Cody's Last Animal Cruelty Investigation

[Luis Adam Bree]

Cody was sitting in the Wild Ginger vegan restaurant, a few blocks from the law school he was attending, finishing up his supper of soba noodle soup with tofu, seaweed, spinach and mushrooms, with a side order of yam and taro tempura. A couple years ago, when in his mid-twenties, he’d been an undercover investigator working for an animal rights organization. During his time with the organization, he’d gotten jobs at several factory farm operations, where he’d used a hidden camera to surreptitiously film workers abusing animals. He’d had a successful career, exposing numerous abuses at each of the operations.
Although the legal consequences for the operations had been fairly light, the bad publicity had hurt their bottom lines. In fact, he’d been so successful that producer organizations had started to distribute photos of him, making it impossible for him to work undercover anymore. So, he’d retired and entered law school to study to become an animal rights advocate. Now, at age 29, he was set to get his degree and move on to the next phase of his life.
Just as he was sipping up his last bite of seaweed, a beep on his mobile phone indicated he’d just received a text message.
“Have animal abuse tip 4 u. Interested?”
“Don’t do anymore”
“This is big one”
Cody figured he could at least get the information and pass it on.
“OK. What you got?”
“Have to meet in person.”
“Where?”
The other party sent him a street address for a location in the neighborhood. Since it was nearby, he decided to walk there in the fresh evening air. As he approached the address, he could see through the twilight that it was one of a row of century-old brownstones. Just as he was approaching the entry, a man came around the corner.
“You Cody?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Hank”
The two shook hands.
“Sorry, but the security system is on the fritz, so I had to wait for you down here. Come on. It’ll be more convenient to use the side entrance.”
“Well ... okay. So, what do you have for me?”
Hank chuckled and made a gesture in the direction of the path leading around the back.
“Just a minute. It won’t take long.”
With that, he disappeared around the corner, leaving Cody with little option but to follow him. When he came around the corner, he noticed that a van was parked beside the building’s side entrance, where Hank was waiting for him. Just as he reached the entrance, the back door of the van suddenly opened, revealing a second man, who’d been waiting there. For a moment, Cody could only gape in surprised confusion. The face grinning back at him was a familiar one.
“Well, hello there.”
Cody hardly heard the last word, as he doubled over in pain after the man had quickly zapped him with a cattle prod.
“Long time no see, Cody.”
Cody was still in too much pain to resist as Hank swiftly grabbed his legs, lifting them up, and the other man grabbed him under the armpits and yanked him into the van. In short order, the two men had bound his ankles and wrists with duct tape and applied another strip of duct tape over his mouth. Hank jumped back out of the van and slammed the doors shut. A couple seconds later, Cody heard the van’s motor igniting, followed by a rocking motion as it took off.
Cody had no idea how many hours they’d been on route, but he had plenty of time to contemplate the predicament he was in. He’d recognized the second man in the van as Jake, an employee at a pig processing facility where he’d worked under cover a couple years earlier. Jake had been a particularly brutal worker, abusing the animals more for the sadistic pleasure than out of any need, however callous, of the work. When he’d revealed the abuse to the authorities, it had cost the operation legal fines and the loss of business from vendors who didn’t want to be associated with the negative press. Eventually, they’d had to downsize and Jake was one of the employees who’d been fired.
Eventually Cody could hear the crunching sound of gravel underneath the wheels as they turned up a driveway. Finally, the van came to a stop. When the doors were opened, his ears were greeted by the sound of hogs grunting and his nostrils assailed by the stink of unwashed straw and pig droppings. Jake jumped out of the van, where Hank had joined him. Together, they yanked Cody toward the door, from where he could see that they were parked next to a large, dilapidated shed, obviously the source of the stench as well as the grunting noises. Jake grabbed him by the shoulders while Hank took his feet.
Together they carried their struggling burden through a doorway into the shed and roughly tossed him down on the concrete floor. Cody winced at the shock of his shoulder hitting the hard surface, as he got his first glimpse of what was going to be his new home. He could see a row of holding pens, most of which held pigs, obviously being battened for slaughter.
“Welcome back to Pennsylvania, Cody. Hehe. I was hoping we’d get to see each other again.”
Cody winced again as Jack ripped the duct tape off of his mouth.
