Tender is the Flesh

An unnamed processing-plant employee wakes in the heat with the vocabulary of slaughter running through his mind. He knows the industry's euphemisms conceal what the plant actually does: humans are bred, slaughtered, and sold as food, while calling them human can itself bring punishment. He recalls learning the meat trade at his father's Cypress Processing Plant, where a pig bite helped change how the workers regarded him, and he thinks about how completely that earlier world disappeared after the reported GGB animal virus.

His memories trace the official account of the Transition. Animals were declared dangerous to eat, attempts at vaccines and antidotes failed, pets and other animals were killed and burned, and clandestine killings of people for food began. Immigrants, poor people, and other marginalized groups were among those persecuted and slaughtered before governments legalized a regulated human-meat industry under pressure from an industry that had stopped operating. Public argument and media coverage helped normalize the new system, while the government renamed human flesh "special meat" and the industry adopted technical language that denied the product an identity.

Alone at home while his wife stays with her mother, he cannot stop remembering. He believes a theory that the virus was staged to reduce overpopulation, while recognizing that people who publicly challenged the official account were silenced. He remembers his father's earlier warnings about scarcity and overcrowding and concludes that the purge reduced population and poverty while creating a growing meat market. The chapter ends with him refusing the official euphemism in his own thoughts even as his work requires him to speak of head, lots, product, meat, and food rather than people.

The still-unnamed employee drives through empty former grazing land to HIFU Tannery. His mother-in-law calls to say Cecilia is doing better but is not ready to move back home. The road and destination make him revisit why he remains in the meat industry. After secondary school he worked at the Cypress for a year and then studied veterinary science, but returned after the animal-virus epidemic as his father's mental state deteriorated. Doctors diagnosed senile dementia; the employee believes his father could not withstand the Transition. The Cypress was eventually sold to pay debts and preserve the house, and his father now lives in a nursing home.

At HIFU, Señor Urami, the tannery's Japanese owner, controls a silent workforce through surveillance and intimidation. In his office, beneath a reproduction of The Last Judgment, Urami discusses human skin as a commodity. He gives the employee a folder of skin samples for the processing plant and breeding center, explains how wounds, refrigeration, hydration, stunning, flaying, and machine calibration affect leather quality, and provides revised cutting designs intended to reduce waste. The employee wants to answer Urami's clinical language with words such as atrocity and sadism, but instead remains silent and smiles.

On the tannery floor, Urami observes manual flesh removal after a machine failure and then abruptly requests black skins. The employee lies that a lot will arrive soon. Outside, a worker repeats rumors that Urami killed and flayed people even before the Transition; the employee treats those stories as rumors and knows only that Urami runs the tannery through terror. Leaving brings relief, followed by the familiar question of why he continues. His answer is practical and explicit: he is highly skilled and well paid, knows no other work, and needs the income for his father's care.

The still-unnamed protagonist arrives at Tod Voldelig breeding center, now part of the Krieg Processing Plant's meat circuit after quality problems at Guerrero Iraola. Before entering, he calls his father's nursing home. Nélida tells him Don Armando is stable despite having occasional episodes. He nearly calls his sister afterward but decides against it. Inside, Tod Voldelig's owner, El Gringo, asks him to join a tour for Egmont Schrei, a German prospective buyer. During the tour El Gringo explains the breeding operation: FGP head are born and raised in captivity without growth modification, teaser studs identify females ready for insemination, vocal cords are removed to make head easier to control, and breeding stock is managed as industrial inventory.

El Gringo privately calls the protagonist Tejo and promises a premium lot with some FGPs. Tejo warns him that two sick head in the previous lot failed Food Standards Agency inspection and were thrown to the Scavengers; Krieg will take his business elsewhere if it happens again. The tour continues through businesses built around captive humans. El Gringo describes drawing blood from pregnant females even though the resulting anemia causes abortions, milking dairy females, and maiming pregnant females so they cannot kill their fetuses. Tejo also presses him about overcrowded transport and gives him Señor Urami's skin samples so valuable hides will be protected.

