Meat

Cardboard boxes sag beneath the overpass, their damp walls folding inward like soft bones, softened by layers of snow and grime. The wind slithers through the cracks, threading icy fingers along the concrete ribs, but deep inside the maze, warmth seeps—slow, steady—from a forgotten thermal vent, its breath curling into the damp air, leaving slick trails on the warped cardboard.

Reeta crouches near the vent, a jagged piece of glass clutched in one raw, swollen hand. She slices into a flattened box, folding the edges carefully, piecing together another wall, the maze expanding like a living lung. Her fingers bleed where the cold splits her skin, the crimson pooling in the creases, but she barely notices. Her voice drifts through the maze—soft, cracked—as she sings the desert lullaby her mother used to hum in another life.

“A moon above the sand, my love,

Where winds will take you home...”

The words tremble in her throat, fragile and thin, but she keeps going.

At the edge of the warmth, where snow worms its way in through torn tarps, Dunia sits. She curls beneath a sagging sheet of plastic, knees drawn tight to her chest. The cold doesn’t bother her—not anymore. Frost has crusted in her hair, her small face pale and still, her lips tinged blue. Her eyes, half-lidded, watch Reeta through the thin veil of falling snow.

“Almost done, Dunia,” Reeta calls, folding the last box into place. “We’ll have more room tonight. Maybe even a window.”

Dunia doesn’t answer.

She hasn’t spoken in days. Maybe longer.

Reeta chooses to believe Dunia is just tired—that she’s fine, still there. She hums louder, forcing her hands to keep working, forcing herself to believe.

At first, it was just her and Dunia. Reeta was seven, Dunia four, two shadows slipping through Belgrade's veins. Refugees from Syria, undocumented, uncounted, and unaccounted for. Their mother had tried her best—working nights in the city, whispering promises she could never keep—but one day, she didn’t come back. Reeta remembers the last time she saw her—the red lipstick smeared on her cheek, the soft press of a kiss. Then gone. Word reached Reeta in fragments after that. Taken by people who sold women’s bodies until they couldn’t sell any more. Then they carved her up and sold the rest. Organ farms. That’s what people called them, but it didn’t sound real, not to a seven-year-old. Was it like the farm back home? It didn't make sense.

Her father tried to keep them hidden, moving from one dark place to another, but the men found him too. He fought, but not enough. They took him, like they took her mother, but with more blood. She’d seen what they left behind—torn, emptied. His eyes wide open, staring at nothing. Like the Eid al-Adha sacrifices—that made sense.

The maze has grown huge now—a sprawling labyrinth of cardboard and tarps, snaking beneath the overpass, like veins under tired skin. She’s built it for Dunia, but others have come too.

It started with the boy—the one who wandered in barefoot, his skin black with frostbite. His left eye is missing, a hollow socket gaping wide, empty as a broken promise. He doesn’t speak, just crouches in a corner, head tilted as if listening.

Then came more.

A girl with a sunken chest, ribs poking through parchment-thin skin. A pair of twins, their arms stitched together at the elbows, moving as one. They drift silently into the maze, curling into its cold corners. Their skin is brittle, tight against bone, as though they’d been frozen for years. But they move. Their joints creak when they shamble, like branches snapping under snow.

Reeta doesn’t ask where they come from. She doesn’t have to.

They’re like Dunia—quiet, small, broken.

And they listen when she sings.

The winter stretches on. One long, endless season. No thaw. No end.

Snow buries the warehouses and automated factories beyond the overpass, frosting the skyline in jagged white. The city is distant, only a faint glow beyond the smog. No one comes here—not near the factories, not near the bridge. People know better. Too many stories about missing people, about black vans that creep in and never leave.

Reeta knows the stories. She’s been dodging the black vans for weeks. Not so lucky today.

She sees the van while scavenging near the factories—its black frame parked high on the bridge, headlights cutting through the sooty night. The engine idles low, its hum vibrating through the steel bones of the overpass. Two figures stand by the railing—a man and a woman—both wrapped in heavy coats, cigars glowing between their teeth, their faces half-hidden by the swirling smoke.

Reeta crouches low behind a rusted barrel, heart thudding against her ribs, her breath visible in sharp bursts as she watches.

The woman takes a long drag from her cigar, exhaling through her nose, her breath mingling with the smoke. “You think she’s down there?” she mutters, voice clipped, tinged with exhaustion.

The man snorts, flicking ash over the side of the bridge. “How the fuck would I know?” He thumbs the edge of his knife, checking the blade’s sharpness. “But those boxes didn’t build themselves.”

The woman curses under her breath, jaw tightening. “Fucking hate this shit. Every goddamn time.” She rubs at her temple with her gloved hand. “Soon as my debt’s done, I’m out. I swear.”

The man doesn’t look at her, only takes another pull from his cigar. “Debt’s never done,” he says flatly, the words falling like stone.

She kicks a chunk of ice off the bridge, watching it disappear into the snowy darkness below. “Not doing this forever. Picking through the fucking bones of kids in the cold.” Her voice cracks, raw with frustration. “This wasn’t supposed to be my life.”

He finally turns to her, face expressionless beneath the layers of smoke. “Way I see it, you’re doing them a favour.”

She stiffens, turning sharply. “The fuck?”

“Yeah.” He leans on the railing, eyes scanning the frozen wasteland crawling into oblivion around them. “They’re already dead down there. You seen them? Living like rats in boxes? Starving, freezing. No one’s coming for them. We make it quick. Merciful, even. No more waiting around to die.”

