It was the craziest story anybody ever heard. Danial had changed from a
lovable child into an angry and crazy teenager. (Now if this sounds familiar, hold tight,
because what I will present next will be anything but.) Danial had always had a moral
problem with eating meat and so had been a lifelong vegetarian. However, for the
last several years, Danial had consumed no animal products at all, with the exception
of honey (which isn’t really an animal product, since it comes from flowers’ nectar).
However, Danial was not a perfect person. His own selfish desires had the great
capacity to override his better judgment and morals. He would go into people’s
houses his parents were visiting and simply look through their stuff without asking.
He would also take things that were not his. Still, Danial was a good kid. Everybody
noted how kind and appreciative he was when he was shown kindness. Daniel did go
through slides, where his motor skills worsened and his behavior became almost
unmanageable. When he was 10, his physical therapist said he should go the
hospital, because of his intolerable and aggressive behavior and prescribed
medicine to help with irritability. However, his mother knew that he was a good kid
and he would soon come out of his slump. Indeed, by the time 2 more years had
passed, Danial was as sweet and kind as he’d ever been. So when a slump began in
his entering teenage years, his parents were not concerned, they knew he could
handle the slump and, ultimately, come out of it a better and more mature person.
However, the slump worsened. Then, as if everything had corrected, things began to
improve. However, this simply inspired false hope in his parents, who thought that he
had come out of his regression. That same year, Danial began high school online. The
experience almost broke poor Danial. His grades fell, he stopped trying, and he fell
way behind. It took much work to get him through the semester.
About the same time that Danial was entering high school, he had watched a
documentary about dolphins. He had become intrigued with the amazing animals
and, being the obsessive type, he had to have one. However, a dolphin is not an
animal that you can keep as a pet. Danial knew this, but he still couldn’t shake the
obsession. Unfortunately, despite his morals, Danial just had to have a piece of
dolphin. The options were a stuffed dolphin or dolphin meat. Since nobody had ever
stuffed a dolphin, that left dolphin meat. Danial, however, had fallen into a trap that
his own mind and obsessions had set. You see, it is illegal to own a piece of or kill a
marine mammal (that includes dolphins) in the US. Danial supported the act, but that
still didn’t stop his irrational obsession. As he looked for anything online that said
dolphin meat, he stumbled onto a land mine: a dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan. The scenes
and descriptions were so horrible and Danial immediately became enraged and
upset. He would follow the hunts online and became very passionately upset about
what was happening. This consumed at least a half of his time. The other trouble was
that Danial was still obsessed with dolphin meat, and trying to figure out if maybe at
some point he could go to Taiji and smuggle a piece into the US. However, these
were mere pipe dreams, and Danial kind of knew this. The dolphin obsession lasted
until at long last it was unthroned by an obsession with horses (due to a
documentary Danial saw about horses). This time, Danial never even seriously
considered a live horse a pet, his mind immediately went to horse meat.
The problem once again was, however, that horse meat was illegal in the US.
Danial was torn anyways, He was happy that horse meat was illegal, but he still had to
own some (however, he kind of didn’t). This weathered over Danial and turned him
into a computer potato, who almost used the computer as his drug to get info on
horse meat. Danial found much upsetting content on horse meat and he really
messed himself up. Then he read an article on Huffpost that said that horse was
legal in the US if it was imported. To prove this, the writers of the article had bought
some from a jerky company in England and had it shipped to New York for their
coworkers to try. Danial was enraged at the company in England (who, by the way,
also has a problem with horse meat) and began a petition calling for the abolishment
of the line. Of course, Danial also had ulterior motives, and the petition was not as
much in care as one might guess. The main reason why Danial had started the
petition was to make it impossible for him to get the same product that Huffpost had
tried. His hope was if he made the mission impossible, the obsession would fizzle out
and his worst desires would cease. However, Danial had not pegged the jerky people
in England correctly, they were bullies and they and their cultists came after Danial
likes flies on fruit. Poor Danial was completely broken by the horrible experience. He
asked his parents for help and they forbade him from visiting the jerky site. That
avenue cut off, the obsession began to wane. However, Danial still had files on his
computer pertaining to the subject and he often looked at them. Then, in the early
next year, Danial was on social media following his favorite animal rights group when
somebody said “that rabbit looks damn tasty!” This would be the start of another
obsession. In this time, his family had acquired a cat and there was most certainly no
way that he could get a rabbit.
For a while, this seemed as that might be all. However, on the 23rd of February
at a certain supermarket, while shopping for cat food, he saw a can that said “Rabbit
Recipe.” Daniel was shocked. He was upset, but he also knew he must possess that
cat food. The obsession and problem continued, Danial had lied that someone had
dared him to get the cat food and eat it and that he must resist this, but that it was
tearing him apart. Finally, on the 13th of April, he told the truth and his mother
consoled him that it was no big deal. In fact, she would get two cans, one for him in
for this he would pay, and one for the cat, which had taken the name of Girl by this
time. The cat, of some note, has not taken well to any unknown food, She only liked
the most mainstream cat food, and of these, she really only liked Fancy Feast.