El Gringo demonstrates a genetically modified female's meat by extracting a small sample from her arm for Egmont to taste. At a farmhand celebration, Egmont eats a sandwich made from a child while Tejo refuses despite its value. Tejo requests black skin, and El Gringo says he is negotiating an African lot because demand is rising. Before Tejo leaves, El Gringo shows them a new operation breeding head for organ transplantation, enabled by a newly passed law. Tejo has had enough of El Gringo's language and departs while Egmont's sandwich sauce drips onto his white shoes.

The protagonist gets up early to visit butcher shops while his wife remains at her mother's. He enters the otherwise empty room containing a white cot that once belonged to him and later to his son. Its headboard is decorated with animals, imagery no longer used on children's products after the Transition. He knows he should destroy and burn the cot before his wife returns, but cannot bring himself to do so.

A Tod Voldelig truck unexpectedly arrives at his isolated house. The absence of the dogs he once owned has made the property unnaturally silent, and he had believed the gate was locked. The driver calls him Señor Tejo, asks him to sign for a gift from El Gringo, and then unloads a female FGP. Tejo immediately orders him to take her back. The driver refuses, saying El Gringo will get rid of him if he returns with her.

The driver tries to hand Tejo the rope around the female's neck, but Tejo will not take it. The driver drops the rope and leaves in the truck, abandoning the female at the house. Her potential sale would be worth a small fortune, which makes Tejo's refusal unusual, but the chapter ends before he decides what to do with her.

Tejo angrily calls El Gringo about the female FGP left at his house. El Gringo calls her a gift and proposes several uses: Tejo can keep her briefly for a barbecue, slaughter her himself, sell her using the papers supplied with her, or breed her. El Gringo emphasizes that she is healthy, vaccinated, at reproductive age, First Generation Pure, and from a consignment fed an almond-based diet for more than a year for a client who orders custom-raised meat. He says the gift recognizes the value he places on doing business with the Krieg Processing Plant. Tejo thanks him curtly and hangs up furious.

It is getting late, so Tejo goes back outside to the female, whom he had left tied to a tree. She has not removed the rope because, he realizes, she does not know that she can. She trembles, looks at the ground, and urinates when he approaches. He takes her to the barn and ties her to the door of a broken, rusted truck. Because El Gringo sent no feed, Tejo searches his sparse refrigerator and finds some leftover white rice. He leaves the female a bowl of water and a bowl of cold rice, locks the barn, and leaves.

The meat run takes Tejo into the city, where the butcher shops, curfew, heat, and emptier streets weigh on him. He remembers a pre-Transition butcher-shop employee who confessed that his employer forced him to disguise rotten and diseased meat for sale. Tejo brought the story to his father, who stopped supplying that shop and hired the man at the Cypress. On the drive, Tejo catches himself wondering whether the female in his barn has enough food or is cold.

At Spanel Butchers, Tejo reflects on how legal special meat transformed the trade. Inspected meat is expensive, while the black market sells cheaper unregulated 'easy meat' with a first and last name. Spanel, who formerly worked at his father's plant, was among the first butchers to adapt. Her shop gradually normalized human anatomy through labels and euphemisms such as upper and lower extremities, trotters, mixed brochettes, and other delicacies. Tejo also remembers an earlier sexual encounter with Spanel at the Cypress and recognizes that seeing her remains complicated.

In the back room, Spanel has Tejo drink wine with her while she signs Krieg's certification forms. She says she expects her own flesh eventually to be sold on the black market and argues that no one can ensure otherwise. Their prohibited conversation turns to whether they themselves may someday be eaten. Meanwhile her silent assistant, whom Tejo privately calls El Perro because of his doglike loyalty, butchers a half carcass behind glass. Spanel tells Tejo customers are ordering brains again after newer medical claims disputed earlier health warnings, and she writes out her weekly order. Tejo watches her and thinks about the brutal detachment she cultivates.