The woman shakes her head, the bile rising in her throat. “That’s the most fucked-up shit I’ve ever heard.”

He shrugs, unbothered. “You want morals? Move west.”

A beat of silence stretches between them, heavy and suffocating, filled only by the hum of the idling engine and the distant clang of the sleepless automated factories.

She flicks her cigar into the snow, watching the ember hiss and die. “Let’s get this over with.”

He pushes off the railing, slipping the knife back into his belt and grabbing his tranq rifle from the back of the van. “Yeah. Before the meat freezes.”

Neither of them looks down again as they make their way down.

Reeta slips back into the maze, breath tight in her chest. She moves quickly, crawling through the narrow paths she’s built, back to the warmth of the vent. The hollow children stir as she returns—dry, brittle heads turning toward her. Their eyes are empty, but they move closer when she sings.

“Winds will take you home, my love...”

Her voice cracks through the maze—thin, trembling, but stubborn. Fear coils tight in her chest, but she forces the lullaby out, each syllable a desperate lie, a paper shield against the tide closing in.

The children creep forward, their bodies creaking, drawn to her song.

Dunia remains in her frozen corner, untouched by the warmth, her small frame stiff beneath the layers of snow.

Boots crunch through the outer edges of the maze—slow, deliberate.

The woman enters first, a flashlight slicing through the darkness. A tranq gun hangs from her shoulder, the dart chamber glinting. She moves cautiously, pausing at each turn, listening.

The man follows, carrying his own tranq rifle, a pistol strapped to his side. His breath fogs as he steps deeper into the maze.

Reeta curls into the darkness, her fingers wrapped around a rusted piece of rebar. Dunia’s hand lies in her lap—small, brittle—but Reeta squeezes it tightly, ignoring the sharp coldness of her sister’s skin.

“Come out, little rat,” the woman calls, voice sing-song. “We just want to talk.”

Reeta presses her back into the cardboard, eyes wide.

The woman lifts the tranq gun, firing into the dark. The dart hits the hollow-eyed boy square in the chest. He doesn’t flinch.

Another dart fires—this time into the stitched-together twins. They sway slightly but remain upright.

The man swears under his breath. “They’re not going down.”

The children move then—silent, swift—their dry, mummified limbs creaking as they surround the strangers.

The woman fires again, but it’s futile. The hollow children lunge, skeletal fingers gripping at her arms, her coat, her throat. She thrashes, slamming the butt of her gun into one child’s face, but their skin doesn’t break. It stretches, dry and thin, bones splintering beneath.

The man draws his pistol, firing into the dark. The gunshots echo for a second—sharp, jagged cracks—before a TIR convoy rumbles over the bridge above. The deafening roar swallows the noise, the overpass shaking with the weight.

Reeta watches as the children swarm the man, dragging him to the ground. He screams, kicking out, his boots striking brittle ribs, but the kids cling tighter. Fingers dig into his flesh, pulling apart skin and muscle. His body folds inward, torn piece by piece, tendons snapping like twine.

The woman’s cries cut short as the boy with the hollow eye sinks broken teeth into her throat. Blood spills fast—hot, steaming in the cold—pooling beneath Reeta’s feet.

She doesn’t move.

The children stop once there’s nothing left but steaming meat—broken, torn bodies spread across the cardboard floor. The hollow kids stand in a circle, silent, their blood-soaked hands dangling by their sides. The entire scene lit by two flickering flashlights painted red with blood.

Reeta pushes herself up, legs trembling. She steps over a severed arm, its fingers twitching in the snow. Kneeling beside the man’s split-open chest, she picks up his knife—and begins to cut.

Her hands move steadily, slicing thin strips of flesh from bone. She works methodically—just like her father once, with the Qurbani calf— peeling back layers, exposing muscle and sinew. The smell is thick—iron and fat, mingling with the wet cardboard beneath her knees.

The children watch, their hollow eyes gleaming in the dark.

Reeta finishes cutting and stands, wiping blood on her sleeve. She finds the woman’s cigar still burning where it fell in the snow, the ember faint but alive. Next to it, the lighter—scratched metal, dented.

She picks it up, flicks the flame to life, and touches it to the cigar’s tip. Smoke curls into her face, thick and heavy. She crouches by a pile of cardboard scraps and bones, lighting them with the cigar’s ember.

The fire crackles, the warmth stretching outward, though it never reaches Dunia.

Reeta skewers a strip of meat on a rusted metal rod, holding it over the flames. The fat sizzles, dripping onto the fire, sending up black smoke.

The hollow children sit in a circle now, limbs stiff, faces blank. Dunia remains curled in her corner, snow crusted over her hair. Her eyes stare into the flames, wide and glassy.

Reeta pulls the first piece of charred meat from the rod and passes it to Dunia, placing it gently in her small, unmoving hands.

Then she takes a bite herself.

The flesh is soft and greasy, the fat warm against her tongue. She chews slowly, swallowing thickly, her throat tight but steady.

No one speaks.

The hollow children do not eat—and Dunia is not hungry either... but God, Reeta is. So, so hungry. She chews another bite, her gaze fixed on Dunia, smiling at her sister warmly in the orange glow.

Outside, the snow keeps falling, covering the bodies, the blood, the torn-apart maze. The city hums somewhere far beyond the factories, its lights blurred through the nighttime fog.

No one comes here.

No one ever will.

No one will bother the black van for some time. And even when they do, it will be just to haul it away, as if it never was.

Beneath the overpass, Reeta eats.

Meat is on the menu tonight.