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Opening: Carcass. Cut in half. Stunner. Slaughter line. Spray wash. These words appear in his head and strike him. Destroy him. But they’re not just words. They’re the blood, the dense smell, the automation, the absence of thought. They burst in on the night, catch him off guard. When he wakes, his body is covered in a film of sweat because he knows that what awaits is another day of slaughtering humans.
Ending: 🤯🤯🤯 whaat?! why???? I’m floored!
Review: In Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh, readers are taken on a journey through a dystopian society where a virus has deemed all animals poisonous to humans, forcing humans to turn to each other as a source of food.
I like it plunges straight into the “meat and potatoes” of the story, making for a fast-paced and captivating read. (pun intended).
Bazterrica paints a graphic and vivid image of a society where consuming human flesh is normalised, accepted and regulated by the government. It is disturbing to see how easily people embrace this new reality and how it becomes part of their daily lives. Would you be able to stomach it or would you stand up against it?
As the story unfolds, it raises a plethora of ethical questions that leave me questioning my moral compass and beliefs. It made me reflect on the extent of human survival and the boundaries we’re willing to cross to survive.
Tender is the Flesh is a disturbing yet thought-provoking read. Strongly recommended.
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If everyone was eating human meat, would you?
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Excerpts:
A commercial plays again and again in his mind. A woman who’s beautiful but dressed conservatively is putting dinner on the table for her three children and husband. She looks at the camera and says: “I serve my family special food, it’s the same meat as always, but tastier.” The whole family smiles and eats their dinner. The government, his government, decided to resignify the product. They gave human meat the name “special meat”. Instead of just “meat”, now there’s “special tenderloin”, “special cutlets”, “special kidneys”.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
He doesn’t call it special meat. He uses technical words to refer to what is a human but will never be a person, to what is always a product. To the number of heads to be processed, to the lot waiting in the unloading yard, to the slaughter line that must run in a constant and orderly manner, to the excrement that needs to be sold for manure, to the offal sector. “. No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him, he would prefer not to have to call them by any name.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
He talks about the essential importance of the flaying machine, how if it’s not calibrated correctly it can rip the skin, of how the fresh skin he’s sent from the processing plant requires further refrigeration so that subsequent flesh removal is not as cumbersome, of the need for the lots to be well hydrated so the skin doesn’t dry out and crack, of having to talk to the people at the breeding centre about this because they’re not following the liquid diet, of how stunning needs to be carried out with precision because if the product is slaughtered carelessly, it’ll show on the skin, which gets tough and is more difficult to work with because, he points out, “Everything is reflected in the skin, it’s the largest organ in the body.”
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
First Generation Pure (FGP) are heads* born and bred in captivity. They haven’t been genetically modified or given injections to accelerate their growth.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
*Humans raised for consumption are called “heads”
Egmont asks if the heads talk. He’s surprised it’s so quiet. El Gringo tells him they’re isolated in incubators from when they’re little, and later on in cages. He says their vocal cords are removed so they’re easier to control. “No one wants them to talk because meat doesn’t talk,”
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
“I’ve got a gift from El Gringo. Can you sign here?”
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“What is that?”
“It’s a female FGP.”
“Take her back, okay? Now.”
Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
At first Spanel copied the traditional cuts of beef so the change wouldn’t be as abrupt. […] The label read “Special Meat”, but on another part of the package, Spanel clarified that it was “Upper Extremity”, strategically avoiding the word hand. Then she added packaged feet, which were displayed on a bed of lettuce with the label “Lower Extremity”, and later on, a platter with tongues, penises, noses, testicles and a sign that said “Spanel’s Delicacies”
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
He knows he can raise her, that it’s permitted. He’s aware there are people who do so, and who eat their domestic heads alive, part by part. They say the meat tastes better, claim it’s really fresh. Tutorials are available that explain how, when and where to make the cuts so the product doesn’t die early.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
It’s known that in public nursing homes, when the majority of seniors die, or are left to die, they’re sold on the black market. It’s the cheapest meat money can buy because it’s dry and diseased, full of pharmaceuticals. It’s meat with a first and last name. In some cases, a senior’s own family members will authorize a private or state-owned nursing home to sell their body and use the proceeds to pay off any debt. There are no longer funerals. It’s very difficult to ensure that a body isn’t disinterred and eaten. That’s why many of the cemeteries were sold and others abandoned.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
This is export-quality meat, that these heads are First Generation Pure. “It’s the most expensive meat on the market because it takes many years to raise the heads,” he says. Then he has to explain that all the other meat is genetically modified, so that the product grows faster and there’s a profit. “But then is the meat we eat completely artificial? Is it synthetic meat?” the taller applicant asks. “Well, no. I wouldn’t say it’s artificial or synthetic. I’d say modified. It doesn’t taste all that different from FGP meat, though FGP is upper grade, for refined palates.”
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“His job is one of the most important, stunning the heads. He strikes them unconscious so their throats can be slit. Go ahead and show them, Sergio,” he says and tells the men to climb up steps that have been built below the window. This way they’ll be able to see what happens inside the box.”
