sacrificial, a short story.

The world will eat me alive, and it will eat me after I'm dead.

The air weighs heavy, and the rods of my cage are burning; after all, my fate is to be burned, but why now burn me? on this cloudless Karachi afternoon? There used to be empathy in the human, but that was a tale as old as time. Now the line between utility and ethics has worn out; if they are the feeling-less ones, should they not be sacrificed instead of us? The end must not be far now.

It is overcrowded, and we all smell of each other until one of us is gone and there is another to replace him. Why do this right in front of us? I ask over and over, until I can ask no more. "Baa, how have you managed not to get slaughtered yet?" asked a new lamb, "I don't know, maybe they confuse me with the others, after all, to them, we are just meat" I answered. The new lamb, confused, turned his back and sat down farther away from me, which was two goats ahead; I wondered if lambs that thought getting sacrificed was an honor still existed.

I always sat in the middle of the cage. Not too far, not too close, perhaps that is what had kept me safe until now. It had been two weeks since I had been brought here, thrown into a pit of sacrificial lambs without asking me what I wanted. Were humans not all about liberalism? I knew places, roads, and words, but I could never speak them, so I collected them instead.

My daydreams came to a halt when I heard the cage unlock. This meant it was time for one of us to go. This was the man who always picked the next goat for slaughter, and I had gone unrecognized by him for some time. He wore a green shalwar kameez, drenched in sweat, and had a hoarse voice. He would always say 'Bismillah', when he rattled the door open, and though Bismillah is for a beginning, it was always the word that started the end for us. We never talked to each other in that cage, yet we all knew what the other was thinking, with tears in our eyes and the look of doom; soon it was time to recite 'La illaha Illalah'.

The man in green picked the new lamb. I was bewildered at my fate; how could it be that I have sat here for two weeks, with this depression nauseating me, while the child had only just found a place to sit? He began crying. He cried so loud that the whole cage went in an uproar, but the man was used to the sound and went around his duty like it was just another day, and for him it truly was.

I said all that I could, "kick, as hard as you can, little lamb," but he was already in the man's arms by the time my voice reached him. That's when I was slapped with the same fact again: this was our reality, and it was mechanic for them, this process.

The little lamb, with black fur, must have been calling hard for his mother. While the sick little girl went over his head with her hand, she felt his helplessness; children see things like us, but once they grow up, their consciousness blurs and fades away.

I saw him get passed around, and once he reached the 'Kasai' who was fairly out of sight of the customers, it dawned on me that I have yet to see my fate play out in-front of me for what felt like the hundredth time. They thought we couldn't see or hear, but we are animals; not inanimate. The Kasai rolled his sweaty blue sleeves up, and took his knife and placed it at the neck of the lamb, and said 'Allahu Akbar'.

The lamb bled so little, for he was not too big himself, but I felt the pain of the knife as if it were my own neck. Every time I would feel it cut through my veins, as I realized I was still alive, the sickness took over me once more. How was it that God put all those who harm the helpless in hell and sent those who sacrificed animals to heaven? Was there anyone in heaven at all?

I went on and decided then; I could take no more. Finding my way through the cage of teary-eyed lambs and goats, I sat right in-front of the door. I could not bear the weight of being alive when every second was not life to be lived but a delay in death. The sun, still hot as ever, reached my eyes, and I took it in as it was my last gulp of sunshine. The man greeted another customer, and I started reciting my prayers to God, praying for nothing.

The man came with a smile on his face, again in his mechanical way, reaching out for a lamb, and I got pushed by another and fell right into his grasp. We were all creatures of fear after all. Isn't this what I asked for just a moment ago? God answered my prayer with death, and it was a relief in many ways.

While he held me in his arms and held my legs with his hands, I thought of how privileged are those who possess arms on their body. It is almost as if they are unspoken consent, for I have four legs, and can not hide myself away nor can I push this man away now. Arms would be like consent, a way to have means of taking my fate into my own hands, but alas, as disgustingly blessed I am with this consciousness of mine, I am a mere four-legged animal in the arms of my slaughterer and so was the lamb before me. It had begun.

He says 'bismillah' with the knife that cuts through my neck, and they will say 'bismillah' when they devour me dead.