“What the hell ... “, he gasped before being silenced by a rough rap on the side of the head.
“Keep your trap shut!”
In the meantime, Hank and Jake cut the duct tape that had been securing his wrists and ankles.
“Now stand up! And take your clothes off!”
Cody got up off the floor, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“I demand to ... Ouch! Dammit!”, he exclaimed as he was hit with the cattle prods by both men simultaneously. He hunched over with his hands resting on his knees, barely able to stay standing. After a couple minutes, he was able to stand straight again.
“Now strip!” Jake barked.
With tears of pain in his eyes, Cody bent over and pulled off his sneakers and socks, followed by his checkered shirt and Tshirt. Then he dropped his jeans to his feet and finally pulled off his boxers. If the aphorism is true that clothes make the man, then the converse must be true that removing the clothes unmakes the man. Cody was acutely aware that, with each article of clothing he took off, that was just one bit less that connected him with his two captors and one bit more that connected him with the livestock being held in the pens.
“Could you at least tell me what this is all about?”
“Sure, with pleasure. You’ve managed to piss off a lot of powerful people with your exposes. It’s not just the legal difficulties and loss of business. They’ve also had to spend a lot of money lobbying politicians to get Ag Gag laws passed. Now that they’ve been successful in getting them approved in a number of states, the producers association feels like celebrating with a banquet. So, they were trying to think of something special to serve on such a festive occasion, when someone got the bright idea that there couldn’t be anything more fitting than a main course featuring the damn tree-hugger that started this all in the first place. So, it didn’t take much detective work to find out where you were these days. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer to go pick you up and renew our old acquaintance.”
Only then had Cody realized that a couple more farm hands had entered the shed. At a nod from Jake, he was grabbed by his arms and legs again and dropped on his back on a rough, wooden worktable. Each man held him pinned to the surface of the table, with his legs spread open. Jake was still grinning as he picked up a pair of shears and approached the table.
“You might remember from your previous time here that we castrate piglets so that they don’t develop boar taint, which ruins the flavor, when they reach maturity.”
Cody shuddered as Jake held the shears up next his genitals.
“You might also recall that we don’t ever use anesthetics. Hehe.”
“Please ... “, Cody pleaded, wide-eyed and shuddering.
Jake tossed the shears aside.
“Chillax, Porky. Just messing with you. At your age, it’s too late for castration to have any effect on boar taint. And we don’t know if ‘boar taint’ is a problem with humans anyway. You’re the first one we’ve tried this out with. So, the boss didn’t think it’d be worth the risk of infection or severe blood loss. However, just to make sure, he ordered us to try out a new, more ... “ (Jake wrinkled his nose in mock disgust as he spat out the word) “ ... humane method.”
Jake grabbed Cody’s head roughly by the hair and jerked it up so that they were looking eye-to-eye.
“But let’s be clear. If I’d had anything to say about it, you’d be a soprano already. So, don’t give me any excuses, understand?”
The other farm hands pulled Cody to his feet and forced him into an open pen that was currently vacant. Jake followed them in and ran his hand appraisingly along Cody’s flank.
“There are two main classes of pig breeds in the world, the lard pigs, who were raised for fatty meat, and the bacon pigs, who were developed for lean meat. Not many people raise lard pig breeds anymore. Leaner meat is more popular.”
Jake patted Cody’s abs. After over a decade on a healthy, vegan diet and several years’ strenuous labor on factory farms as part of his undercover work, Cody’s physique was fit and trim.
“Fortunately you obviously are a bacon pig, so you’re likely to please the palates of the banquet guests.”
Cody gasped as, without warning, Jake punched him in the stomach so hard that it knocked the wind out of him.
“That’s for losing me my job, bitch.”
Jake cuffed him on the head so that he fell over, still gasping for breath, onto the straw-strewn cement. Then he walked out of the pen and shut and locked the gate. Before leaving the shed, he picked up Cody’s discarded clothing and dumped it in a garbage bin. Cody was left lying alone on the floor, hoarse from panting and trying to get his wind back. Through the slats of the partition with the neighboring pen, his eyes met the eyes of a large pig curiously staring back at him as it snuffled in the straw. From now on, this was going to be one of his peers.
A couple of hours later, Jake came back to the shed carrying some buckets.
“Feeding time, Porky!”
