The Shift

I stare daggers as a man in the grocery store beside me orders his pick of the finest human meat. Vomit rises to my throat, sickened by the thought that any one of my friends or family who has Devolved could have been hunted and killed, hung in a meat locker, and sliced into gourmet steaks.

“You should be ashamed of yourself” I snapped, making sure he saw the anger in my eyes as he caught my glance.

“Lady, they’re just animals.” he laughed, looking back to the attendant who was wrapping his order in butcher paper. “How much for 10 pounds of her?” he joked, gesturing in my direction.

The attendant pretended not to hear, keeping his head down as he weighed the human flesh masked to look like nothing more than a slab of beef.

“Disgusting” I spat, turning on my heels, eyes stinging with angry tears.

My fridge and pantry were empty—I had avoided the grocer for as long as I could manage once they legalized the sale of human meat. Now, my stomach ached, and I had lost my appetite. I would fight this battle another time. I would lay in bed and listen to my stomach moan. Anything was better than reading every label to ensure no human meat product or byproduct was used.

Eighteen months ago, humanity as I knew it, ceased to exist. Many of the Evolved have adapted to this new reality by allowing themselves to be indoctrinated into a dog-eat-dog world, or in this case, human-eat-human. More frightening than seeing a friend of your own become Devolved, roaming through the streets and dumpsters, operating on instincts alone, are the radical groups that have sparked in the wake of The Shift. Too many of the Evolved want to obliterate the Devolved and send out teams of hunters to gather and cage them so that they may be slaughtered for the supermarkets. The thought sickens me, despite the jitters I get when I mistake a Devolved Human with a Peeping Tom, or see a former colleague catching and eating live toads whole. The reality I am living in seems fictional, but I am reminded that it is real every time I glance out my bedroom window and see a Devolved Human grazing in the fields and forest behind my home, and then see an Evolved hunter lay low in wait for the opportune moment to pounce.

Life has gone on, schools have reopened for the Evolved, and each of them has found their own way to cope with the changes that have befallen the world. Families have adapted as one of their own has turned, hiding them within their homes like house pets. Some Devolved, those who lived alone or had no family in sight before The Shift, wander around aimlessly without want to attack the Evolved. These are those that are in danger of the radical groups, hunting them for a quick buck in the butcher shops. They look at us with blank stares from the woods, and sometimes we catch them nibbling on the food in our vegetable gardens or trash in our garbage cans, and we feel guilty shooing them away like common racoons. It makes our stomachs turn, watching others like us live primitively and become roadkill in the streets.

Eighteen months ago, I watched as recognition faded from the eyes of my sister, as she became skittish like a fox whose foxhole has been compromised. We were watching a comedy that night, sitting in my living room and drinking a bottle of cabernet. We were creatures of habit. Every Wednesday night she would come over after she got off work. I would be making an elaborate meal for just the two of us, and she would supply the bitter red wines she swore by. We would eat dinner and watch cult classics, and then stay up talking. It was our routine; it was what kept us so close.

That night, eighteen months ago, many others had already Devolved. She was in tears when she arrived at my home. As a kindergarten teacher, three of her students had become Devolved. The parents of the children were devastated, and so was she. I didn’t have the answers—at that time, no one did. I convinced her that a comedy would lift her spirits, and that the only way to get over this devastation was to get through it. I poured us each a glass, and I held her, pretending that I didn’t feel the same pain and anxiety that she was tormented with. She fiddled with the brass heart shaped locket that she always flaunted around her neck. Inside, she kept a photo of mom and dad in their early twenties.

Her eyes glazed over midway through the movie, and she became suddenly aware that I was holding her, and that she didn’t know who or what I was. Pulling away quickly, she ran to the opposite side of my small living room and hid behind the loveseat, whimpering.

I didn’t understand at first, thinking perhaps her pain had turned into a dark sense of humor and she was playing some cruel joke on me. But as I called her name, pleading with her to drop the charade, I realized there was no charade to drop, and my sister was no longer the intelligent, spirited woman with a quick wit.

Eighteen months have passed, and I haven’t seen her since. She left my home and ran for the woods behind my house. I tried to chase her, but she was fast. I managed to break the locket off her neck as she ran away. I wish now that I hadn’t. It would have identified her in a crowd of Devolved. Any evil could have befallen her in the woods, and although I have searched countless days and nights for her, my excursions have been in vain.

We’ve been told that many possess it; a mutated code in the genome that should have affected nothing at all but has recently affected everything. The World Health Organization has described the phenomenon as a “side effect” but to what it is a side effect of remains undisclosed. Reports are now saying that as many as 34% of the world’s population has been affected, and the future will only tell how many more will be born with this genetic affliction. No Devolved person is safe, not even the infants.

We, the Evolved, are the majority. But each of us knows someone, a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a client, who has become Devolved.

I shut the heavy wooden front door to my small bungalow, which is nestled into a hillside, providing privacy I no longer desire to have. I sit in bed and listen to my stomach gripe and groan with hunger. I take my sister’s small brass heart shaped locket from my neck, slide my bedroom window open, and set the locket on the sill.

“Come back” I whisper to the wind and the trees.

“Please, come back.”

A tear rolls down my face, and I shut the window with shaky hands. Lain in bed, I cry for my sister, I cry from hunger, and I cry with heartache for all that has transpired.

I am alone, and eighteen months later, I am aware that this loneliness will swell just as my stomach swells with hunger.

I awake the next morning, weak with starvation for food and love, my face salted with dried tears. It had stormed heavy torrents of rain overnight, leaving the earth soggy and loose. I lift the window and discover the locket has disappeared. The indent of small bare feet in mud trailed to and from my window. I had a visitor in the night.

I sigh a breath of relief. Perhaps I can allow myself to hope. Perhaps she will come back. Perhaps she is returning to her Evolved state. Perhaps she is alive.

Perhaps.