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Sergio enters the box room and gets up onto the platform. He grabs the club. Then he shouts, “Send in the next one!” A guillotine door opens and a naked female, barely twenty years of age, walks in. She’s wet and her hands are held behind her back with a cable tie. She’s been shaved. Inside the box there’s very little space. It’s almost impossible for her to move. Sergio places the stainless steel shackles, which run along a vertical rail, around the female’s neck and clamps them shut. The female trembles, shakes a little, tries to free herself. She opens her mouth.
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Sergio looks her in the eye and pats her a few times on the head, almost like he’s petting her. He says something to her they can’t hear, or sings to her. The female becomes still, she calms down. Sergio raises the club and hits her on the forehead. It’s a sharp strike. So swift and silent it’s crazy. The female is knocked unconscious. Her body goes slack and when Sergio opens the shackles, it falls to the ground. The automatic door opens outwards and the base of the box tilts to expel the body, which slides onto the floor.
An employee enters and binds her feet with straps that are attached to chains. He cuts the cable tie holding her hands together and presses a button. The body is raised and transported face down to another room via a system of rails. The employee looks up into the lounge and waves at him. He doesn’t remember the man’s name, but knows he hired him a few months back.
The employee gets a hose and rinses off the box and floor, which have been splattered with excrement.
Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
They walk through a hallway with a wide window that looks directly into the slitting room. […] The heads enter via an automatic rail. Three bodies are hanging face down. The first has had its throat slit, the other two wait their turn. One of these is the female Sergio has just stunned. The worker presses a button and the body that’s been bled dry follows its course along the rail while the next body moves into place above the trough. With a swift movement, the worker slits the head’s throat. The body trembles slightly. The blood falls into the trough. It stains the worker’s apron, trousers and boots.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
They see the way the female’s bloodless body moves along the rail until a worker undoes the straps around her feet and the body falls into a scalding tank where other corpses are floating in boiling water. A different employee plunges the corpses below the surface with a stick and moves them around. The taller applicant asks if their lungs fill with contaminated water when they’re pushed below the surface.
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Once they’re entirely hairless, they can be gutted. ##
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## Then it follows with a very graphic and detailed description of the butchering and processing of the heads
What he wants to do is prohibited. But he does it anyway.
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The spiritual master tells him that the church member who will be immolated has been examined by a doctor and has prepared his testament and performed his departure ritual. The man gives him another piece of paper that’s been stamped and certified by a notary and says, “I, Gastón Schafe, authorize my body to be used as food for other people,” and contains a signature and ID number. Gastón Schafe steps forward in his red tunic. He’s a seventy-year-old man.
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“My life will truly take on meaning once my body feeds another human being, one who truly needs it. Why waste my protein value in a meaningless cremation? I’ve lived my life, that’s good enough for me.”
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In unison, all the church members shout, “Save the planet, immolate yourself!
Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
“My dear cavaler, fate has smiled down upon me. Some time ago, I implemented a programme that allows celebrities who have fallen from grace by amassing large debts to settle their accounts here.”
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“What do you mean? I don’t follow.”
“They are required to remain on the game reserve for one week, three days or a few hours, depending on the amount they owe, and if the hunters aren’t able to get them, and they survive the adventure, I guarantee the cancellation of all of their debt.”
“So they’re willing to die because they owe money?”
“There are people willing to do atrocious things for a lot less, cavaler. Like hunting someone who’s famous and eating them.”
Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
Guerrero Iraola is talking about the Lulú cabaret. He’s using code words because it’s known that the place is a seedy club involved in human trafficking, with one minor difference: after paying for sex, a client can also pay to eat the woman he’s slept with. It’s extremely pricey but the option exists, even if it’s illegal. Everyone is involved: politicians, the police, judges. Each takes their cut because human trafficking has gone from being the third largest industry to the first. Only a few of the women are eaten, but from time to time it happens, that’s what Guerrero Iraola is telling them, emphasizing in English that he paid “billions, billions” for a stunning blonde who drove him wild and afterwards, he of course, “had to take things further”. The hunters laugh and clink their glasses, celebrating his decision.
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The office first began sending inspectors a few days after the female was brought to his house. The female who at the time had no name, who was a number in a registry, a problem, one domestic head like so many others. […]
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Remember that if you decide to slaughter her, you’ll need to contact a specialist who’ll verify you’ve done so and notify us for our records. The same goes for selling her, or if she escapes, or if anything else happens that should be recorded, so we don’t have any issues down the road.
Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
CLICK TO REVEAL ENDING (SPOILER!!)he regulations specify that reproduction is only permitted by artificial means. Semen must be purchased in special banks, and sample implantation carried out by qualified professionals. The whole process has to be documented and certified so that if the female is impregnated, the fetus already has an identification number. As such, domestic females should be virgins. Having sex with a head, enjoying her, is illegal and the sentence is death in the Municipal Slaughterhouse.
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Tender the the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
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