ASSEMBLY

The carcasses hang on meathooks, the conveyor slowly winding its way through the processing plant.

Empty skins swing, pendulum-like, in a grotesque parody of the living.

The skins are taken off the hooks, grabbed roughly by inexpert hands. Innards are packed into the skins. Guts, a voicebox, a heart. Brains, cold and slippery to the touch, their convolutions glistening.

Crammed unto the bursting point with guts and other fell assemblages, the skins are sewn up, a Frankenstinian quilting bee. No electrodes protrude from the base of the neck, yet electrodes are there, hidden.

Money is exchanged. The glassy-eyed shambling horrors, fully assembled, are thrust roughly into the hands of their new masters. Their life of slavery has begun.

It is terrible, this Abbatoir-in-Reverse, this backwards slaughterhouse. I have seen enough. I run, screaming.

It is at that moment that I shout at the very heavens, swearing unto All that is Holy:

“I will never set foot in a Build-a-Bear Workshop again!”