“Eat your meat, son.”

It was delicious, as always. Thick, hearty, bloody, cooked and seasoned to perfection. A whole plate, all from the same steer.

Each family received one full cow, butchered up and packaged perfectly.

Even the wafting smell of the aromatic steak, nearly cartoonlike as it drew us all in, could not lift the dour mood that hung over the table.

My father always grumbled.

Never yelled, never whispered, never quipped; just grumbled. Like the world was a pointless chore he just kept putting off.

I wish that explained why we lived in Scythe, Texas.

It didn’t.

There are well over 1,000 small towns here in The Lone Star State. All of them make the cut to get on the map – Cut n’ Shoot, Luckenbach, you name it. Bumfuck nowhere, meet cartography, your one suitor.

But not Scythe.

You could pick up a dusty roadside map from 1975 absentmindedly stored in an attic box, no Scythe. You can scour the internet for us today. Google has never heard of us.

By extension, neither has God.

I wish I could say this cold, lost part of the world was home because my father wanted no piece of life. The reality is, we’d simply lived there for generations. Everyone’s family had.

Nobody ever left, or came, to Scythe.

Not permanently.

Those who went to get provisions or services found themselves racing back to our little hamlet. Everything we needed to build, we learned. It had been that way for generations.

A lonely, little self-sufficient blot.

In retrospect, life was mostly typical, albeit mind-numbingly dull. My childhood diverged in two profound aspects.

Well, three.

Three.

First, a class in school we had to take annually from kindergarten through our senior year of high school.

A class called “Obedience.”

Like any other class, over thirteen years it developed from rudimentary facts and building blocks to the abstract and theoretical, more esoteric concepts. It was a strange hodgepodge of history, sociology, divinity, and law, all centered around our town.

And the rules.

My God, the endless rules.

I’ll spare you the infinite laundry list but suffice it to say, two themes dominated every lesson: no one could ever come to or leave Scythe, and we could never communicate with the outside world.

The penalties, all doled out publicly, ranged from obscene humiliation to gruesomely creative torture, but the driving point was always the same – if you don’t obey, you will suffer.

I had the same thought anyone have in this situation. The thought we all had. The thought we whispered when we thought no one was in earshot.

Just book it. Head for them thar hills.

We learned quickly that was not an option.

One of the earliest edicts decreed that if anyone escaped, their punishment would “pass on, with increased magnitude.”

Vague language. We knew from Obedience that the principle was interpretated liberally.

Your friends. Your family. Your neighbors. The guy you had a three-minute conversation with every second Wednesday at the feed store.

All on the chopping block.

Brutalized. Tortured.

The last person to leave Scythe was in 1916. Herbert Figgis. A sixteen-year-old who made it out. After all, it isn’t hard. There were no guards to dodge or walls to scale.

If you wanted to, you could just leave.

Nobody is sure why Herbert left. Maybe he didn’t believe what they’d do, hadn’t seen what we’d seen. Maybe he had, and he just didn’t care.

But the statute was absolute, and its enforcement drove a message that kept us existentially and literally locked in place.

After all, each family took turns polishing the sun-bleached skulls of Herbert’s mother, father, and two toddler-aged sisters that rest on jutted stakes on the road leading out of town.

One skull reads “OBEY.”

Another, “PUNISH.”

The skulls of the two little girls were marred with a single, fading word: “CULLING.”

Nobody sees clear when they’re standing in a storm.

Sure, in retrospect, it all seems obviously insane and evil, but this is what we knew from our first memories, all we knew. We had no yardstick to compare it to.

By the time we were old enough to see the horrifying parallels between us and the rest of the world a la’ the internet and social media, we knew the cost. We’d seen it with our eyes.

The punishment.

The torture.

We kept our secrets with absolute obedience.

Reprimands were rare. There is no doubt draconian rule is a moral aberration. But you also can’t doubt its efficacy.

It usually only happened every few years.

Dan, the young hardware store owner with his stiff limp and kind eyes, lost two fingers for writing a letter. Not an expose’, nothing scandalous. He’d been a fan of a band, Modest Mice or House or something like that.

How he’d gotten the letter out, or how he had been discovered, we never learned.

The only clarity for us was the aftermath.

Two fingers for a fan letter with no return address. Taken slowly by a dulled, serrated knife.

We all had to watch.

And listen.

I’d never heard a grown man scream and sob for his mother before. Never heard a knife try to scrape its way slowly through dense bone, like trying to fell a tree with a weak saw.

Like I said…effective.

The second was “The Culling. “

A mandatory annual trial.

We’d studied the ritual extensively in school. Think decathlon meets quiz bowl. A series of physical and intellectual challenges designed to gauge the best amongst us. And weed out the worst.

