In the Land of the Pigs, the Butcher is King
Nobody calls it a regime. That would imply a change.
The Department of Nutritional Compliance oversees distribution, same as always. There are forms. Stamps. A seven-week waiting period for poultry privileges. You want red meat? That’s Tier Two. You better have kids and an approved job. Artists aren’t Tier Two. Retirees sure as hell aren’t.
I’m not bitter. I still get the synthetic stuff. Processed to taste like memory. I remember what bacon used to taste like. Sort of. That means it’s working.
I live in Tower Six, Block D. Same as everyone else. Identical kitchens. Identical curtains. You’re not allowed to paint the walls. Uniformity is calming, according to the Wellness Broadcasts. They say too much color leads to unrest. And unrest leads to hunger.
And hunger is dangerous.
It started slow, the decline. First, the markets closed. Then the trucks stopped. Then came the televised reassurances: Distribution equality. Climate urgency. Species stewardship. It was noble. Reasonable. Civilized.
And it ended with us chewing soy bricks labeled Ham-Type Product A3, pretending this was what progress tasted like.
I work in Requests and Exceptions. We process appeals. People begging for real butter for their dying mother. A man who wanted to eat fish one more time before losing his teeth. All of it gets filed and denied. Filed and denied. We use a stamp shaped like a pig’s hoof. Someone thought that was funny.
We still have holidays. Feast Days. Every three months they let one neighborhood “celebrate.” We line up for a slice of something real. Or real enough. There’s laughter. Recycled-plastic fireworks. A drone display that spells out THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICE.
Then we go back to our pills and our bricks and our compliance videos.
The funny thing is, no one’s forcing us. Not really. There’s no armed guard. No collars or fences. Just the understanding: break the rules and you get reassigned.
Reassignment isn’t exile. It’s worse. You stay in town. You just stop being seen. Your ID stops working. Your lights flicker and don’t get fixed. The hallway cameras forget your face. People cross the street when they see you. Not out of malice. Out of fear you’ll take them with you.
That’s what happened to the guy across the hall. Terkel. Gray beard, smoker’s cough, always humming something from the before-times. He used to sketch murals on scraps of cardboard—rain-soaked cathedrals, people with eyes too wide. Beautiful, in a way that felt illegal.
One day his ration card got flagged. “Unauthorized modification,” they said. No idea what that means. He disappeared within the week. Now his door’s locked from the outside, and the hallway bulb above it flickers like it’s got a nervous tick.
They don’t clean it. That’s the worst part.
And in the middle of it all, there’s the Butcher.
Not a person. Not anymore. Maybe never.
It’s the name we give the system. The pressure. The sense that something is always adjusting things behind the curtain. You lose your food credits? The Butcher balanced the herd. Your neighbor gets promoted while you get reassigned? The Butcher sharpened the blade.
It’s what happens when systems become gods. No face, no voice. Just the low hum of compliance and the soft sound of trimming.
Nobody knows who’s in charge. Not anymore. Maybe nobody. Maybe it’s all just drift now. Bureaucracy on autopilot. But we keep calling it the Butcher.
Because the cuts keep coming.
—
I tried to leave once. Five years ago.
Packed my bag. Took the stairs to avoid the elevator scanners. Walked the service tunnels until I hit the perimeter fence. I was outside the grid for maybe twelve minutes.
It was silent. Not peaceful. Just empty. Like everything outside the city had been bleached and scrubbed until nothing real was left.
Then I saw the drone.
It didn’t buzz or beep. Just floated, silent and circular, like a lens looking for its subject. It didn’t stop me. Didn’t flash red. Just stared. Like it was waiting for me to make a decision.
I went home.
—
My father used to tell me, “Never trust the man who carries the cleaver but smiles like a priest.”
He grew up in the old system. Before the Butcher. When you could still choose your diet and your news. He was a meatcutter. Worked in the back of a grocery store that smelled like ammonia and crushed dreams. Said people never wanted to know how it was done, just that it looked good in plastic wrap.
That’s where it all started, he said. The not-wanting-to-know.
We voted for it, bit by bit. To not see the suffering. To make the choices for us. Until there was only one channel. One source. One distributor.
And then one day, we all woke up and called it normal.
—
There's a man who visits my office every Wednesday at 2:14 p.m. sharp. No appointment. No file number. Just walks in, sweats through his shirt, and asks if there's been a change.
“There won’t be,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “But what if there was?”
He used to be a chef. A real one. Trained in France, or maybe just said he did. Doesn’t matter now. He just wants his knives back. They were confiscated during the Culinary Realignment Initiative.
He thinks if he can hold them again, he’ll remember who he was. That he’ll matter again.
I get that.
But the Butcher doesn’t return things.
—
They released a new meal protocol last month. “Enhanced Texture Layering.” Basically, they added bumps to the soy bricks to simulate chew.
We’re supposed to be grateful. There was a segment on the broadcast showing citizens smiling while biting into them like they were artisan baguettes.
My neighbor, Lorn, cried. Said the bumps reminded her of her mother’s cornbread. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they were randomized.
Comfort, even if fake, is still comfort.
That’s what the Butcher understands. Keep people just satisfied enough, and they'll sharpen their own chains.
—
Last night I found a note under my door.
No envelope. Just a torn corner of cardboard with a sketch of a cleaver and one line scrawled in block letters:
"DO YOU REMEMBER TASTE?"
I didn’t sleep.
This morning, there was no note. No trace. But the cameras on my floor blinked out for seven minutes. No explanation.
I filed a report. They responded with a pamphlet about stress management and a voucher for one extra chew-brick.
The Butcher saw. The Butcher adjusted.
—
There’s a whisper now, under the static of the broadcasts. People are talking. Quietly. Coded. In recipes.
“Did you try the rosemary loaf?” means “Are you safe?”
“Too much salt” means “It’s worse than we thought.”
And if someone says “Just like Grandma used to make”—that means run.
They say there’s an archive. A place where real ingredients, real memories, are preserved. Not food exactly. Something older. Pre-processed. Pre-approved.
They call it the Pantry.
No one knows where it is. But people are looking. Whispering. Hoping.
That’s dangerous.
Because the Butcher listens, even when it pretends not to.
—
Yesterday, I heard the drone again. Not outside. In the hallway.
It was hovering near Terkel’s door. The one they never clean.
But this time, the bulb was steady. The door was open.
And inside, the walls were covered with sketches.
Not just of food or faces, but of systems. Chains. Loops. Machines with no end and no exit. In the middle of it all was a cleaver.
Above it: a crown.
Below it: a mirror.
I stepped back. Closed the door. It locked behind me.
I didn’t file a report.
The Butcher already knows.
—
We were never livestock.
We walked in willingly. Voted it into being. Called it safety. Called it progress. We chose this.
The horror isn’t that someone took away our freedom.
The horror is that we traded it for better packaging and cheaper utilities.
Because the truth is, in the land of the pigs, the butcher doesn’t have to chase anyone.
He just waits.
And eventually, we line up.
Smiling.