We all know everyone dies, but do we know, that no one remains dead? That is when the second journey begins; the other secret maybe where we will be transferred to.
The Butcher
In a dark ally of Brugge, Belgium, down Blind Donkey Street, under the citys archwaythen, just beyond that point, in a cellar, of which a small caf is right above it, a light is on. As one walks down the flight of stairsdeep into the roots of the cellar, he has to go through a back doorthen he will meet a long stretching hallway, past that a front coal burner room; then backed into the corner of the cellar is a small booth type-room. In this room is Romero, he is a small fat looking slop of a man; in his fifties, reddish hairuncombed, buckteeth, a mouth that stretches from ear to eara dim sight to see, with a hermits character. By trade hes a butcher. His father and his fathers father had both worked at the stockyards, outside of Brugge as butchers in their younger daysnow he and his brother picked up the trade, as often times sons do in this part of the world. They [they being: him and his brother owned this small underground booth-type butcher-meat shop for many years, wherefore, Romero would bring down a half pig, or cow and butcher them there; cutting the prime meat for the rich folks, and the fat of the back part of the pig, for the poor. He had an assortment of regular and non-regular customers; along with some walk-ins whom found their way to his shop, and thus, made their orders, equally.
The brains of both animals hed eat, and if their was puss or boils hiding behind the animals thick meet, hed discover it by poking his knife here and there, and if it wasnt obvious to the customers hed not cut into it, or cut it out, thus, making the meet heavier, for more money [kind of like what is done in todays society; in fear hed lose the sale of the meat hed sell it as it was. To take this one step further, hed simply wipe the drippings off and l et the boils fester in the animal; Once cooked hed say, no one would be the wiser, until that is, until theyd get sick and die. But no one blamed him, no one knocked on his door pointing a finger at him. It happened now and then, but not too infrequent.
It was the October of 1893, as usual he was working in his booth, many, many new customers [referrals for the most part were coming in and out to buy his meat it seemedand much to his liking; yes, business was picking up, one of the reason being there was little overhead, and therefore he could charge less for his meat than other butchers; Hitherto his cheap pieces for meat got around the city, which made him a man worth dealing with. In the mean time, he continued to bring his regular customers their daily supply, if not semi weekly portions, then on the weekend hed go back to his farm outside of Brugge where his brother was working the farm, for his father and mother had long passed on; there hed take again his s upply of beef and pork and bring it back to the city come Monday, taking only Sunday off for rest; as he had learned from his gracious mother, and the teachings of the Good Book.
But it was on another October night things changed. He was sleeping with his head laying on his arm (in his shop), after butchering up a large portion of a pig, when he fell fast asleep; a deep, deep sleepa kind of sudden sleep you might even say; whereupon he drifted into a monstrous nightmare, a nightmare so grotesque his mind could hardly digest it.
He noticed in his minds-eye, his body twitching, involuntary movements going, spasms, neurological jolts if you will, jolts in his neck, eyes, elbows, knees. When he woke up, he found himself out of his little one-hundred square-foot room, down the hall by the coal room.
Jonathon, the young maintenance man for the building had been murdered; his body parts were laying all about. He looked at himself, and saw that he had blood all over his apron, and his handshuman blood, blood that was not there before: Ahh! he murmured in a thoughtful voice, out loud, others couldnt tell whose blood it was, but he could, that is, after twenty-two years in the business you can tell blood from blood, it smells. Plus, he noticed he was holding his butchers knife in his hand, and also noticed blood stained on that, or I should say, he became quickly aware of the dripping from his mouth contained blood as if he had eaten the human flesh, or someone had put it in his mouth. He then spit out a finger nail and a part of the mans intestines. Hence, he came to the conclusion he was the culprit; he butchered this man without even knowing he did it, yes, he did it in his sleep, he told himself: and was in the process of eating himso he told himself again. Yes, that was his conclusion, it was undeniable; what else could it be?
It was even so in his dream, the dream he tried to tuck away back into his cerebellum, but ins tead of pushing it too far back, he had been forced to wakeuphe felt liken to a frog leaping out of a pond, he too jumped out of his dream. Whatever possessed him to do this he thought? In all his days, not such a thing had ever occurred to himnot even once, never, ever: why at the present? But the evidence was too incriminating, and accordingly he had to do something, and do it quick. Next, he put all the body parts quickly into a gunny-sack, one that held some fifty pounds of potatoes at one time: he had found it in one of the corners of the underground storage area.