Because the female is in his barn, Tejo abandons his usual practice of staying overnight in the city during the meat run and drives home after buying feed for domestic head. He finds her curled on the floor, gives her blankets, water, and feed, and thinks explicitly that her life is fear. He recalls a prosecuted family that kept ten female head as slaves: the family and the females were all sent to the Municipal Slaughterhouse, while the public repeated that slavery was barbaric. Still unsure what to do, Tejo considers selling the female, breeding her and starting his own lot, or abandoning his current life altogether.

Nélida calls after Don Armando has another episode, so Marcos cancels his game-reserve visit and goes to the nursing home. On the way he stops at the abandoned zoo and remembers visiting it after his mother's death, when his father tried to draw the silent boy out; this memory is the first point in the narrative at which his first name, Marcos, is stated. At New Dawn, the narrative also recalls that Marcos met Cecilia there when she was one of his father's nurses. Marcos reflects on the black-market sale of dead nursing-home residents and resolves that his father will not be cut up. Nélida explains that Don Armando stripped naked and ate another resident's birthday cake, and Marcos agrees that his father may again be restrained at night.

Marcos arrives at the Krieg Processing Plant, whose electric fence keeps Scavengers from breaking in for fresh meat. He contrasts its anonymous white buildings with the surviving facade of the Salamone Slaughterhouse and remembers that his father believed slaughterhouses should never call attention to what happened inside. Security guard Oscar admits him, and secretary Mari greets Marcos before he enters Krieg's isolated office. Marcos reflects that Krieg excels at markets and transactions but avoids people, leaving Marcos to manage the human side of the plant. Few coworkers know about his child's death, Cecilia's absence, Don Armando's decline, or the female Marcos cannot bring himself to kill.

Krieg assigns Marcos to evaluate two applicants and tells him that a night guard raped an FGP female to death, an act the plant handles as destruction of movable property and a financial loss. Marcos takes the applicants through unloading and resting areas, explaining inspection, disease removal, shaving, fasting, and the color marks that route head to the game reserve, Valka Laboratory, slaughter, or export-quality FGP cages. He also acknowledges to himself that some diseased head are deliberately left for the Scavengers despite the official procedure. The taller applicant asks practical questions and grows pale; Marcos distrusts the shorter applicant, who seems unusually interested in the killing process.

Marcos brings the applicants to the stunning sector and introduces Sergio, a stunner and friend who supported him after Leo died. Sergio says he justifies the work by providing for his family and feeding people. He demonstrates on a young female, calming her before knocking her unconscious with a club, then explains that inexperienced stunners use a captive-bolt pistol and that a bad strike can ruin the meat. The taller applicant is shaken, while the shorter applicant is eager to try. When Sergio explains that the head cannot scream because their vocal cords were removed, Marcos concludes that the shorter man's desire to kill makes him dangerous rather than suitable for routine slaughter.

From a corridor window, Marcos and the applicants watch the slitting room. The female Sergio stunned regains consciousness because workers take too long, frees herself from the hanging straps, and is shot in the forehead with a captive-bolt pistol before being rehung. Marcos reprimands the responsible worker because fear and stress damage the meat and temporarily reassigns him. The taller applicant is deeply disturbed while the shorter man watches with a smirk. They continue through scalding and dehairing, with Marcos explaining the plant's procedures rather than allowing the applicants into regulated work areas.

The tour follows the stunned female's body through cutting, flaying, organ removal, inspection, and the offal rooms, where nearly every part is cleaned, graded, stored, or sold. Marcos explains uses for the head and extremities while the workers process intestines, stomachs, hearts, lungs, and other organs. Watching the routine work, he thinks about how people can become accustomed to almost anything. The exception for him is Leo's death: he links the plant's monthly slaughter to the money needed for Don Armando's care and concludes that his grief is the one thing he cannot normalize.

Near the end of the tour, Marcos watches Pedro Manzanillo cut carcasses with a chainsaw and remembers Manzanillo's former partner Ency. Ency deteriorated psychologically, tried to free head from the resting cages while shouting that they were not animals, was fired after being subdued, and killed himself within a month despite Krieg paying for treatment. Manzanillo has hated Marcos since then, and Marcos interprets that hatred as something that keeps the man functioning. Marcos then catches the shorter applicant secretly filming the slaughter process, destroys his phone, and tells him he will circulate his identity to other processing plants. The applicant responds only with a brazen smile.