He walked along the row of pens, doling out slop to each of the pigs. When he was finished, he came over to Cody’s pen.
“We’ve fixed up something special just for you, Porky.”
He dipped a ladle into one of the buckets and, reaching through the slats of the pen, emptied the contents into a trough lying on the floor. It was a mushy porridge made from barley and corn that had been soaked in soy milk. Then he spooned out some sort of greens from another container into the same trough.
“These are the new, kinder and gentler, means of dealing with boar taint. It’s raw chicory leaves and cooked chicory root. You might taste delicious even without it, but they claim that a diet of chicory for a period of two weeks removes any bad flavor. Luckily, the banquet isn’t until a couple more weeks either, so you’ll have time to get ready for dinner.”
Cody just lay there and looked at him with a sullen expression.
“Eat your food, pig.”
“Fuck you! ... OW!!”
Jake had reached through the slabs of the pen with the cattle prod and given Cody a long zap.
“Don’t make me lose my patience.”
Still sore from the zap, Cody crawled gingerly over to the trough on his hands and knees.
“How am I supposed to eat this? With my hands?”
“For all I care, you can stick your nose in it and snarf it up like all the other pigs. But, if you’d rather use your hands, go ahead. Knock yourself out.”
Hesitantly, Cody grabbed a handful of the raw chicory, put it in his mouth and started chewing. The chicory was the sort used as forage for animals, rather than human cuisine. Chewing it was like chewing on weeds and it had an unpleasant, bitter taste. Nevertheless, with Jake standing on the other side of the partition, happy for any excuse to use the cattle prod some more, he had no choice but to chew and chew until he finally was able to swallow it. Hoping for an antidote for the bitterness of the greens, he dipped his hand into the porridge and lifted a handful of the bland, mushy slop to his mouth. It was boring, but rather soothing after the greens.
He continued eating alternating handfuls of greens and porridge, all the while keeping a wary eye on the cattle prod, until he’d finally managed to finish off everything in the trough. When he was done, he crawled over to a second trough that had water in it. There weren’t any cups, so he had to cup his hands together and try to get them to his mouth before too much of the water could leak through his fingers. After several attempts, he’d managed to get enough water to satisfy him for the time being. Then he crawled back to the other side of the pen and lay down against the wall, his jaws still sore from chewing on the chicory.
Jake grinned sarcastically.
“Now that’s a good, little piggy. Just keep up the good work and you’ll be ready for the dinner table in plenty of time for the big banquet.”
Jake returned two more times that day with slop for Cody and the pigs. Cody was still aching from the previous zaps from the cattle prod, so these times he ate his food without arguing, while Jake stood watch over him to make sure he finished off every bite. In between feeding times, he just lay on the straw, staring at the ceiling, still unable to believe that he was really there, being battened for slaughter as meat. When night fell, he despondently curled up in a foetal position against the wall. Shivering from the cool, night air in the drafty, unheated shed, he had difficulty falling asleep, with the annoying sound of grunting coming from his neighbors. However he finally succeeded in losing consciousness, if only for a brief time.
“What the . . . ?” Cody spluttered as he sat up with a start, realizing that he was soaking wet.
“Rise and shine, Porky.”
Jake was standing on the other side of the partition, holding a garden hose.
“As you see, we at this operation are always concerned with the health and wellbeing of our livestock. We attach great importance to the cleanliness of our pigs and their environment. Stand up so that I can give you a proper cleaning.”
Cody muttered something under his breath.
“Stand up! Now! Or you’ll get the prod.”
Cody wearily stood up and passively endured the jet of cold water.
“Now turn around so I can get you from behind.”
Cody turned his back to Jake, who sprayed him with more water.
“Bend over. I want to make sure you’re clean all over.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Cody thought, without daring to say it out loud.
He obediently leaned over, exposing his butt cheeks to the chilly shower. When Jake was satisfied that he’d cleaned the pig sufficiently (or just got bored of teasing him), he put the hose away. A short time later, he returned with the morning ration of slop and chicory, which Cody forced himself to eat without resisting. The rest of the day passed just like the previous one.