Okay, so, Decathlon and quiz bowl, with just a hint of Most Dangerous Game.

We didn’t know that those who ranked in the bottom half were killed. We were taught in Obedience they were simply “aided” the town.

That was the only word they’d ever use.

“Aided.”

We did know that the bottom half of scorers were never seen or heard from again. We all assumed best case was expulsion, which seemed like it might just be a godsend, or worse, death.

There were always rumors. The losers were sacrificed to some hidden pagan god. The town council was secretly cannibals, and this was how they got their fix.

Speculation, I figured, wouldn’t change the color of the sky, the smell of mesquite on the wind, or my fate.

I just let it all go; you can’t stop what’s coming.

I’d watched family after family maintain their composure as their son or daughter didn’t return from the woods where the games were held.

There were no tears of anguish, no maudlin breakdowns, no mawkish gestures.

Just rigid acceptance.

Just Obedience.

I remember that year vividly.

The bitter cold was punctuated by the endless wind that howled across the flat, barren deserts and the endless acres of yellow grass, chasing its way through the mesas.

It was my year. I was a senior, ready to graduate. All of us would meet at the edge of the woods just before the witching hour.

I missed Matt.

My best friend, a year ahead of me in school. He’d been beside me all my life. We were inseparable. More like brothers, really. I never knew a kinder, more genuine soul. He’d been beloved.

After The Culling last year, Matt never came home.

Any rage or despair was quelched by years of indoctrination and traumatic memories.

Life moved forward; the continual condition.

We knew the games were treacherous, full of arcane riddles and intense physical challenges.

We’d prepared how we could.

Study Obedience, perfect your body, sharpen your mind.

The wind seemed to change direction, making a roundabout, and coming from behind me, trading the stinging of my cheek for a shove toward the woods.

I remember my father shoving three pieces of freshly seared steak in my backpack, looking me squarely in the eyes, the faint reek of gin on his breath.

“You, you eat these, Pappy. You eat ‘em, keep you warm, keep you strong when the time comes. You, you gotta understand there are reasons…is a reason…well I can’t say but this is how it is and there ain’t no choice and just eat this and try to understand, we must.”

“Eat your meat, son.”

I remember glancing back and seeing my father down the meager remnants of the bottle in a single swig, looking at me, and crying like he’d never see me again.

That was as close to an “I love you” as I was gonna get in this world.

In this strange little town.

I remember seeing families sending their teenagers off with grandiosity and glee, like they knew they’d be back.

My mother never left her bed. Wouldn’t even open her eyes to say “good-bye.”

The bell tolls for Pappy, apparently.

I was fairly confounded by the whole thing. Making bets on the outcome was strictly prohibited, but if it wasn’t, I’d be an odds-on favorite to easily make the top half.

Academically, I had crushed my way into the top 5%. I was an athlete, adept at nearly every sport I played. Fast. Strong. Quick on my feet. And I didn’t waver under pressure.

So why the funeral knell from my folks?

My thought was interrupted as the wind moaned against my back and forced me into the tree line.

I saw everyone. Every kid in my grade. A thousand stories, a million memories.

And time for half of us to exit stage left to wherever that might lead.

“Eat your meat.”

A man none of us had noticed had slithered out of the forest. His voice was hardly a whisper but was unshakably commanding.

He bore the crest of our village on his shirt.

A cow hanging upside above a gathering of people, blood covering their faces as they looked upward.

Only one person in Scythe could wear the crest –The Shepherd.

We all knelt in reverence before eating our respective steaks.

Obedience had taught us The Shepherd was a venerable position. He alone tended to the massive herd. Slaughtered them by hand. Packaged their legs and chests and rumps. He was the giver of life in a dry, dead place.

And he was to be honored.

He also was sequestered from the village, his name permanently abandoned. Vows of celibacy and secret religious oaths.

For he, and he alone, oversaw The Culling.

The Shepherd gave us time to eat, his grayish-blue eyes piercing us one by one, as though deciding our fate.

“It is time.”

Less of an observation, and more of a command.

He seemed somehow both strong and lifeless, like grass that just refused to die out.

We all rose to our feet and began following him. Every few strides he’d turn his head, careening it side to side. Monitoring his flock, making sure we were all in tow.

Each of us was bursting with nervous energy. It was palpable in the air. But it had long been ingrained in us that this was our deepest religious rite, and idle chatter amounted to punishable sacrilege.

And I was a fan of my fingers.

We all kept searching, peering into the abyss, trying to discern some sort of obstacle course or battleground. There were just woods, growing ever thicker, the trees climbing ever higher.

The well-worn path, plainly walked by thousands, led the way.