Marcos has security take the shorter applicant away and notes that outsourced security should never have allowed the hidden phone inside. He dismisses the taller applicant with the standard promise that the plant will contact him. The chapter ends with Marcos observing that no person in their right mind would be pleased to take this job.

Cecilia calls Marcos for the first time since moving to her mother's house. She says she is still unwell, is not ready to return, and needs to be alone; when Marcos says that he lost Leo too, she cries and says she cannot take any more. After the call, Marcos remembers the long course of fertility treatment that preceded Leo's conception: injections, tests, debt, failed eggs and embryos, discussions of adoption and donors, and finally pregnancy and birth. The sequence ends not with recovery but with the child's death.

Marcos returns home, feeds the female, and carries Leo's cot into the yard. Drinking whiskey, he destroys the cot with an ax, burns it with kerosene, and remembers his son's feet after birth. He then enters the barn with the ax and considers killing the female, but instead cuts her rope. Marcos lies down outside beside the dying fire, no longer caring whether she escapes or Cecilia returns, and falls asleep while the female remains nearby.

Marcos wakes outside after a vivid dream in which his father, Leo, Sergio, Manzanillo, Cecilia, and Spanel appear amid slaughter imagery. The female has not escaped and is sleeping close to him; her presence and smell excite him, but he abruptly returns her to the barn. On his day off he drives to Spanel's closed shop, locks himself in the back room with her, and the two have a violent sexual encounter while El Perro watches through the door window and tries to enter. Marcos leaves without saying goodbye after Spanel finally screams and later sits smoking and smiling.

Marcos visits his sister Marisa, who treats his arrival as a social obligation and argues with him about protective umbrellas and the government's claims about animal contagion. She talks about her children's virtual pets and repeatedly emphasizes the family's supposed financial limitations, although she contributes nothing to Don Armando's care. Marcos notices a new cold-room door used by households that keep domestic head and realizes why Marisa invited him: she intends to ask him to obtain head cheaply. The chapter ends as her twins arrive home.

At lunch, Marisa's twins Estebancito and Maru whisper about what Marcos might taste like and invite him to play a cannibalism-themed game called Exquisite Corpse. Marisa angrily insists that they do not eat people even while the family is eating special meat. She then asks whether Krieg sells head to private households, confirming Marcos's suspicion, and Marcos turns the conversation to her failure to visit Don Armando. He leaves after unsettling the twins by describing how he imagines they would taste, and throws away the umbrella Marisa makes him take.

After lunch Marcos wanders through the abandoned zoo rather than going directly to the lion enclosure. He remembers Leo's funeral and the required cremation that followed the ceremonial burial, then explores the ruined aviary, playground, and serpentarium. In a terrarium he discovers four scrawny puppies, waits for them to calm down, and begins petting them. Holding one puppy, he laughs and cries silently.

Marcos names the four puppies Jagger, Watts, Richards, and Wood and remembers Koko and Pugliese, whom he killed during the animal purge because he feared a worse fate for them. Adult dogs then appear outside the terrarium. Marcos engineers an escape route that also gives the puppies a chance to survive, but a pack of six dogs chases him to his car. Safe inside, he refuses to harm the starving animals and drives away, saying goodbye in his mind to the puppies.

Back home during a storm, Marcos decides the female can no longer remain filthy and washes her carefully in the rain. He notices the twenty FGP marks corresponding to her years at the breeding center, her freckles, green eyes, and the brand on her forehead. His handling becomes increasingly intimate: he hugs her, kisses the brand, and thinks about the pain caused by branding and removal of her vocal cords. He removes his clothes and the chapter ends by stating that what he wants is prohibited and that he does it anyway, without yet naming the later consequences.

After a time jump into spring, Marcos watches old reports about the destruction of animal images after the Transition and worries that his work performance has declined. The female now moves through the house while he is present, wears clothes, watches television, and has learned parts of domestic life. Marcos calls her Jasmine, revealing the name he has given her. The chapter's final fact changes the stakes of their relationship: Jasmine is eight months pregnant.