Later that evening, however, after the last feeding time was over and Jake had left for the day, Cody tried testing the strength of the slats on the pen’s partition. Unfortunately, the pork producers evidently had had the foresight to reinforce the hinges on the gate. No matter how hard he shook it or kicked at it, it wouldn’t give. However, the noise he was making startled his fellow captives, who started squealing in panic. In no time, Jake appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a couple of the farm hands, to find out what all the ruckus was about.
“What’s going on here?” he growled. He walked up and down the row of pens, lighting up each one with his flashlight. When he showed the light on Cody, crouching next to the gate of his pen, his face darkened with a frown.
“You’ve been trying to get away with something, haven’t you?”
Jake opened the gate and entered the pen. Stepping up to where Cody was sitting on the floor, he leaned down punched him on the side of the head.
“Answer me, pig!”
Desperately, Cody jumped up and swung at Jake, before trying to run out through the gate. However, the bigger man grabbed his arm before he could escape and started pummeling him on the head. The farm hands had come up and held his arms pinned to his sides as Jake continued hitting him.
“Take the pig and stretch him over the table.”
The farm hands dragged Cody to the table and bent him over it, so his face and upper body were pressed down on the rough wood. Immediately after, he felt a sharp sting on his thighs. Jake had removed his belt and started hitting Cody on the hips and legs.
“I was hoping you’d give me an excuse to get in a little tenderizing. Just remember, Porky, with every lash, your meat is going to get a little bit more tender and delicious. That’s worth a little pain, isn’t it? Hehe.”
When he was finished, Jake had the farm hands bind Cody’s wrists and ankles with duct tape again.
“Since we can’t trust you not to try any funny business, we’ll have to keep you secured at night.”
Totally defeated, Cody passively let them bind him and dump him back in the pen.
“You know, Porky, you might as well get used to the idea. You’re just a matter of days away from becoming pork chops, no matter what you might want.”
With that, Jake and the farm hands left the shed, leaving Cody bound, lying on the cement floor. It took a while before the other pigs in the shed had calmed down enough for him to finally be able to fall asleep, exhausted.
The following morning, Jake woke him with a slap and, after a little more tenderizing, removed the duct tape so he could spray Cody off with cold water again. The day passed like the previous one, the only diversions being the regular servings of slop and chicory. At the end of the day, he was bound up again and left for the night.
The next few days followed the same pattern: first a little roughing up for the sake of tenderizing, followed by a cold wash from the hose, and then the feeding periods, with their never varying menu. However, one day there was a surprise. Cody had finished his second helping of slop for the day, when Jake walked in, beaming with glee.
“We’ve got a surprise for you, Porky.”
As he was talking, one of the farm hands had driven a new pig into the shed.
“We’ve got a roommate for you, to keep you company.”
Cody shrank back in shock as they drove the pig into his pen. He’d never really realized before just how big pigs could be, until he found himself in a confined space with one, and felt especially vulnerable without his clothes.
“I think he needs a name. What do you think about ‘Cody’? That’s a good name for a pig, I think. Hehe.”
The next feeding time didn’t go over very well. The larger boar had no difficulty shoving Cody away from the trough as it greedily guzzled down all the slop. Cody had only managed to grab a handful. So, the farm hands were obliged to put in a second trough on the opposite side of the pen, so that Cody could eat his portion in peace, although he had to hurry to finish it before the boar had finished its own meal and come over for seconds. That evening they bound him again, leaving him lying defenseless and alone with the boar. There was no way he could avoid it when the boar decided to lie down right next to him. However, the boar’s body heat did relieve some of the chill of the night, so he eventually got used to it and fell asleep.
As the days went by, Cody’s daily routine continued unchanged. Without any human contact, unless you counted his encounters with Jake, his only company was the other pigs in the shed. He gradually gave nicknames to the pigs in the neighboring pens and occasionally would even catch himself starting to make comments to them. He just told himself that he wouldn’t really be going crazy until he started hearing them making comments back at him.
In the middle of the second week, Jake and the farm hands came into the shed at a different time than normal. He opened the gate and walked into the pen.
“Cody. C’mere, Cody”
Cody looked up and started to get to his feet.
“No, Porky, not you. I was calling Cody there.”
When the boar didn’t come, he jabbed it with the cattle prod and drove it out of the shed. Cody never saw it again. When he was lying in the straw that night, his wrists and ankles bound as usual, he couldn’t help feeling more depressed than usual. After all, he and the boar, along with the other pigs in the shed, had a common bond. They all were fated to share the same common destiny.
