Yum Yum In The Tum Tum(Martha Huett) The crowd outside the tiny planet's only food pantry was pretty excited on the last Friday of the month. Fresh meat was coming in. Usually, supplemental food assistance was distributed in shrink-wrapped or dessicated plant form, so fresh meat from Earth was something you saw maybe once a year. And the word out on the street was that a huge load was coming in. The demons outside the food pantry were indeed hungry, but they were also festive. There was going to be some real celebrating that night and into the weekend.

Fremont was drooling within minutes of hearing about the meat. Stars! It had been years since he even had a bite of a burger. It was such a throwback meal that only an accomplished historian like himself could acknowledge it, contemplate it and savor it. And how he really wanted one! Cooked, of course. Only the underprivileged ate their meat raw. Oh, and well done with catsup, please. Snapping out of his culinary wistfulness, Fremont decided right then and there that, in spite of his job status, therefore ineligibility, he would nevertheless join the crowd of hungry miscreants and get his fair share of meat. He jumped into his flyer-car and took off. Rules be damned. Those poor demons can share, he assured himself. After all, he had very generously donated a couple of unwanted food items to the pantry maybe five years ago.

Much of the food pantry's fare was sub-standard, though some food products were really tasty. A big favorite among the pantry's recipients was the dried, pickled dung from Xerxes-1. Another coveted food item was the sweet, packaged pebbled saliva from a Uranian moon. But, the foodstuffs from Earth, which were fewer and farther between, were really everybody's first choice, especially the meat. Though meat was plentiful for the fat and carnivorous Earthlings, it could only be consumed by the hungry, skeletal demons of Vulga if it was harvested from soulless creatures. That pretty much left out the strange beings known as cows, pigs, bats, rats, pangolins, chickens and crickets. There were limits to what they would eat, after all. No self-respecting demon would ingest meat poisoned by a body that had harbored a soul. Unfortunately for the demons, only one of Earth's species was susceptible to soullessness. The in-coming load of fresh meat from Earth was going to be a huge and well-deserved treat for the disadvantaged of Vulga. They could hardly wait.

Already standing in line was single mother-of-one, Philippa. Biting at her bony fingertips worriedly, she knew she shouldn't have left baby Root alone at home. He had been sleeping deeply, but still. He was only four years old and innocent in every way. Root, especially, needed the extra enzyme for growth that could only come from fresh meat. He was a child of stunted growth and stood no taller than his mama's knee. Most of the planet's children were fully grown at ten years of age and were working by the time they hit their teenage years. Poor little Root was still in his highchair. Philippa would not give up this opportunity to properly feed her son. She needed that meat. It had been over a year since either of them had enjoyed the taste of flesh.

Food shortages among the masses on Vulga were sporadic and appeared to be lengthening. Unable to grow their own food due to planetary degradation and a flat refusal to resort to cannibalism, the people had learned to rely on the stealthy acquisition of food through minimal trade and maximum intra-galactic theft. New retrieval technology allowed the demons to spot the bodies of living and freshly-dead soulless creatures and surreptitiously abscond with them. It wasn't exactly the most honorable method of putting food in your kids' mouths, but whatever. It is what it is.

The only set of twins on Vulga could give a flying fig how the planet acquired their food. All they had known their entire twenty years of life was work and hunger. From the day they were able to talk, Pinch and Wince were exposed to geology and rock collection. When they were put out in the field at thirteen, the boys quickly became the pride of the lower classes. They made the whole group shine with their uncanny ability to divine and unearth zirellium, a rare and powerful energy-producing mineral. Zirellium also happened to occur solely on Vulga and was the planet's only export. Profits derived from zirellium certainly never went to Pinch or Wince, but it did give them special societal allowances like going to the head of the food pantry line; which is exactly what they did the minute they stepped tenderly off their flyer-discs upon arriving.

It was only about a half-hour trip to the food pantry by hover-car, but only the privileged few like Fremont the historian had one of those. Most food recipients travelled a full day by land through sand-burnt waves of heat and burning hot desert. Many, including Philippa and Pinch and Wince arrived treading lightly. Their flyer-discs barely kept the soles of their feet from frying like fritos in the skillet of Hades-like heat. It was a miserable journey. But hey. You gotta eat.

In front of the food pantry, the bony bodies of the food recipients (except for Fremont's corpulent one) clacked against each other as they jostled for a better view of the incoming food shipment. Cheers, laughter and jubilant applause rose into the singed air above the crowd. Carcass after carcass was being unloaded from a hovering supply ship onto a rolling assembly line where they would be cut and quartered, then distributed to the hungry, unwashed masses. Fat Fremont wanted that meat at any cost and threw caution to the hot, dry wind. Pushing the skeletal forms of hungry demons aside, he heaved himself onto the conveyor belt to claim a whole carcass for himself. He didn't want to share one morsel of his meat with the less fortunate. Not his problem. Not his responsibility. Unlike his fellow Vulgarians, Fremont had no soul. No one, not even himself, recognized that fact until now. He was so busy branding the chosen corpse as his own that he didn't notice the crowd's hungry, speculative glances upon his own rotund form.

Suddenly, a carcass moved; its legs kicked wildly. The head thrashed side to side. It was alive! The crowd screamed in delight. They jumped and danced crazily on the seared soles of their feet. Never ever had the people of Vulga had such a treat. Meat so fresh that it was still alive. It was almost too good to be true. Soon some had doubts, and the crowd turned to Pinch and Wince for the go-ahead. The skinny twins were more than willing to sample the meat and test it for toxicity. Like others, they knew the meat from Earth was especially prone to toxicity because almost all of its inhabitants have souls. This time, however, the demons of Vulga were able to more confidently nourish their bodies with those of the soulless. Thanks to the new Vulgarian retrieval technology and the current state of affairs on Earth, those creatures with no souls were more easily identified and picked off. Nevertheless, there were fearful doubts. One swallow of soul-infused meat could be fatal to a demon. Pinch and Wince, at the encouragement of the crowd and with the promise to spit out any hint of poisoned meat, stepped up to the flailing body and took a bite.

The living carcass screeched out in pain, then cried like a baby. It whined and whimpered. Pinch and Wince chewed thoughtfully, swallowed and announced with wide smiles, "It's perfect. It's fat and flabby. Cruel and corrupt. It has no soul!" At those words, the crowd in front of the food pantry on Vulga could not be contained and threw itself upon the living carcass. Those who could not reach it, pulled the other carcasses from the conveyor belt and went to town. "Mmmm. Yummy. Nom nom," murmured the crowd while they ravenously ate. Belatedly recognized as a soulless carcass, Fremont was lost between the jaws and teeth of his fellow Vulgarians and was quite literally swallowed up by the frenzied crowd.

The living carcass had its red tie ripped from around its throat. Its blue suit was in tatters. Philippa was there at the very last when it was uttering inanities about being the best and the smartest. When the living carcass started ranting something about how he alone could make Vulga great again, she reached her bony fingers into its mouth and ripped its tongue out. Philippa tucked it into her bag. She could hardly wait to share the savory morsel later that night with her boy, Root. When at last he had his yum yum in his little tum tum, she would also share a sweet bedtime story with him. It was a true story, she promised her tender and drowsy son, about how the demons of Vulga selflessly helped rid the Earth of its soulless tyrants and their soulless thugs. Finally. Once and for all.

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