The Organisation (A short story)

This one is a play on moral value and peoples ability or inability to apply a single across all areas of their life.

Typewriter keys clicked as black lettering scrawled across the screen. “The Organisation.” This kicked off a choppy, spy style guitar line. Dual smoke cans dropped into the foreground and submerged the title in smoke. I glanced to Fay’s side of the bed as the intro music faded with the shot. A dimple played in her cheek. She kept her eyes fixed ahead. 

On screen, a low-lying shot of a lush, green paddock panned upward to show the hooves and nose of a grazing steer. Atmospheric synths sat on a dissonant flat chord while the shot lingered.

“Jeez, P.E.T.A have sure upped their production budget!” quipped Fay as she popped a Bliss Ball into her mouth.  

Before I could respond, the camera rose to show the animal’s eyes. At first serene, then alert—drums began to surge--then frightened. The shot widened, and we were shown four balaclava-clad men, dressed from head to foot in black, clutching the sides of the bovine like a covert bobsled team. The steer hooved at the damp earth, but a fifth figure appeared to block his escape. The figure clasped a tea-towel sized cloth to the animal’s big wet nose. Fay and I were subjected to an extreme close up of one of the animal’s eyes, at first determined, but fading from vivid to dull as his eyelids grew heavy. The shot widened to show the men guiding the drowsy yet still conscious animal over to an inexplicably placed van—also black. Through the open van door, we saw our horned hero lose his battle against his heavy eyelids just as the last hope of escaping from this moving cage slid shut along its rollers.

More typewriting ensued. “Contract Kills from the Best in the Business.” More smoke bombs. The spy music returned. “The Organisation.”

“Are they trying to sear the words ‘bad taste’ into their customer’s heads?” I laughed. My smile faded when I saw Fay’s lower lip shoot outward. “No…” I said. “You can’t actually think this is clever?”

“It’s a bit of fun.” She shrugged and swallowed another Bliss Ball.

“Glorifying slaughter. Yea, what a rib tickler!” I spat back, feeling my face heat up.

Fay rolled her eyes. “Hey it’s better than factory farming. You’ve gotta give them credit for that.”

“Sure, and Ted Bundy wasn’t quite as bad as Hitler either. Is that any title to put on your mantlepiece!”

She threw me an eyeroll, tucking the Bliss Ball packet into her bedside draw. I braced myself for a barrage—usually she leaves her used wrappers out, flaunting the high protein, low sugar ingredients list as a reminder that these treats are no real indulgence. She crossed one of her Lulu-Lemon-clad legs over her thigh. Her eyes trailed down to my exposed belly button, poking beneath my white singlet. I pretended not to notice the sneer that formed, oh so subtly, at the corner of her nose.

“If only you cared for yourself as much as you do those animals,” she said. “Look at you, Geoff.”

I didn’t need to. She cast enough judgement over my entire body for both of us. I instinctively straightened up on the bed, tugging my shirt downward as she proceeded to shake her head. “How long are you gonna stick with the tofu and tempura before you see what it’s doing to you?” she added as if I hadn’t already grasped her angle loud and clear.

“This might come as a shock to you, Fay, but not every lifestyle choice revolves around fitness.”

She rolled her eyes for a second time and swung her legs off the bed, wandering over to the mini bar to inspect its contents. Argghh! “Fanta and peanuts! Did you pick up a consulting job at Hotel One that you didn’t tell me about? It looks like you wrote the bloody rider for this place!”

As she proceeded to read off the ingredients list from the back of the nut wrapper, muttering her most high-pitched exclamations at the sight of “canola oil” and “sodium thickener,” I swung my own feet off the bed and marched up to the open closet. I took my collared shirt off the hanger and turned to the mirror as I did up each button. The Ad break ended and the episode of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” that we’d both only vaguely been watching came back on.  “Maybe we’re making a mistake here, Eff?” I said with a sigh. 

The nut packet hit the ground with a rustle, Fay lunged at me and gripped my collar in her fist. “Don’t you dare back out on me now, Geoff! The taxi’s on its damn way already!”

Forcing myself to exhale a long breath before doing anything, I took Faye’s fist gently between my two hands and unpeeled it from my collar. I pulled her into my arms and from over her shoulder—breathing in her raspberry and mango scented Shampoo—I whispered, “until we board that plane, we haven’t actually committed a crime yet.”  