One morning, when Jake arrived in the morning, instead of unbinding Cody and hosing him down, he took him by the arm and led him out of the pen.
“You’ve got some company today, Porky. You’d better be on your best behavior.”
Then he motioned to the door and shortly afterwards a couple large, middle-aged men came in.
“Porky, these are a couple of the members of the pork producers association who you’ll be feeding at the upcoming banquet. They’ve been looking forward to meeting the guy who’s caused them all the bother.”
One of the producers chuckled.
“I guess you’re called ‘Porky’ now? That seems fitting, I think.”
Then the second one chimed in.
“Porky, then. Porky, seeing how interested you were in observing our production methods back when you infiltrated one of our facilities a couple years ago, we were delighted to give you the opportunity to get an even closer look at the pork production process, in the most direct way possible, as one of the pigs, from the beginning right up to the very end. We hope you’ve found it an educational experience.”
The first one turned to Jake.
“I don’t suppose he could possibly have a hidden camera on him this time,” he joked.
“No, sir. Not unless he had one stuck up his ass. I could check to make sure, if you want.”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll just check out the meat to ensure that your husbandry of the pig has developed a good muscle tone.”
With that, both men palped Cody’s arms or grabbed a piece of his flank. They continued to examine other points on the body. When they were satisfied that Cody’s meat would pass muster, they left the shed without another glance at him.
That was Cody’s last night in the shed. In the morning, Jake led him, still bound with the duct tape, and a couple pigs from the shed to another building. As they crossed the yard, he occasionally gave Cody a few last cuffs to hurry him on. The interior of the building was covered with white tiles and there were some hooks dangling from the ceiling with a drain in the floor just beneath them. Jake pulled out a bolt gun and released the cartridge against the middle of the pig’s forehead. The pig immediately collapsed to the floor and the farm hands quickly hung it by the feet from one of the hooks. Then Jake turned to Cody.
“Porky, I’ve been fantasizing about this since I was fired from my old job.”
Cody had originally become a vegan because he felt that using animals for food was no different than using other humans for food. He believed that animals felt the same emotions as humans, but he was aware that the converse was also true, that humans, including himself, had the same physical composition as animals. He’d long known that he was made of meat. This doesn’t mean he was any more resigned to his fate than any of the pigs were. Still, it was obvious that there wasn’t any way out of his predicament at this point, and there wasn’t anything he could do but submit to sharing the same fate as the animals whose welfare he’d spent his brief career advocating for. The next phase of his life, that was supposed to have begun with the completion of the law degree, was going to be a brief one as a meat animal. Shuddering, he closed his eyes as Jake placed the bolt gun against his forehead.
A moment later, he was lying unconscious on the tiled floor. Just as quickly as with the first pig, the farm hands had hoisted him onto the hook so that he was hanging head downwards. The pig hanging next to him had regained consciousness when its throat was slit and started squirming about. It knocked against Cody, who also regained consciousness just in time to briefly feel the knife open his jugular veins. The blood poured out into a large basin placed just underneath him, in order to save it for use in blood sausages.
Once the carcass had been completely bled, Jake slit it down the middle, letting the inner organs drop out into a slop bucket. The heart, liver and kidneys were set aside, along with the brain, which had been removed after the head had been detached and broken open, for use in specialty recipes. The rest was discarded. Finally, the carcass was carved down the middle with a chain saw. At this point, the two halves hanging there bore an even greater similarity to the pig carcass halves they were mixed in with. The primary clue that they were once part of a person was that the limbs ended in toes and fingers, rather than hooves. That, and the tattoos. Both Cody’s entire right arm and the upper half of the left one, were covered with sleeve tattoos.
“Those tattoos won’t do,” said the head chef, who’d come in to see how they were progressing with the meat. “We’ll have to skin the arms first, before we’d be able to use the meat.”
Jake had an idea. “Don’t discard them. I’ll be right back.”