Marcos locks Jasmine in a prepared room and goes to Krieg, where members of the Church of the Immolation have brought seventy-year-old Gastón Schafe to be legally sacrificed. The church's arrangement with selected plants produces tax benefits, while Krieg secretly sends the resulting meat to Scavengers. Marcos remembers learning that Jasmine was pregnant on the day another church member, Claudia Ramos, panicked at the boxes, fled through the plant, and was stunned by Sergio before being given to the Scavengers. To avoid another incident, Marcos drugs Schafe's water; Sergio then stuns him and workers take his body to the Scavengers, whose attack on it can be heard beyond the fence.

At home, Jasmine greets Marcos and follows him through a house he has altered around her pregnancy. Her room contains mattresses and little she can use to hurt herself; Leo's former room has been repainted and furnished with a cot Marcos built by hand to avoid suspicion. Marcos has locked drawers after Jasmine cut her hand while exploring knives, and he installed cameras so he can watch her while at work. He imagines keeping the newborn beside his bed so he can make sure this child does not stop breathing.

At the game reserve, owner Urlet discusses the pleasure of eating living beings and gives Marcos an order emphasizing impregnated females and capable males. Urlet explains a program in which indebted celebrities can erase their debts if they survive a prescribed period as hunted prey. Marcos watches returning hunters pose with dead head, including a pregnant female and a famous musician he recognizes but cannot yet name. The killed prey are weighed and divided between food prepared at the reserve and packages for hunters to take home.

As Marcos tries to leave, former supplier Guerrero Iraola forces him into lunch with the hunters, where Marcos learns that the dead musician is Ulises Vox. Guerrero Iraola boasts about an illegal trafficking venue where clients can pay to eat women after sex, and another hunter says Iraola raped a fourteen-year-old girl before she was slaughtered. At lunch the hunters eat parts of Vox and other human dishes; Marcos initially avoids the meat but eventually eats a piece of finger and is surprised by how much he misses meat. He remains focused on Jasmine while the group celebrates the hunt and the fact that Vox had only five hours left to survive.

Driving home, Marcos remembers his last return to the abandoned zoo, before he knew Jasmine was pregnant. He found teenagers in the serpentarium killing the four puppies for amusement. Three were killed before the last, Jagger, bit one teenager, provoking an argument about whether the animal virus was real and whether the government used it to justify cannibalism. The teenager then threw Jagger against the wall and the group proposed setting him on fire. Marcos, outnumbered and unable to intervene, stopped watching.

An inspection of Jasmine forces Marcos to confront rules he once helped write while working for the Office of the Undersecretary for the Control of Domestic Head. He remembers an earlier case in which he and Alfonso 'El Gordo' Pineda discovered a domestic female hidden under a bed and confirmed that her owner had illegally had sex with her; the owner was sent to the Municipal Slaughterhouse. In the present, a new inspector insists on seeing Jasmine, whose pregnancy would expose Marcos's crime. Marcos delays him, calls the now-promoted Pineda, and secures permission for a signature-only inspection, but recognizes that the suspicious inspector may return and that he can no longer rely on this protection.

After the inspector leaves, Marcos unties Jasmine and embraces her tightly. He puts a hand on her pregnant belly and cries. Jasmine touches his face gently, a gesture the narration describes as almost a caress even though she does not understand his distress.

On his day off, Marcos takes Jasmine beneath the tree where Koko and Pugliese are buried. They eat and listen to instrumental jazz on his old radio. When Thelonious Monk plays, Marcos brings Jasmine to her feet and they dance; he kisses the brand on her forehead. They remain beneath the tree for the afternoon while Marcos imagines his dead dogs dancing with them.

Nélida urgently summons Marcos to New Dawn. On the drive he stops beside the abandoned zoo and knocks down its sign, leaving the place without a name. At the nursing home, Nélida tells him Don Armando died in his sleep during the early morning. Marcos initially feels numb and something like relief that his father is free of dementia, but after seeing a hummingbird at the window and imagining it might be his father's spirit, he begins to cry.

