The Trials of Todd, Part 2
We left Todd in the freezer with an enormous angry chicken. I’ll let him take it from here:
hmm says the chicken hamburger sausage links chicken taquitos a meatloaf tv dinner fish sticks bratwurst you dont cook much do you todd just heat things up no time with your busy schedule right so where do we start ah here we go frozen meatballs lets just read the ingredients oh todd are you sure so much salt is good for you Im standing in the corner shivering I dont know why I should be cold Im dead I dont even have a body the chicken turns and smiles at me hey todd I have an idea he says and then it all goes black
then it gets light again its morning and Im outside its a huge corral or pen or something a feedlot I guess its full of cows thousands of cows Im in the middle of them Im scared shitless theyll crush me I start to scream and yell but it comes out in moos and I look down and see that Im a cow too I scream some more its so hot and were packed in there shoulder to shoulder hoof to hoof the smell is gagging I can hardly breathe Im standing in cow shit up to my ankles Im sick to my stomach all the other cows just stand there lined up at the feeders eating eating eating the food taste funny tastes like chemicals the air is so foul Im sick and I eat and I eat all day long all day long I dont feel good and I eat and then the night comes
Let me break in here a minute. I noted a week or so ago that Todd’s sense of time on “the other side” seems to be wildly different from our own. I think this time-twisting effect is integral to his story. As far as I can make out: Todd had the experience of living the life of a feedlot cow for almost seven months. Seven months of long days and long nights, long hours and long minutes and long seconds, standing in a field of shit, crammed in with thousands of other cows with nothing to do but eat and eat and eat the drug-soaked feed that was put before him. The stickies get more difficult to follow, as Todd re-experiences his tale in the telling of it. Todd’s human consciousness recedes as the days go on. Some of them just say eating. Other say sick. A few say sad. One says afraid.
Finally, Todd must have gained enough weight. In disjointed words, he tells of being loaded onto a truck and taken to slaughter:
moving moving truck yelling man yelling hurt hurt moving afraid afraid afraid smell afraid screaming afraid death death death death afraid death
And then