We marched through a thick, wintry forest in a part of the world where there are no trees.

This was a place of holy dread.

The path led us to a steep hill. Almost like a tiny mountain concealed within the deepest trees.

There were no mountains here. There weren’t hills here. The earth was flat and dry and barren.

“Here, I leave you. Go up.”

We looked at each other and one by one, we began to trudge up the incline.

As we passed, The Shepherd muttered something indecipherable to each of us.

I swear I heard, “eat your meat.”

We finally arrived at the top of this oversized hill. Nearly seventy of us, all shivering, inched forward in the pitch black.

The world was suddenly on fire and my eyes only saw a blistering white.

Screams of terror and panic arose everywhere around me as we began slamming into one another. No amount of programming can override the autonomic.

“Quiet.”

We all fell silent.

“Still.”

We all stood fast in place.

“Behold.”

My vision returned, adjusting to the light the flickering flames cast around us.

I consider myself moderately brave. There is no doubt in my mind I would have shrieked like a Banshee and dove rolling off that hill if I had the slightest choice in the matter.

My legs would not move at my command, nor would my voice cry out.

We all glanced around, eyes bulging, realizing we were all frozen in place, entrenched by some spell.

Thousands of human skulls ringed the hilltop. Maybe tens of thousands. They were piled high, a circular wall of art deco death that never seemed to move.

A bright and devilish fire danced atop the skulls, never touching them.

Weaving its way between us were three demons.

“Silly.”

“Foolish.”

“Children.”

Each spoke a word as it slithered between us.

Not like you and I speak. There was no tenor, no fullness. Each whisper sounded like wind being forced by some weak instrument. A quiet, long, and laborious exhalation.

In my deepest nightmares, I could not have conceived these three.

Their bodies were as pale as the moonlight that ran from them, sinewy, curving torsos ending in a tadpole tail.

Nine arms sprouted from each torso, and on nine hands were nine fingers.

Their faces were each held a toothless, lipless mouth that protruded too far and looked as though it had been torn away by time and force, like the withering of a canyon across millennia.

Each creature had two vertical slits for a nose and no eyes. Their skull was an elongated, fleshy, translucent helmet that extended backwards by two feet.

Two massive horns sprouted forward, each twisting and turning, kinking to a sharpened end nearly fifteen feet above their respective heads.

And they were dripping.

Their eyes, their mouths, every last one of their fingers. A horrible rain that spilled all over us as they weaved between us.

Blood.

We were covered in their dripping blood.

It smeared our faces as they floated by, rain downed on us as they swirled above us.

“Not.”

“Ghosts.”

“Not.”

“Ghouls.”

“Not.”

“Demons.”

They took turns, each pushing out a breathless whisper. Each word sent electricity down my spine.

My eyes caught a few of my classmates wetting themselves.

Who could blame them?

Each of the monstrosities breathed deep, sucking in the smell of us.

“Meat.”

“Meat.”

“Meat.”

The dove in, up and down, eyeless, smelling our transfixed bodies, coating us in more and more blood.

“Shepherd.”

“Shepherd.”

“Shepherd.”

We all felt our bodies turn, pulled by some force beyond our control and understanding.

The Shepherd stood before us; his beautiful eyes were filled with sorrow.

And duty.

“I shall make this as quick as possible.

Our people tried to traverse this land nearly three hundred years ago. Each family’s founding father and mother.

But here in this dead wasteland, they fell victim. The weather trapped them for a night. But the next morning, there was disease. A plague, a pestilence. For we had sullied a holy land with our unwelcomed presence.

There was no game to hunt. The livestock they brought with them for their journey did not last long. The earth was too hard and empty to grow crops. And the disease grew ever worse.

The pilgrims began to bleed. From their eyes. Ears. Mouths.

Everywhere.

Everywhere was blood, and hunger.

They were too weak by the end to even turn to cannibalism.

Then, out of the doom of the dark, came the Boventus.

Three gods who claimed this land for their own millions of years before breath entered the first mammal’s lungs.

We know little of their story.

Their true name, we do not know.

We ask little out of reverence.

We only adhere to the deal we struck.

Obedience.

They graciously cured the party of the horrible disease and offered them food.

In exchange for a deal.

Half of the party would be given over to them. Fed to them. It was to be their choosing who would be sacrificed.

Each person chosen was consumed whole.

Half of our people, gone.

The disease was cured, but the hunger remained.

Until our masters vomited up the skeleton of each sacrifice, one, by one, by one.

And shrieked into the wind.

Out of the torso of each skeleton burst a single cow. Full, fat, docile.”

The Shepherd dropped to his knees, eyes raised to the heavens, leaving pretense behind.

“We ate.

Oh, how we ate.