Nélida has Marcos complete Don Armando's death and cremation paperwork and explains that she was required to notify Marisa. Marisa wants a farewell service, which Marcos initially rejects before telling Nélida to let his sister arrange it. He insists that the cremation happen immediately and reacts sharply to Nélida's attempts at consolation. When she explains that he must accompany the body and witness the cremation, Marcos reminds her that he has already gone through the same process with Leo.

After witnessing Don Armando's cremation, Marcos drives to the abandoned zoo with the ashes and goes to the aviary. He remembers his father's fascination with birds, Icarus, music, and the love between his parents. Marcos scatters his father's real ashes from the hanging bridge and says goodbye. He then fills the urn with dirty sand and rubbish from the playground, stubs out a cigarette in it, and reserves that false urn for Marisa's farewell service.

Marisa repeatedly calls while Marcos drives home and tells him she plans to hold Don Armando's farewell service at her house. She wants the urn immediately and offers to collect it herself. Marcos refuses, tells her the service will happen only when he decides to bring the urn, and hangs up when she objects.

Marcos gets home exhausted, leaves Jasmine asleep, drinks a bottle of whiskey in the hammock, and wakes with a vivid dream still intact. In the dream the restored aviary fills with motionless birds and butterflies that shatter or turn to dust when touched; multiple silent versions of Marcos appear, and one version kills the others merely by speaking. The zoo becomes a forest hung with body parts and babies that vanish or die as he reaches them. He wakes beneath a bright blue sky and finally screams aloud.

Before visiting the Valka Laboratory, Marcos tells Krieg this will be his final trip there and threatens to resign if he is not allowed to train a replacement. At the laboratory, Dr. Valka displays experiments on conscious human specimens, including addiction studies, vivisection, pain exposure, mother-child separation, and simulated automobile crashes. Marcos also sees living animals in a restricted room and questions why an advanced laboratory has not found a cure for the animal virus; Valka invokes confidentiality and refuses to discuss it. Marcos openly challenges her treatment of employees until she orders him out and says she will send future requests directly to Krieg.

Cecilia calls after hearing about Don Armando's death. She offers to accompany Marcos and says for the first time since leaving that she misses him, but he declines her company and tells her Marisa is handling the farewell service. Cecilia says Marcos looks different and more distant; he responds that she chose not to come home and he cannot wait forever. After ending the call, Marcos returns home, hugs Jasmine, and whistles 'Summertime' to her.

Marcos prepares Jasmine for a long absence, checking her vital signs and reflecting on the medical equipment he obtained to monitor her unregistered pregnancy. At Marisa's farewell service, he gives her the urn containing zoo sand and watches guests praise a staged display of Don Armando's life. He discovers that Marisa has acquired an FGP female and is keeping her alive in a cold room while the household removes and serves pieces according to a fashionable 'death by a thousand cuts' guide. Marcos tells Marisa she disgusts him, condemns her hypocrisy and neglect of their father, and leaves her holding the false urn.

Mari urgently calls Marcos from the farewell service because a cage trailer has overturned near the plant and Scavengers are killing the transported head. Driver Luisito is also killed, and Krieg believes the attack may have been planned. After comforting Mari, Marcos and Krieg discuss how to prevent further attacks. Marcos proposes waiting several weeks, poisoning head, and giving them to the Scavengers so the resulting deaths will appear connected to the stolen meat. He leaves the plant unable to feel either the pity for the hungry Scavengers or the grief for Luisito that he thinks he should feel.

Marcos returns home and finds Jasmine in labor with discolored amniotic fluid. He calls Cecilia, reveals that the pregnant female is carrying his child, and persuades Cecilia to help despite her shock and disgust. After a difficult breech labor, Cecilia delivers a living boy; Marcos immediately frames the baby as belonging to him and Cecilia while Jasmine reaches desperately for her son. Marcos calms Jasmine, then strikes her unconscious with a club on the branded forehead. When Cecilia protests that Jasmine could have produced more children, Marcos drags Jasmine toward the barn to slaughter her and ends the novel by describing her as having 'the human look of a domesticated animal.'