt moved her on to the women and their mallets.

Each female employee on the assembly line took a whack at the girl’s chest, making sure her heart stayed tender. This was an essential step of the process. If a woman were to pound on the girl’s heart too hard, the girl would enter womanhood without a backbone, tasting overly sweet. A strike that was too soft would result in a bitter-tasting wench whose love was too tough to produce a nice flavor. Each woman made sure to hit the girl’s heart with precise pressure. Not one of them desired to produce any piece of meat that was less than perfect.

The conveyor belt moved the girl along. The figures around the conveyor belt shifted from middle aged women to young boys. Coming to a halt, the belt stopped and each working boy took a fistful of the girl’s body and began stuffing the flesh into grey casing. The girl didn’t fidget at all when the boys’ grimy finger nails dug into her already chaffed skin. Each youth took as much of the girl as they could, eager to cram her essence into the long casing. They shoved and distorted her body until it fit in snuggly. The girl kicked in her new skin, legs swollen as they fought to circulate blood. Then, all at once, the boys were finished wrapping her up and all together, they worked on transferring the paralyzed girl back on to her strip of belt.

The casing fit the girl perfectly, hugging the curves of her figure with stylish precision. Her irritated complexion had been hidden beneath the grey casing, her blushing cheeks resembling storm clouds. Her face was veiled with the skin of the casing. It tightened around her cheekbones like latex over glass, making them appear exaggerated and sharp. The boys looked over their work, smiling shyly at the woman that they had created.

Before leaving the factory, the woman was forced into a Styrofoam tray with three other female meat products, who looked no better or worse than she did. Once each piece of meat had gotten to know one another, their friendship and freshness was sealed away under bright plastic wrap. The woman and her new companions were eventually loaded into boxes and then onto a truck, where they were able to discuss their childhood and accomplishments. Once the meat products had arrived to their destination, each box was loaded into the building and the trays of meat were placed onto illuminated shelves in the refrigerated section.

After a week of waiting and gossip, the woman and the others on her tray were eventually bought by a suburban housewife. She took the meat back to her home, eager to share the new and exciting brand that she had found at the market that day. The wife’s husband was tired of hearing how the highlight of her week could be found among the frozen dinners and soft produce. Instead, he examined the meat products to see if they were grade A or grade B, or whatever the heck his wife had told him was the same grade that was used in dog food. Not being able to find any of this, the husband excused himself from the kitchen as an attempt to avoid his wife.

At the dinner table, the woman was served on the wife’s plate with a side of mashed potatoes and a tossed salad. Her friends were tugged and stabbed with dull butter knives that had been supplied to the child consumers. The wife trapezed her fork around the dish, carefully avoiding the succulent body of the woman. Becoming bored, the woman looked around the large dining room, catching the eye of the husband. He gave his wife’s meal a small smile and the woman answered with a coy wink. Looking up from her mashed potatoes and noticing the woman’s small gesture, the wife stabbed the prongs of the fork deep inside the woman’s torso. The wife lifted the impaled woman up to her mouth, biting off the head of the flirtatious sausage. The wife coughed a bit as the woman broke out of the casing and clawed at the back of the wife’s throat. The wife washed away the acrid chunk of sausage with a bit of water, and the woman was eaten away by miserable stomach acids.