I can still taste them. I cannot tell you why, but my father tasted the best.

Our new gods ordered us to stay, shrouding this corner of the world off from prying eyes who might find us. But we were bound to police our own people from leaving, from revealing our existence.

We were to bear certain burdens for our sins.

Every year we were to bring them a fresh batch of adults. Every year they would consume half.

And every year, they would give us back an equal number of cattle born from each corpse.”

The Shepherd looked tired.

“I was there. There that day. I can still feel the hunger, the disease, the pain and panic. We were given a pious offer, one which had to be accepted.”

Fear rose in his eyes.

‘It was plainly clear then, as it is now, the Boventus do not choose the weakest, the cruelest, the slowest amongst us.

As immortal penance, they choose the best among us to be eaten.

I…I was made The Shepherd. Burdened with the duty to forever tend the cattle, forever see to The Culling.

They…they burrowed inside my mind. The saw who I was. What I was. The worst of all of us. They saw the little native boy I raped after slaughtering his family when I was out hunting.

The good and true and brave and strong, they ate.

But we remnants were blessed with the TRUEST gift!”

For the first time, the Shepherd’s voice rose, reaching a frenetic crescendo.

“Do you know that other people must eat plants, fruits, so many foods? They must drink water, or they will die. Imagine!

The meat of cattle forever sustains our body. They took away that weakness. The gifts wrought from The Culling forever keep us fed, strong, and healthy.

Such was our deal.

We have long concocted a lie to keep this ritual in place. Deviation, disobedience, will lead to a fate far worse than starvation or incurable blight.

Those of you who fear you are weak, wrong, or unworthy, take solace. To those of you who are strong, decent, and true…I am sorry.

You will aid us.”

This, I learned that day, was the third way my life profoundly diverges from your own. I only need the muscle, fat, and flesh of cow to survive. I am unencumbered by thirst, free from a prison of nutrition. I have never tasted fruit, eaten a vegetable, or had anything to drink.

I just crave beef.

The Boventus began encircling us, their lidless faces and withered mouths spilling whispers as they cascaded up and down, smelling us.

I thought of Matt. Kind, gentle, honest, and true.

And gone.

I felt them inside my brain.

I watched as each of these ancient gods began to swallow my classmates whole, as though they were nothing more than a morsel.

Whispers echoed in my mind.

“You.”

“Are.”

“Unworthy.”

“Liar.”

“Murderer.”

“We.”

“See.”

“We.”

“See.”

Visions of it all slammed against my psyche.

A young boy, Manny, had taken to taunting me on midnight runs from his bike. One night I whipped a rock at him. I didn’t even think I’d even hit close to him. But it had smashed into his head, crushing his little temple.

I had buried him along the path.

He was never found. There was an investigation, but nothing turned up. All they knew was Danny had not left.

“We.”

“Told.”

“Them.”

“Murdered.”

“We.”

“See.”

“All.”

“No.”

“Punishment.”

“For.

“You.”

“But.”

“Living.”

Suddenly, I could move again. Everything ached. Around me, quiet sobs, terrified knees hitting the ground.

The world in slow motion.

“Culling.”

“Culling.”

“Culling.”

Those of us less worthy, the rotten apple in each bunch tossed together, shook with terror.

“YOU.”

“WILL.”

“WATCH.”

For hours, we watched in sheer terror as the Boventus vomited up each skeleton. Eventually, a steer or heifer erupted from every chest cavity.

For my part, I just sobbed.

The Shepherd led us back down the path, corralling us and the cattle that were once our friends.

Looking back, I saw the Boventus go about their dark work, stacking more skulls upon the pile.

My father looked equally shocked and disgusted to see me.

“How…how are you…how are you alive? What did you DO?”

All pride was gone. He’d thought me good and sent me on my merry way to my doom.

Any joy in his eye was robbed by fury.

“What did YOU do, dad?”

“What did MOM do? Huh?”

I sat at the table.

A neat, freshly seared stack of steaks beckoned to me.

My mother came downstairs, her eyes never leaving the floor.

My father speared a steak and plopped one onto each of our plates.

“So now you know.”

I am posting this story, dear reader, giving into the temptation of the internet, because someone should know.

The world should know.

The Boventus will.

I’m sure I’ll lose a hand, a foot, some fingers. Maybe they’ll pluck out an eye.

Maybe worse.

But that comes later.

For now, meat.

“So now you know, son.”

My father breathed the sigh of a broken man, a wordless whisper escaping his lips.

“So…who is this?”

I pointed to the beautifully cooked remnants of our cow.

There was accusatory venom in my voice, but I knew I was no better.

My father looked me square in the eye and said something I cannot shake.

“Eat your Matt.”