Corporate Personhood

by Philip Mason

Synopsis: The perplexing nature of corporate personhood becomes all too clear for one unsuspecting shopper. 

The idea of corporate personhood was at first strange to me. That huge corporations could be given all the same constitutional rights as people seemed odd, and I didn't understand the rationale. I noted some characteristics of corporations that made them very unlike people, such as mergers and acquisitions, and thought this to be a perfectly legitimate way to demonstrate that corporations are in no way the same as people. Corporations can buy other corporations to merge together into a new and altogether more powerful entity. People can't do that, I thought.

But I was mistaken.

This morning I was at Earth Fare, high on my own sense of self-satisfaction and glowing with a superiority complex that could fill a jungle, and was fixated on the ten varieties of organic apples that lay before me. I was minding my own business of scrutinizing apples when I saw something suspicious. A large man with the beard of a phantasm drifted behind a display of fine cheeses no more than a few meters away. He spoke to a short man who was acting very secretive and suspicious. They both looked around them as they talked, like they didn't want anyone to see what they were about to do. I walked casually toward them, having just thrown a couple apples in my basket, and making it apparent that I might be interested in some cheese.

The two men walked into the back of the store, where the double doors took them to the storage rooms. I followed them. They moved behind a large shelf of boxes. The large man pulled out his wallet and handed the short man a wad of cash. This was followed by both men removing their shirts.

I'm about to witness an act of prostitution, I thought. I was disgusted, but too intrigued to look away. Gay prostitute sex in the storage room of Earth Fare, this would definitely be something to Tweet about, I remember thinking. I silently bit into one of my apples, because there was no telling how long I'd be back here witnessing this event.

The small man put the wad of cash in his pants, and pulled his arms in close to his chest. What happened next was unexpected. The large man lifted his phantasm beard to reveal a crack in his neck. With both hands he pulled open the crack, which split all the way down to his abdomen. His entire torso opened like a book, revealing a medley of guts and veins and a surprising amount of extra room. There was a gaping hole inside of him, and it glowed green. He dropped to his knees and held himself open wide, inviting the tiny man inside. The small man slicked back his hair and took a running dive into the large man, landing in the glowing green gaping hole with a sound that was both a thud and a splash. He let out a wheeze and a high pitched shriek, while the large man unleashed a thunderous laugh. The glowing green hole began absorbing the flesh of the small man who was now silent.

It was becoming humid in the back room. The large man closed his torso carefully - his skin began glowing and his limbs pulsed with spasms of warping shapes. The crack sealed itself, all the way up under his chin. The man adjusted his beard to hide the crack, and groaned for a minute. As he groaned, he grew taller, a little bit fatter, and his head swelled in size. His beard lengthened. When this was over the man put his shirt back on. It was a tighter fit than before.

I had been wrong about corporations. Mergers and acquisitions, as it turns out, was a very person-like thing. I had learned something new.

I finished my apple and left the core of it on the floor of the back room. I ran back out to the store and returned the other apple to its place among its brothers. I wasn't hungry anymore.