Lucidity

"Good evening, America, I'm Jack Union from Channel 4. In tonight’s news, the United Nations is currently meeting in Switzerland to discuss the rapidly growing world population. As you know, our population hit nine billion last year and as the world’s already constrained food supplies..."
June Layden turned off the tv. When she looked back up, her young daughter stood in the arched entrance of the living room.
"Elyon, honey, I thought you went over to Margaret's to play."
"I did, but no one answered the door."
A panicked expression flashed across the mother's face.
"Are you hungry? Let's get you something to eat."
"Mom, where did..."
"There are cookies on the counter or I can fix you a peanut butter jelly sandwich."
"Can I have grape jelly? Grape jelly's the best. Strawberry's gross."

***
Margaret's house laid empty as if the family simply walked out the door and left on a whim. Everything was exactly how it should have been that evening: lights turned on throughout the first floor, the table set for five, the heat from the oven emanating through the kitchen. Only one dining room chair laid uncharacteristically on its back.
The story usually read like that: neighbors down the street, tenants at the old home, and whole rural villages would just vanish. Initially, people raised questions, the typical “where,” “why,” and “how,” but realized that this was not a matter up for discussion and that prying for answers could mean their own disappearances. And soon they became silent, just like those who were abruptly uprooted.

***
An eighteen-wheeler with an ad on the side for S.E.R.A.P.H. hummed down a freeway that cut through the Arizona desert. The driver looked normal - a middle-aged, balding man who covered up his apparent balding with a dirty trucker’s hat, but he carried a heavy load. The truck drove on for miles scattering scarlet dust in an otherwise peaceful wasteland. It passed town after town, each more obscure than the previous and even passed the last trace of human existence - a rest stop so old that only the long-resting dead would know about it.
The truck neared a moderately guarded gate. It cleared. After a few miles, the truck neared a slightly more secure gate. It cleared. This continued for a numbingly long time until the truck slowed at the sight of its own kind - trucks, tens of them, all with the same advertisement for S.E.R.A.P.H. A white hazmat with black-tinted glass for a face approached the vehicle. The hazmat made a series of gestures towards the driver directing him to one of the many pits in the level ground. The pits were wide - maybe hundreds of feet in diameter. The other trucks were already backed up to the edge ready to unload. The last one pulled up in reverse to fill the gap between two trucks, and this created an eerily uniform ring of truck, space, truck, space. At the hazmat’s signal, all the containers tipped at an impossibly dangerous angle. And when the hazmat pressed the only button on a handheld remote, the doors flung open. Live humans tumbled one over another in a great mass into the pit. As screams pierced the air, one particularly falsetto voice yelled, “My rabbit!”
The hazmat waited until all the humans settled at the bottom reaching halfway up the pit’s curving wall. It gave another soundless signal, and from somewhere underground a monster stirred to life. The contents of the pit did something curious. The level fell as if someone pulled the plug from a bathtub. But as the contents decreased, the volume increased. The humans screamed more gruesomely. The cries that floated up from the very bottom of the pit were guttural and a bit choppy due to interference from other non-vocal sounds - those of a crunchy, organic substance being simultaneously sliced and crushed and those of torn meat and skin slapped about by the usually hidden blades before falling into the collection bin.
The trucks righted their containers and drove off to receive new loads. The hazmat returned to the offices. Processing took well over an hour, and the hazmat had other matters to take care of.

***

In a tiny country off the coast of the Andaman Sea, a cargo ship docked itself. It was a timely ship, emblazoned with S.E.R.A.P.H. on both sides, but it carried a heavy load. As large forklifts approached to carry the newly arrived cargo, dock workers unloaded burlap sacks labeled “FERTILIZER.” The ship’s crew, clearly unfazed by the overwhelming odor, strode past the sacks while the dock workers struggled to carry the large, putrid bags. In an effort to keep their contact with the stench as limited as possible, the dock workers quickly tossed the bags onto the fork lifts, which were then set off for immediate distribution in the fields.

The next few days were busier days as the fertilizer had to be spread while it was still of optimum quality, but the effort was well worth it. For when it came time to harvest, the yields were larger than previous years foregoing S.E.R.A.P.H.’s FERTILIZER. The produce was then shipped around the globe to satiate the remnants of the world’s growing population.

***
The white hazmat walked around the circumference of the pit - the picture of cleanliness circumventing such a horrible site. As it neared the rim of the abyss, its tinted gaze fell upon something uncharacteristically human - a hand-sewn stuffed rabbit. The hazmat walked towards the toy and when it was close enough, shoved the toy over the edge without a second thought. The raggedy doll fell unperturbed by the blood splatters, descending into an increasingly red world until it fell past the blades and onto the collection bin, a topper for a disturbingly human work.

***
Elyon sat at the kitchen table, delighted with her sandwich and rambling about her day at school. June, while slicing various fruits and vegetables, occasionally nodded her head or muttered a few words of acknowledgement to prove that she was, in fact, listening. June set aside her chopping to take out a blender.
“Can I toss them into the blender, mommy? That’s my favorite.”
“Of course you can, sweetie.”

Elyon picked up the cutting board and dumped the whole load, and with a push of a button, she squealed with joy as the fruits and vegetables blended together into a red puree.