The Meatfields: Chapter Six: The Meatfields, Chapter 3

The Meatfields, Chapter Three
When I fell in love with Michael, I thought about him constantly. All day, every day and most every night until I fell asleep. The number of times I thought about him probably out weighed the number of times I actually laid eyes on him. Because of this, I had an incorrect idea of who he was. I know this now. The Michael I thought I knew I saw through the eyes of my mind- I had a picture of him, who he was, how he was, etc., that was comprised only of ideas and not reality. After he dumped me I couldn't believe that my perfect Michael, my idealized Michael could do such a thing to me. It wasn't until Julia told me that I wasn't sad for being apart from Michael at all, only from the imagined Michael who wasn't and couldn't be real, that I finally saw things straight for the first time. Now, not only could I not be wronged by a phantom and was thus spared the pangs of rejection, but I could put a face on evil, on bad, on enemy, on original deceit and start to deal with it.
I was crying that evening, alone on the walls of the compound, when I felt her slide next to me. I had seen her before, I knew she was weird. The weirdness of her approaching me at all was enough to forget myself, though I don't think I was ever uncomfortable.
"I know why you are crying." she said.
I stared at her.
"It's because you are hurt. You are feeling hurt. Not because Michael Rundstrom hurt you." She turned to look at me. I could hear the faint hiss of a meatstalk spurting.
"Do you know why you cry?" She asked. "You cry because you hurt. Do you know why you bleed? You bleed because you hurt. Do you cry because you bleed because you hurt? Or do you cry and bleed because you hurt? I think it is the latter: I thing the water and the blood spring from the same source: from you. Sometimes our body hurts and bleeds and the ethereal feels this too and so cries. But sometimes we just cry, but our poor bodies can't bleed from it. This is sad, I think." She looked out over the fields. "Our tear water is the blood of something deeper than our skin, but just as much apart of us." Her face hardened. A geyser of red shot up from the fields. "If I love you and leave you I hurt your feelings and you cry, but do not bleed." Grabbing my arm she retrieved a knife from somewhere in her jumpsuit, "But if I cut off your arm you bleed and bleed and cry and cry and both your feelings and your body are hurt then, too, right?" She was strong and I struggled, but she held firm and drew the blade close to my skin. "But one is just your feelings and one is just your arm, right?" She was sounding manic and here eyes were huge and close to mine, looking for a reply.
"I-I don't know.." I whimpered. She let go.
"You have an arm. You have feelings. You have bone and meat and blood." Another spurt from the fields and I saw her flinch. That's when she turned to me and said it:
"Meat has feelings, too, you know."