However, the Girl had never had rabbit meat before so why not. For almost a month,
Danial went back and forth, debating if he should surrender one of the cans to the
cat or keep both. On May 2, Danial finally decided to feed one of the cans to the Girl.
She indeed hated it, but a certain feral cat named Oscar loved it, so there was no
wastage.
Danial’s life did not change at all as a result of having the rabbit meat and he
began once again to think about horse meat. He went to many different shady sites
looking for a way to buy horse meat. By this time, Danial was also obsessed with sex
and pornography, which severely worsened his condition. On one site, of which the
name shall remain unknown, Danial found a person who claimed to be selling horse
meat. Danial chatted with them and asked how they had it. They simply said that
some horses had died, they had not done anything cruel and, while the meat was not
human-grade, it would not cause any problems. With this fact, Danial again began to
think about dolphin meat and made a grave mistake, he said the forbidden word to
his best friend. After that, his best friend had not another thing to do with him. Again,
Danial messed around on the internet and he found more things which caused him
upset. He became very cold and hard toward his loving parents and claimed he
wanted help, but then dismissed it coldly when it was presented. One night in late
July, with a talk with his mom and mixture problems from Algebra II ringing in his
ears, he was visited by a strange apparition. The appreciation intoned that it was the
ghost of a horse that had been killed for meat. It would haunt Danial day and night if
he dared make another move towards buying horse meat. He was very much upset
by the apparition and had to wake up for a period of several hours in order to calm
down from the strange encounter in his dreams. When he finally went back to bed, it
was almost four. Disturbing thoughts wrenched his head and he finally fell into an
uneasy sleep.
The person had responded to his horse meat request by saying that he was to
meet them at 154 Braker Street at 10 the next evening. Danial arrived on time and
everything seemed in order for the sale. Danial hoped the police would see how bad
he needed the horse meat and let him off. Besides, he had the Huffpost article in his
defense. So, while Danial was worried, he was not terrified as he should have been.
Danial was making a big mistake by meeting shady people at an unknown address.
Once the people saw him, they said coldly, “This is a kill-your-own horse farm
and we need more slaughterers, looks like you’ll have to stay a little longer than
planned, eh?”
“I will never kill a horse!” Danial retorted. “Not even if I must
have a piece of its flesh for my collection.”
“Your a good kid with solid morals,” The closest one, of which I know the name
to be Buck, sneered. “Too bad that you won’t have a choice. Isn’t it interesting how
such a good kid went so bad and killed a horse for a couple of horse meat sellers?”
With those words, Buck proceeded to point his gun directly at Danial’s face.
“No funny business,” he warned, “Or I will kill you.”
With great tension and effort, Danial was forced to accompany the couple as
they walked to the farm.
“There you are,” Buck said. “Remember shoot once and shoot so the horse
dies right off. I don’t want any explaining and I don’t want you waking up the
neighborhood with gunshots. If you fail this task, I will put in the kill pen and you’ll be
sorry that you disobeyed me.”
Here Buck’s companion, who was named Barrel, spoke for the first time.
“Shoot that baby right in the eyes. It’ll be bloody, but at least, we should be
guaranteed that the horse won’t start making noise and attract unwanted attention.
Now do it!” He said, gesturing with his own gun.
The horse, by the way, was a beautiful majestic chestnut mare with a long
black flowing mane and caring eyes. It seemed like the kind of horse you should be
riding, not shooting to kill. Danial’s grip faltered on the gun. With each passing
second, the horse was stealing more and more of Danial’s heart. He had to save this
horse, he had to.
Meanwhile, while Danial was in his reverie, Buck shook the revolver at his face,
“Hurry up now, or you know what happens.”
“I..I...ca..a...an’t...d...d...do it,” Danial wailed. “I can’t.”
“Well then I shall kill the horse first, so you can see it, then I will kill you and
we’ll clear out,” Buck said menacingly.
“We’ll see that you don’t make it out alive,” his companion, Barrel, added
ominously.
With this fact firmly established, Buck aimed straight towards those beautiful
eyes. The horse, sadly, seemed to know what was coming and he just looked at Buck
as if asking why, why did Buck have to do this?
“No!” Danial screamed. “You can’t kill that horse. Look, she knows what you’re
going to do and she is pleading with you to spare her!”
“You really think that horse is capable of feelings?” said Barrel. “They are just
another kind of livestock and we happen to prefer working with them instead of
cows, no hard feelings.”
Buck, on the other hand, paid no attention. He had his “prey” in sight and he
wasn’t backing down. As he squeezed the trigger, and Danial prepared for the
terrrible scene he was about to witness, the scene went black and Danial heard his
mom say, “What happened? You were screaming awfully loudly.”
“Just a nightmare. At least I know now that no horses died,” Danial said simply.
As awful as the dream had been, it had actually been the best thing that ever
happened to him. As he proceeded to pick the wreckage of his life, Danial vowed to
never to let selfish desires get in the way of his morals ever again.