A Flavorless Meal

     Cafeteria food has no taste at all.

     I haven’t even tried a single bite, yet I know this to be a fact. Why would it taste like anything? The government, state, and general population, all will ensure an inmate’s needs are met– yet they find no pleasure in doing so. Food is to be nutritious enough to keep one’s organs going, but there is no need to make it flavorful, let alone tasty. Tastes like air, feels like rubber, and one would expect me to stuff it down my throat. I’m not foolish enough to dignify such injustice.

     “Hey,” calls a voice behind me. I don’t need to turn around to recognize one of the guards, “If you don’t eat, it’ll get cold.”

     I pry a laugh from my throat, which comes out more like a mocking gurgle, a sound closer to a roar than anything else. I don’t care to correct it, because the guard’s nerves are on end no matter what I say.

     “Your time in the cafeteria’s almost up,” he says, through a valiant effort to keep his voice from shaking. Not that it will fool me, “Once the bell rings, I need to take you back, wherever you eat the food or not. You really should do it– er. Eat, that is.”

     I sigh, choosing my words carefully, “It will taste the same as if I eat nothing at all. Unless you can offer me something else, officer?”

     The silence is telling enough: The man’s scared shitless. Good. He attempts to sneak out of the room– poorly that is. And I listen to him tripping over himself to be out of my presence, I let out a silent laugh.  Is it too much, to leave a man shaking just by a mere couple of words? Some might find my words crude, maybe even cruel, considering my current housing situation– which others might say is properly deserved.

     Not like I mind it, really. Sure, this is a prison– but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve never lived in anything but.

     Memories from my past are hazy, like static and white noise playing from a television in a different room. My head starts to pound whenever I feel myself drifting into times long past– is it even worth it, to re-live such hazy memories? Times where dreams would bleed through reality? Some might call it a curse, to be chained by a mind you cannot trust, in a world you exist, as much as you didn’t.

     I, on the other hand, might digress.

     Back then, there might have been a warden, but my conscience was too blind to see it. In a time when I used to be alone with my thoughts, there was no cold cafeteria, no flavorless meals. What I can recall, and clearly so, are not thoughts but feelings. My nerves, constantly on edge, were the only thing grounding me in reality.

     Sometimes, the pain would be so great, it was as if I was engulfed in flames. Pins and needles, ran through my lungs, inhaled by a poison no one could see. Not that I was aware of it, of course. At one point, closer to the beginning, I kept wondering what was so wrong, that I kept feeling like that.

     The more it happened, the more I came to accept what was wrong was me. My own voice, echoing in my head, would repeat it over and over like a mantra. It was my mind that traveled to such unsavory, surrealistic ideations. No one else was responsible for the way my brain would gasp through narcotics.

     I recall a voice somewhere in there, muted as all those memories are. A girl, a sister, a nickname. A kind soul, who would insist I was not to blame– none of us were. An idealistic, hopeful kind of thought. Worthless in the end, considering what happened.

     She was laughing, alongside my other siblings. They were laughing– or were they screaming? Regardless, it was a hysteric kind of joy, the high that was achieved through the first evening out of captivity we had ever had. A community, a family, all safe and sound. Our fingers, Beth's and I’s, laced together, joining my siblings in saying Grace– a thank you, for a food well earned. For a freedom well earned.

     We were saved, and we were hungry.

     A meal, as delirious as it was delicious, cooked to perfection just for us. A flavor unlike any other, warm and airy, dripping through my tongue. I remember the consistency of the meat, firm yet smooth, breaking apart bite after bite. As I tore my teeth into it, pulling it in strands and then swallowing them whole. My teeth would graze against bone, the sensation as irritating as nails against chalkboard, but it never really mattered. Nothing else really mattered, but the taste touching my tongue, and the feeling of my stomach satisfying a primal hunger.

     Back then, I was blinded by desperation to know what really transpired behind jail cell walls. Today, I wonder if there was but a tear in my blindfold, and I just chose to ignore it. After all, my siblings and I were sharing a moment unlike any other, with it growing a bond that would never break. One is all, all is one. They were made of the same matter that I needed to survive, and as the hungry creatures that we are, I just acted on instinct.

     Yes, instinct– is that how I like to justify it? Beth, the girl whose name tasted as sweet as honey, had once trusted me enough to talk about what passed through her mind. The things she’d heard about, the books she’d read, the things she’d seen: biology was her fascination for a while. She loved animals, especially fluffy ones like cats and dogs. Tamed, caged-up predators, of a soft gaze, yet carnivorous taste.

     I did not harm them out of hate. In fact, I’m convinced that a part of me did it out of love. Out of instinct: the caged-up predator that I was, with a carnivorous taste.

     I’m not sure if it is my ultimate sin, or my most treasured of blessings, but I wake up with a single thought whispered in the back of my mind:

     It was the most delicious meal I will ever, ever have.

     A sound shook my thoughts away, the sound of a cane against metal. The cafeteria door unlocked with a heavy whirl of mechanical locks, and the voice from earlier called out from the hallway,

     “Collins,” It was that guard, “Lunchtime is over, come on.”

     I sighed, rising to my feet and glancing at my surroundings. The cafeteria was as empty as ever, a controlled environment for an isolated psychopath. Alone time, as I liked to call it. It was always alone time when it came to me.

     “I said move it, Collins, the hell are you spacing out for? ”

     “I’m going,” I answered, letting out a sigh. Below me, staring like a helpless prayer, lay the flavorless meal I had been assigned earlier. With shackled wrists, I pushed it away and abandoned it on the table.

     I refused to nurture myself with something like that. What was the point? It might nurture my body, but that was nothing I was concerned about. A meal like that would never compare to the taste of crimson blood.

     Nothing else would ever nurture my soul.