Food Fright

It was a hip restaurant with exposed brick walls and artificially composed graffiti. It was crowded, with dim lighting and a loud hip-hop soundtrack. Yet all this visual and acoustic noise couldn't hide that Kayla's date, Austin, was surrounded by a ghostly herd of cows.

"I don't mean to be rude," said Kayla diplomatically, "This is just a first date, and we're getting to know each other - but I think you may not be a vegetarian."

As she said this, a beefy black Angus phantasm lifted its tail and plopped out an ectoplasmic pile of goo. Several cows moved around the area, with one particularly gauzy cow butt brushing by the face of a man in a three-piece suit.

Yet the ghost cow that ecto-flopped seemed quite attached to Austin.

Many chickens also fluttered about. But, the world was lousy with ghost chickens. For whatever reason, most people could not stop eating chicken. Luckily, for the most part, these ghosts were ignorable.

The somewhat upsetting apparition was the giant sea turtle crawling towards the restrooms.

Everyone around the couple tried to ignore the bovine's ethereal defecation. Kayla could not.

Austin didn't even look up from his menu, "It's not mine."

The onslaught of animal ghosts had gradualy happened over the last year. Rumor was that it had started in Alaska. Global warming had melted some particularly long solid permafrost, releasing long-dormant viruses and bacteria. The popular scientific supposition was that these "ghosts" resulted from an as-yet-unknown gut bug entering the food system. The idea was that these visions were somehow manifestations of humanity's microbiome.

But no one could explain why those who had not eaten the same food could see other people's "undigested bits of beef."

Many felt this was Earth's spirit (Gaia, Prithvi, Asase Yaa, or what have you) attempting a last-ditch effort to alert humanity to the destruction it was causing.

Another popular belief was that this was a form of revived indigenous magic. They argued that this was how early humans had lived. They said this was why the first people of the North American continent had treated their hunted prey with such reverence. They knew they'd have to live with the literal spirit of everything they consumed.

Regardless, the planet's deceased fauna could no longer be ignored.

The fact that most people had indeed changed their diets - vegetarian and vegan diets became very popular - seemed to support the "mother earth" theory.

For starters, cheese had been elevated to legendary status. That cheese remained viable in a world filled with "stomach specters" was a welcome relief to those who had long considered becoming vegetarians but didn't want to cross over to veganism.

Vegetarians often pointed to the fact that since they were not haunted by eggs, abortion was not murder. Others responded that eggs were not the same as an unborn fetus. They would point out that eggs were actually chicken "periods." They were unfertilized discard. Thus, abortion was still murder.

Many Filipinos continued to enjoy balut unmolested by spirits and stayed out of this particular argument.

Especially at the start, vegetarians and vegans were often surprised by how often they had unknowingly eaten animal products. There had been gelatin in their mints and animal stock flavoring their seitan. The upsetting part for many had been the number of ghost insects that wound up following around so many of them.

"Bogeyman Bugs" and "Sleep Spiders" were everywhere.

Janists continued to sleep easy.

Kayla and Austin had met on a dating app that loudly coded people's diets at the top of their profiles. As religion or ethnicity had been a great divider in the past, now it was hard to find a vegetarian dating a meat eater. Pescatarians still seemed able to date almost anyone. Meat eaters didn't feel like they were being "tolerated" by them. Many veggie-inclined folks felt like being with their fish-eating partners was like walking through a spectral fish tank.

Austin refused to stop eating cheeseburgers. As such, he'd been unable to find someone to date in the last year. As a result, he had indeed lied about his dietary status. He hadn't had a burger since matching with Kayla, but that had only been the day prior. Sometimes, meat eaters would "fiber up" to "pass the ghost" before situations where spectral animals would be awkward. It didn't always work.

Most mainstream restaurants were lousy with animal ghosts. Austin thought it might go unnoticed.

Kayla was particularly sensitive to these ghosts. Where others might have been able to ignore or overlook this transgression, she was not. Shortly after all this had started, Kayla had one of the most disturbing events of her life.

It had been at an early summer BBQ pool party, stocked with the usual summer fare. The ghosts were finally appearing to more or less everyone. While a few spooky stories floated around online, it was still viewed as a curiosity. People still treated many of these spectral cows, chickens, and pigs as if they were pets of a sort.

At this point, Kayla had already experienced her first ghost chicken, which resulted from a grilled chicken Caesar salad. It had been a weird, if harmless, experience that messed with her enough to stop her from jumping into her next cheeseburger.

She'd been waiting for this party for a good month and was prepared for the possible consequences of her lunch.

Kayla ate the hotdog topped with mustard and relish and paired it with a lime-topped Corona. Breaking all the rules, she wolfed it down and immediately jumped into the pool. She felt sun spiked, a little tipsy and was having fun.

Splashing in the pool, she didn't notice him at first. The area was crowded. The first person to recognize what was happening was her cousin, Jenny.

Jenny managed to both scream and vomit into the pool at the same time.

Stomach specters were faded and translucent versions of their original selves. They also appeared slightly out of focus. Even when looking directly at them, they were often described as appearing as if in one's peripheral vision. The one exception to this was their eyes. The eyes stayed crystal clear - sharp and in focus. These specters were also silent. The cows didn't moo; the chickens didn't cluck; the pigs didn't snort.

His name was Thomas Perez. Originally from Guatemala, he was only 16 when he was pulled into a midwestern meat plant's processing machine while cleaning it. Most of his body had been recovered. It had been assumed that any missing pieces had been cleaned out by the next cleaning crew. All that had gotten through to the hot dog line had been the equivalent of a tablespoon. Yet it had been enough to end this BBQ pool party. No less than three partygoers now couldn't seem to shake the young man's shadow.

For the next week, when she could eat, Kayla would only eat rice. From then on, she held a strict vegetarian policy that skated much closer to veganism. Diet was her dating dealbreaker.

"I'm sorry, Austin," Kayla said as she stood up from the table, "this isn't going to work out."