Canned Meat

When I was still a young man I inherited a meat-canning factory resultant from an unfortunate personal tragedy at our annual family reunion involving an unfavorable reaction by most of my relatives to aunt Sarah’s infamous botulism pie. Nearly everyone ate some out of courtesy and nearly everyone, including poor senile aunt Sarah died as a result. I left college early to take reigns of our ‘family’ business, Little Vienna, and never looked back.
You know the stuff, Vienna style sausages, spicy potted meats made from byproducts, a small prideful company that was regrettably so far gone it wasn’t even threatened by a hostile take-over from some greedy conglomerate corporation. Fresh from college and full of new ideas, I watched the dying company fall deeper and deeper in spiraling debt. Idealistically I refused layoffs and took the loss from my own shares of stock to continue to meet payroll only to be rewarded in turn by my faithful employees fleeing the company of their own accord. Production began dropping faster than sales were plummeting. Raw meat storage was becoming a real issue, I was under contract to purchase so much meat from slaughterhouses, you may know the process; you bid once a year for bulk price lines and you guarantee to purchase a minimum amount of product at that low-end agreed upon price. If sales are good and you exceed your quota, you are rewarded with a considerable markup on bulk meat prices for excess purchases above the minimum guaranteed order size, there are also certain minute agreements included in the contract such as who I may buy from and what cap prices the slaughterhouse must set, but in my case it was hardly an issue since I could not process the meats I was obligated to purchase. Storage was a problem, maxing out local freezer storage facilities and now being overwhelmed with additional Meat Locker rental rates, I was forced to renegotiate my contract with the company I purchased my bulk meats from.
The offices located at the stock pens where the company I dealt with worked out of was run down and a veritable slum by slaughterhouse standards. The owner was not pleased with my offer to increase my per pound price and reduce the minimum amount of my order agreement, and it looked as if I was going to lose everything as I walked away from my meeting with the owner. The conference had been short, but had gone long into the evening as I had been kept waiting to learn my fate for hours in a dingy green reception room. On my way out, lost in my own train of thought, or more likely deep in self-pity, a thin pale man approached me. Tall and gaunt, his face made him appear to be middle aged except for the tired ancient look in his eyes; he spoke to me of a business proposal; bold, daring and absolutely financial suicide. But he intrigued me with his confidence and we talked well into the night about his idea. You see I was not the only business in danger of dying in the community. The man I spoke with represented a group of workers, not a union as such, but a colony of individuals’ mostly comprised of a migrant Slavic family that worked at the slaughterhouse and feared the loss of their jobs should it belly up. He invited me to his village just outside of town, a self sufficient community of sickly anemia ridden people that to me most closely resembled a leper colony, with the exception that the employees of the slaughterhouse were a certified and competent team that depended and relied on each other in a far more intimate way than merely a professional capacity. As we discussed options and opportunity into the night, a pact was formed. A unified coalition was created wherein I purchased the slaughterhouse with the financial backing of the little village, they took control of operations of the plant and provided me with much needed labor for my own operation, and hopefully we would pull one another out of the mutual rising well of corporate drowning.
The arrangement proved to be a good one in that it was profitable, sales took an unexpected leap for the stars and rocketed off the charts almost overnight. My product became the number one household treat in America and overseas, demands were escalating. We tore down the old plant years ago and built a new mega facility in its place. The slaughterhouse now only provided meat for me and worked diligently to meet our demand. This had proved to be a perfect union of two struggling companies. With just a couple minor glitches;

· The nightshift provided by the slaughterhouse colony proved to be so efficient that the day shift and swing shift were made obsolete. Efforts were implemented to improve the production on other shifts but the graveyard shift was where production was most efficient so graveyard is when the work was performed.

· As it turns out, the colony was indeed similar to a leper-like community of its own right, not inflicted with something so obvious as leprosy, but something far worse, more diabolic and frightening at the same time. A village whose members suffered from a rare disease called porphyria or more specifically porphyric hemophilia, a disease that ravaged the body, causing severe pain and discomfort to the chest and extremities, sensitivity to sunlight, serious anemia, and an insatiable craving for the heme found in human and animal blood. A secret so far successfully kept from the public in general for were it known by anyone, suspicion and prejudice would cripple our perspective businesses.

· And now for the ironic kicker. Yes, the above diagnosis could be remotely perceived as vampirism, and while technically true, the “vampires” of the village do not feed off of humans, living or dead, but find their sustenance from the animals they butcher at the slaughterhouse. Thus proving for generations that porphyria victims and society as a whole can coexist side by side without TV movie theatrics and wholesale panic.

· Finally, my confession; I only recently discovered a link with the recent outbreak of Renfields disease and clinical vampirism that has plagued our nation. It appears that while the slaughterhouse community has been feeding off the blood of animals in a sanitary and organized fashion, a subculture of vampiric followers formed within the colony has been feeding directly from the animal carcasses. These carcasses are then broken down and rendered into canned meat products. Apparently the vampire saliva has an addictive component that acts as a contagion and has been slowly infecting the consumer of these canned meats I provide to the marketplace. Did I mention our plans to go global later this year?