As I scuff my feet on the way to Practical Training, my wet boots make a obnoxiously wonderful squeaking sound. I giggle. My fellow Titles regard me with sky high eyebrows and maintain a good five foot radius around me as though they think they can catch my crazy. Don't worry children, you won't catch it, it's genetic. Still I wouldn't wander too close. I bite. As I push open the door to the Practical Training room one of my obscenely long fingernails gets caught. I bend it back and forth until at last I can tear the tip from the rest. It remains stuck in the door. It is yellow and grotesque; a deliciously gruesome tribute to my insanity. I frown as I move to take my place among the others, the claws on my left hand are no longer all the same length, that's depressing.
Apocalypse's replacement is an ugly toad-faced creature. Well as ugly as you can be when you're engineered to look perfect. Her personality makes her ugly; it's what twists her lips and sits on her eyebrows. I will call her Toady. Doomsday delivers an eloquent speech about whatever painfully useless thing we are about to be forced to do. Her words are chosen with beautiful precision. Clears throat: "Blah, blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah, greater purpose, blah."
Her speech almost brings tears to my eyes. If only she wrote novels we would all waste away into the depths of starvation devouring her every written word. Toady pushes a metal box on wheels into the room and opens it. Inside, packed on ice is a human brain. She sets the box on the table and reaches in to retrieve a shiny little knife. The first person goes up in numerical order and takes the knife, cutting a clean slice out of the brain. She takes the slice in her right hand and brings it to her mouth, in four bites it's gone. She swallows hard, her face exhibiting a significant lack of satisfaction with her culinary experience.
Who's brain is that? She just took a mouthful out of a person's identity. Dreams and fears, desires, memories, knowledge, darkest secrets, greatest virtues-all that's left is the tiny residue clinging to her unamused tastebuds. The next person goes up and does the same thing biting off some mathematical aptitude, with a small side of ability to maintain homeostasis. One by one they take a sliver and swallow. Finally, Doomsday calls me down to the brain. My feet move unattached to my body, my shoulders sag and my lips are pursed. Bump Nose's voice whispers in my ear. Keep you're head down, do as you're told and this will be the last generation of Titles, you can end all the suffering. I pick up the knife. A thought occurs to me. Why are we being forced to do this?
For what feels like an eternity I stand there in front of the brain, knife in hand. I don't want to eat that. I have never wanted to do something less. At last I turn away from the brain. In one fluid movement I throw the knife upward with a firm jolt. It lodges itself in the ceiling, it's butt waving back and forth upon impact. I clear my throat to speak. "I'm not hungry." With that I walk back to my place, nerves itching for an electric jolt, shoulder blades aching for a bullet, yet I'm delivered no such liberation. Because for some reason the gray blob in my head is infinitely more valuable than that one.
The next person goes up cautiously, a nameless, faceless number. I'm not paying attention. I hear the chink of a new knife being placed on the table. My eyelids droop. Yet after five minutes in occurs to me that the Title is still down there holding the knife over the brain. A male face, stony and white, looks deep into the space right above the managed organ. With a ringing sound the knife hits the ground. He begins to walk back to his place. Then the push of a button. Burnt hair. Blackened corpse. Putrid stench. He is dragged away by Toady, leaving a trail of black on the perfectly manicured floor. Within half an hour the brain is fully devoured.
