THE INVASION OF THE CHICKEN-FEET EATERS

“Sometimes to enjoy an end-product means deliberately avoiding seeing the process of making it. If you want to truly enjoy a sausage, try not to witness the process of making one.” A (1972 - )


They were here, in my house, all 9 of them, R and his parents and three of his four siblings plus their spouses. Despite drowning slowly in the buzzes inside my own head, I could hear his mother said something about “future arrangements” which “is really up to the children” but “the sooner is the better, don’t we all think?”

I heard my dad said “Of course” and his eldest sister went up to me asking whether I had talked with R about the “exact time”. Like a very nice and obedient Oshin I told her “No, Teh”, trying to slip my cellphone into my jeans pocket, in it an explicit message which mentioned a very specific body part was displayed.

The next evening when he called me saying that he and his family actually gathered after that visit and “discussed things,” I couldn’t help but say that all these sausage-making process was kinda scary.

“Sausage,” he took a breath. “You said sausage?”
“Yes, the making of a sausage. You stuff minced meat, blood-dripping minced meat, only it’s not all meat, there could be anything in there, all dripping with blood, into an elastic wrapping – “
“Morbid kid,” he laughed.
“ – and after seeing the process of making it, eating it will be an effort, I guess – “
“I told them you said that I was the one to decide the time,” he said, “And I told them and they all agreed with me that – that it would be in June.”

It was by far the longest telephone conversation we ever had – he didn’t even stay silent for two whole minutes at a time like his usual self. He talked so much about so many things, during which I was the one who stayed silent – a picture of myself stuffing ounce after ounce of blood-dripping meat into an elastic wrapping materializing inside my head.