On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs.

[...] He said that his boss forced him to sell diseased meat covered in yellow spots, which he’d had to remove. The employee wanted to leave, to get a job at the Cypress Processing Plant, since it had such a good reputation. He just wanted to do honest work so he could support his family. He couldn’t take the smell of bleach, the stench of rotting chicken made him vomit, he’d never felt so sick and miserable. And he couldn’t look the customers in the eye, the women who were trying to make ends meet and asked for whatever was cheapest to make breaded milanesas for their children. If his boss wasn’t there, he gave them whatever was freshest; otherwise he had to sell them the rotten meat, and afterward he couldn’t sleep because of the guilt. This job was consuming him little by little. The employee told him all this and he talked to his father, who decided to stop selling meat to the butcher shop and hire the man to come and work for him.

[...] It’s known that in public nursing homes, when the majority of seniors die, or are left to die, they’re sold on the black market. It’s the cheapest meat money can buy because it’s dry and diseased, full of pharmaceuticals. It’s meat with a first and last name. In some cases, seniors’ own family members authorize a private or state-owned nursing home to sell their bodies and use the proceeds to pay off any debt. There are no longer funerals. It’s very difficult to ensure that a body isn’t disinterred and eaten. That’s why many of the cemeteries were sold and others abandoned. Some still remain as relics of a time when the dead could rest in peace.

[...] He thinks it’ll be cause for concern when the man stops looking at him this way, when the hatred doesn’t keep him going any longer. Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything. He wishes he could hate someone for the death of his son. But who can he blame for a sudden death? He tried to hate God, but he doesn’t believe in God. He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral, but he couldn’t keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one. [...]

Esteban is his sister’s husband. Whenever he thinks of his brother-in-law, he sees a man hunched over, with a face full of contradictions and a half smile that’s an attempt at hiding them. He believes Esteban is a man trapped by his circumstances, by a wife who’s a monument to stupidity, and by a life he regrets having chosen.

She takes him to a room on another floor where the specimens, all males, are sitting on seats similar to those found in cars. They’ve been immobilized and their heads are inside what look like square helmets made of metal bars. An assistant pushes a button and the helmet-like structure moves very fast, striking the specimen’s head against a board that senses and registers the quantity, velocity, and impact of the strikes. Some of the specimens appear to be dead because they don’t react when the assistants try to revive them. Others look around disoriented, and have pained expressions on their faces. Valka says, “We simulate automobile accidents and collect data so that safer cars can be built. That’s why we need more male specimens, strong ones, so that they can withstand several trials.”

When he reaches the kitchen, it’s as if he’s been struck by a smell that’s rancid, if fleeting. He walks toward the door to the cold room. He looks through the glass and sees a head without an arm. So she got herself a female, that skank, he thinks. Domestic head are a status symbol in the city; they give a household prestige. He looks at the head more closely, and when he makes out a few sets of initials he realizes she’s an FGP. Off to the side on the countertop, he sees a book. His sister doesn’t have books. The title is Domestic Head: Your Guide to Death by a Thousand Cuts. There are red and brown stains in the book. He feels he might vomit. Of course, he thinks, she’s going to carve the head up slowly, serving pieces every time she hosts an event. The death-by-a-thousand-cuts thing must be some sort of trend, if all her guests are talking about it. An activity for the whole family, cutting up the living being in the fridge, based on a thousand-year-old form of Chinese torture. The domestic head looks at him sadly. He tries to open the door, but it’s locked.