Jake was an avid hunter and had tried his hand before at tanning hides, so he had the necessary chemicals for treating the skin. He rushed back to his room to mix the solution together and, by the time he’d returned to the abattoir, they’d finished removing the tattooed skin. Leaving the farm hands to finish the job of processing the carcasses, he returned to his room to let the skin soak in the solution for a few hours. When they’d soaked for enough time, he removed the pieces and stretched them gently on racks to dry. The floral and leafy patterned tattoos, predominantly in greens and reds, were rather pretty. He thought they’d look nice tacked to the wall of his room as a memento of the time he’d been able to give a tree-hugging animal rights activist his comeuppance.
By this time, the preparations for that evening’s banquet were in full swing. As Jake entered the kitchen, it was bustling with chef’s assistants busily preparing dishes for all the guests. The head chef took time out to greet him. Jake smiled back at him.
“I sure wish I was one of the big wigs in the banquet room. After all the work I’ve put into the preparations for this meal, you’d think even a peon like me would get at least a taste.”
“You’re in luck,” said the chef. “I’ve saved some for myself and I’d be happy to have you join me for dinner. I’m afraid it’ll take some time to prepare, but by that time the guests will all have finished and we can relax and eat our fill.”
“My mouth’s watering already. Can you tell me what’s on the menu?”
“Well, I was rather intrigued when I heard what the battening included. Although you used a sort of chicory that’s really only suitable for livestock, there are more delicate sorts used in fine cuisine, such as radicchio.” The chef gestured toward a table where six heads of red radicchio were sitting. “I thought it would be interesting to use a recipe incorporating radicchio, to tie in with the means used for preparing the meat.”
With that, the chef pulled out a slab of meat.
“I carved this piece of meat from the abdomen to use in my own recipe. I was just getting ready to start preparing it.”
Jake took a look at the meat. Even though it had come from an athletic, young vegan, it still had a thin layer of fat, which would make it nice and juicy when cooked properly. After all, this was to be expected for a cut from the belly.
Meanwhile, the chef had placed the meat on a cutting board, with the smooth, white skin facing up. With a knife, he quickly scored a pattern of cuts into the skin. Then he rubbed some olive oil into it and scattered some pepper and sea salt over it. Then he laid the meat in a shallow pan and stuck it in an oven.
“Come back in an hour and a half, if you want to watch the next step.”
When Jake returned, the kitchen was even more bustling than before. The room was filled with the aroma of cooking pork. He’d arrived just as the banquet had finished with the appetizer course and was ready for the entree. As he wound his way through the commotion to the chef’s preparation space, waiters were hurrying past him carrying plates of Cody chops with a maple-orange glaze for the famished guests. When he reached the chef, he was just removing the ab meat from the oven. The formerly soft, smooth skin had crackled by this time. Putting it aside, the chef placed the radicchio heads, each cut in half, on the roasting tray. Then he scattered chopped garlic and thyme over the radicchio and poured some cider over it. Finally, he drizzled some olive oil, dotted it with Dijon mustard and sprinkled some brown sugar over it. Then he laid the pork on top and popped the tray back in the oven.
“It’ll be another two hours before it’s finished roasting, but it’ll be worth the wait. Trust me.”
By the time their dinner was ready, the main banquet had finished with the dessert and only a handful of guests were still lingering, sipping their cocktails after that excellent dinner. Things had calmed down in the kitchen as well, with just a few kitchen assistants working at cleaning up the mess. When the chef removed the roasting tray from the oven, the meat was sizzling in its own juices. With a pair of tongs, he lifted the pork to a cutting board, where he carved it into thick slices. Then he placed a bed of radicchio on two plates, placed a couple slices of ab meat on each and spooned some of the juices from the roasting pan over all. Finally, they sat down at a table in the partially darkened kitchen and, after first clinking their wine glasses and taking a sip of the pinot noir, they proceeded to tuck into their dinner of slow-roasted vegan belly with chicory.
By this time, Jake was starving, but the wait had indeed been worth it. Actually, as he took his first bite of the ab meat, he was in the best mood he’d been in for ages. Now that there wasn’t anything left of Cody other than some pantry items, he wasn’t feeling as resentful anymore about having been fired. After all, he was the one who’d had the last laugh. And, who could bear a grudge against someone who was so delicious?
Jake carved off a second bit of pork and placed it in his mouth to savor the flavor. The mildly sweet, ham-like taste of the abs contrasted with the slightly bitter flavor of the radicchio, all tied together by the flavorful juices.
“It’s true,” Jake thought. “Revenge is sweet.”