the vegan buffet

“All finished there?” The plate was moving away and so was the table, and my chair seemed to be following it into the murky underground kitchen. Two strapping Indian men in loincloths and oiled chests swung meat cleavers around their heads like half-full shopping bags, and their first born adult son, strapped to the manacles on the stainless steel work surface, embraced his rapidly nearing sacrifice, crude black fiber-tip lines illustrating the incisions 1-2-3-4, and the first seemed to be straight across the chest, and the men and the boy both sang American folk songs, "Chimes of Freedom", and the sign outside said ‘Vegan Buffet’ so I wondered, still holding my fork and serviette, if there wasn’t maybe another kitchen, in-keeping with the Vegan ethos, where a boy wasn’t going to be cut apart in merriment as another city sacrifice.