In a burst of violence of the kind that a pandemic, one dead kitten, and a year of unemployment never managed to spur in her, she pounded at my back as though I was attempting to abduct her. I took the brunt of what were largely arm blows without loosening my grip. They weakened and came out less enthusiastic with each strike, but I only released her once she’d tucked her head into my shoulder and she’d used my clean shirt to muffle her sobs.

“This is our chance to break out into the lives we want.” She said with a wet snuffle. “The universe doesn’t hand gifts like this to you for no reason,” she said.

“But It’s not our money.”

“So what? It’s a bank. Digits on a computer. We’re not sticking a gun under the nose of some poor widower here.”

“I just don’t know, Fay.” I said, stepping back and looking at her ruined make up. “Are we that hard off? Is this worth giving up everything?”

Turning away and throwing her hands to the ceiling, Fay erupted into another tirade. “For fuck’s sake, Geoff! Who are these strangers you feel such a debt to? Some glitchy banking bot added those two extra zeros to the end of our savings account. No one is being harmed by this.” She surged back up to me and took me by both collars before I had a chance to answer. A glistening trail of snot ran from her nose down to her plush upper lip. She looked up at me with pleading eyes. “Do this for us. Prioritize our life. Just once.”

She must have seen something loosening in my eyes because her accusing stare shifted into a smile. For all that I didn’t want to, I let the jabs she’d taken at my figure slide off my back, I let the sneer I’d picked up on earlier reform itself into an image less biting.

“Alright, let’s fucking do it.” I said, my chest filling with the warm static of adrenalin as I voiced the words. Her eyes lit up, and she threw up her hands before pressing her lips to mine.

Over on the TV, the “Who wants to be a Millionaire” theme song hit it’s foreboding, “da na na nommmm” resolution. I held Fay in my arms and wiped the lingering option of cancelling that taxi right out of my mind. We were doing this.

On cue, the clack of typewriter keys scrawled from the TV’s cheap nineties speakers. I glanced over just in time to catch the tail end of an abridged version of the cattle-rustling Fay and I had witnessed earlier, with The Organisation’s title font superimposed on top. As this image faded to dramatized static, those spy guitars chopped once again, a tense high hat swelled up and the image of a military looking man—though on the wholesome side of that spectrum—appeared on screen.

“Welcome to the Organisation. The only place on the planet where we utilize every part of the animal. Delivering you—” the man mimed an Uncle Sam finger at the camera,”—our customers, the healthiest premium organ meat this side of the border—” he pressed a finger up to his ear. “--and if our intel is correct, on the whole planet.”

The scene cut to a slickly lit image of a meat-works interior with thousands of the Organisation’s signature jet-black branded meats moving down a conveyor belt, working through a series of clockwork-like steps before reaching the destination of a family dinner plate. The theme music briefly rose in volume before the spokesperson’s baritone returned as a voiceover. “Kidney, liver, heart. Cuts of meat that usually end up as dog food or simply get thrown out.” The camera cut back to our man. His perfectly symmetrical features compressed inward. “Our question is: why? When these nutrient dense cuts are the most bio-available source of Vitamin A,D,E,K and B12 available to man, why in 2023, are we turning up our nose at them?”

The shot cut to a scene of a high-end supermarket, with an attractive middle-aged woman passing over an Organisation-branded package to the cashier with a smile. Our announcer’s voice returned. “When the term ‘zero waste’ is such a hot-button issue in the collective conversation right now, why do we have our blinders on?” The shot cut back to the announcer who drew back his head with a concerned squint. “We believe it is nothing more than a PR issue. That’s why we ask you, the educated public, to see past the stigma and join The Organization for a brand-new protocol on your diet choices.”

The music hit its obnoxious peak as yet another typewritten scrawl of the company’s font crossed the screen. Fay had moved over to the other side of the hotel room without me noticing. “There’s a way to justify anything if you really want to, right?” I said, with a shake of my head.

No answer came. I chased Fay’s figure over to the edge of the window where she was peering out. Clearly having missed my statement altogether, she flashed a perfect-toothed smile and raised her eyebrows at me. “Taxi’s here!”