Weekly Drabble #317: Dinner Bell (Patreon)

This week's prompt comes from Jeffrey Kessler with 'remember to feed the ancestors' and what that might entail

Enjoy!

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Dinner Bell

The wheels of the cart squeaked. It was really more of a wagon, Jan thought as he led the team down from the mouth of the cave towards the elevator. Behind them, the heavy steel doors across the opening squealed shut as the guards closed them behind the party.

The elevator, large enough to hold three times as many men and wagons, was sturdy but it rattled as it descended. Down, down, down. It settled on the bottom-most level with a thud. Greeting it were a pair of guards, AA-12 shotguns hanging from straps over their shoulder. At seeing Jan, his people and their cargo, the first guards swiped his keycard through the lock and the heavy grated doors across the elevator slid open.

“That time again, is it?”

“Yep,” Jan said as he led his people out into the foyer. It was a large, empty room lit by strings of overhead lamps, naked power cables running into the elevator shaft and from there to the upper levels. The floor was simple corrugated steel and the walls were carved stone. At the back end of the room, in front of a pair of doors as thick and heavy as those at the cavern’s entrance, was a desk, computer and several second hand chairs for the guards to use during their shift. “Who do we have today?”

As the first guard checked everyone’s IDs, the second man went to the computer, bringing up the schedules. “You’ve got Jorge, Meridi, Kimmin and Ophydia.”

Jan grimaced. “Great.”

The two guards took position at either side of the reinforced doors. They each had a key, inserting it into a slot and turning it at the same time. The large doors rumbled open, allowing the group through. Two more well-armed guards met them at a small security post. A medical technician gave each of the group a quick examination, shining a light into each member’s eyes before nodding to the officer behind the shatter-resistant glass. “You can go through,” he said, his voice clicking through the intercom. He unlocked another set of doors, the guards from this room accompanying the group on their rounds.

There were more doors and checkpoints, but they reached the uppermost levels of what some called ‘the Animal House’. Jan didn’t call it that and he made sure nobody in earshot of him did either. Their first stop was a large cage carved out of the rock. Inches-thick steel bars ran from floor to ceiling and a padlocked gate – never opened in all the time Jan could remember – separated an enclosure from the hallway. There was smaller back accessway into the pen that staff used when they had to. Like today. A bright red line marked out more than a meter from the bars. There was a large, prominent sign on the bars.

DO NOT CROSS RED LINE

A rustle of movement stirred within the enclosure. It was more than a cage, with sturdy jungle gym equipment, an underground spring creating feeding a large, clear pool. It looked like a combination of a schoolyard’s playground and a primate house. Lights shone down from above, highlighting the enclosure’s single inhabitant. He was hulking, grotesquely muscled humanoid figure dressed in dirty overalls that even a large man would be lost within. Arms thicker than a man’s thighs knuckled the figure towards the group. A ghastly, misshapen face the size of Jan’s torso peered at the group through the bars.

“Have you come to let Jorge out?”

“Not today,” one of the guards told him.

“Jorge will be good. Jorge promises.”

“You’ve said that before, Jorge. We know how that turned out.”

“Jorge does not like it here. It’s too dark and you are mean, very mean to keep Jorge here. Jorge would like to see the sun. You promised Jorge.”

“And Jorge knows why we haven’t been letting him out,” the second guard told him. “You ripped Perly’s arm off.”

“He said bad words to Jorge. Jorge is not an idiot child. Jorge is older than him and knows things. Jorge knows a lot of things, but Jorge won’t tell you unless Jorge gets to see the sun again.”

“Is Jorge going to be good?”

“Jorge is always good.”

“It’s time for Jorge’s dinner,” Jan interrupted. “What would you like today?”

“You are a nice man,” the hulking abomination told him. “You bring Jorge food, but you are a little mean, too. You don’t let Jorge have his favourites.”

Jan gestured to the wagon, fresh animal carcasses pile high upon it, several goats led on leashes by the men in the back of the group. “What would you like?” he asked again.

Thick fingers wrapped around the bars as Jorge pressed his face between them. His head didn’t fit, but he could reach an arm through. On Jorge’s face, his idiot grin split wide, hunger flickering behind his dark eyes as he stared at the pile of meat and men, smacking his lips. “Jorge wants the fat piggy.”

Jan put a hand on a pig. It was three hundred pounds of meat. “This one?”

“No,” Jorge said. He pushed his right arm between the bars. The guards stiffened, hands going to their shock prods but all the hulking grotesque did was point to Amson, sweat bursting across the overweight man’s forehead. “Jorge wants that fat piggy. Jorge bets he squeals.”

“Not today, Jorge. You can have the pig, not Amson.”

The hunched figure withdrew his arm, sulking like a toddler denied a treat. “And this is why you are mean, too.”

After Jorge they moved on to the next two. Kimmin. As soon as they dropped the dead deer into his darkened enclosure, there was a wickedly fast blur and the snapping of bones. It didn’t even touch the ground before he was upon it.

Meridi had a live feeding. For a while they’d tried giving her carcasses, but she sulked and complained and even stopped producing silk, so the board finally agreed to do so. Live feedings were not something they liked to do. It encouraged a certain mindset, but in certain cases the Care, Containment and Confinement Committee allowed it. Meridi was generally well-behaved and her excess silk went for truly astonishing sums among textiles buyers who had no idea of its true provenance. The last time she’d broken out, she hadn’t even killed anyone, just paralyzed and tangled them up. Some on the board argued that that had just been her hedging her bets in case her escape failed; if she’d actually gotten loose, then she would have gone back to her old ways.

Jan didn’t know about any of that. It wasn’t his job. His job was to bring food into the ‘animal house’. Or ‘ancestors’ shrine’, if you preferred.

Ophydia was the last stop of today’s feeding. Her enclosure was among the largest there, knocking out walls of neighbouring cells to make more room for her. As the lights in her room slowly came up, Jan looked into the room. A serpentine body approaching the size of the prehistoric Titanoboa unwound from its resting place. High-definition lights made the delicate mosaic pattern of scales shine like water. She must have recently shed.

In the enclosure was a pool the size of Jorge’s entire cell, tall shrubbery and trees and even a desk with paper, pens and typewriter. Shelves of books and magazines lined another wall, a circle of heated mattresses in front of a television. Ophydia was the most compliant of the ancestors, and perhaps also the most dangerous. She slithered up to the very edge of the barred, reinforced glass between her and her guests, crossing her arms across her chest. A pleased, expectant smile formed on her disconcertingly beautiful face, halfway between serpent and human. Her eyes, the colour of fresh-forged gold shone out, their pupils narrowed into slits as thin as the edge of a knife. She wasn’t even holding herself particularly high and she towered over each of the men there.

“And what,” she purred in a voice as sweet as honey, “have you brought me today?”