Quickly again, he brought the sack back into his stall, hurriedly cutting the meat off the bones. After that, he hastily took the bones and put them into the furnace, but while he was doing that, one of his customers came down the flight of stairs and into his shop, and mistakenly took a wrapped up piece of human fleshthinking it was his weekly portion of meat, and laid the money on the table for the butcher. Fine, Romero said, seeing this, but only seeing it as his customer walked out the door and up the steps he went; at which time he felt no more could be done, and left well enough alone: in point of fact, he really didnt know what to do, and if there was a consequence, wellheck, hed come out clean with the story I suppose. If he killed young Jonathon, then he deserved what punishment he got, so he told and convinced himself.
During the following week the owner of the building looked high and low for young Jonathon, but not finding head nor hair of him, thus, feeling he went his own way, to perhaps another city, he went and hired another man, a much older man, thinking this timea more matured person would possibly stay on the job. That same day, the old customers that had taken the wrong batch of meat came back and ordered double the quantity of meat he normally would get, insisting hed get the same cut of meat he got last timethinking he must had gotten on e of the rich peoples portion, and not able to resist it, saying:
My goshit was the best tasting portion of pork Ive ever eaten, I didnt even need to use garlic with it.
The Butcher, happy as could be that both situations were taken care of for him somehow, gave another portion to his customer in addition to his two portions, matter of fact, he gave him a forth portion of meat to boot, one for his sisters family.
The Furnace
All in all, things were going quite well as time passed. It now was several weeks since he had experienced that ugly ordeal with Jonathan, whereupon the old red-headed butcher fell to sleep again on his wooden table; when he woke up the following morning, he found the new coal man [again dead as can dead can be by the furnace-burners; evidently he had been shoveling coal late last evening. And like with the butchers previous ordeal he was covered with blood, he and the coal man. Again the Butcher grabbed a potato sack, and re peated the same basic motions he had down with Jonathans body, putting the body parts into the sack; but this time he knew right away how he was going to handle the situation, and so he commenced cutting portions of meat off the bones right away and selling them to his rich customers, along with giving a few to his poorer ones for advertising purposes. After all was said and done, and all the portions of meat were sold at a premium pricefor he had raised the prices two-fold, he found himself getting to be a rich man. Yet he had not tasted the meat himself, per se, nor could he remember killing anyonenevertheless, all things led to him, and the money was good now which seemed to lighten the burden of wonderment.
If only, he mumbled, if only I could let my brother in on this, he might understand but he never told his brother about such happenings at the butcher shopalthough it seemed a little suspicious when hed come home on the weekends and count the money out i n front of him and it would be double the amount he normally made on selling the same quantity of meat; nor did Romero offer any information on how he was acquiring a larger amount other than, his shop was of a better quality than his rivals, and Ramiros brother paid little attention to business outside of the farm itself, and that was kind of the deal they had both made. The brother preferring the farm life to the city life, which was quite fine with Romero; again I repeat, the less said, the better Romero felt.
Several months now had gone by since the last incident, and they had gone through another furnace and maintenance man, when suspicion came upon Romero by the police, whom started asking questions on why so many of the maintenance men from this [his particular building were coming up missing.
Romero being a man of few words, said very little, shrugging his shoulders (what could they prove he figured), along with moving his head back and forth and makin g dumb eye movements; everyone knew he was odd and the police knew if they were to fined out anything on him, theyd have to be an eyewitness to it, or find another person that was. On the other hand, the police knew Romero also for his dumb ticks, paid little attention to them other than searching about the little room looking for clues finding nothing.
Said Romero with a dumbfounded smile:
Here, take this home to your wives, giving a big portion of what looked like pork to each officer, there being three of them.
Having done so, the Police Officers took the meat, and returned the following week for another portion, this time with money in their hands, and all had pushed aside the previous murders feeling Romero couldnt really do such a thing; saying it was the best meat they had ever eaten.
Romero one evening in February again fell to sleepinvoluntarily of course, although he had put a glass by the door this time, so if hed open it, it would break a nd hed wake up, and his killing streak would stop. So as I was saying, he fell to sleep, and young Quincy Brown, now the new coal man was tending to his duties by the furnace pitching in shovel after shovel of coal, loading the dark-black dusty coal into the required furnace.
The glass broke and Romero woke up, petrified, he could see an image by the door, was this a live nightmare (thinking he may be dead) he thought, or was he still sleeping and this was just a nightmare brought on by guilt, another thought said: was it the devil himself he was witnessing.
What was it, he thought; he picked up his knife, poked himself in the arm with it, Ah! Yes, yes he said, Im awake, then added [looking astound, who are you? he stuttered looking in the archway, lips quivering.
The entity said nothing, just looked about. The more he looked the more it looked like some extra-planetary entity; it didnt look human, but the more he stared at it, the less it looked to be th e devil itselfjust awful and scary, grotesquery.
Hitherto, the creature just stared, then glanced about a moment longer sucking in his chest and was about to blow out a wave of whatever he had inside of him, evidently to put him back to sleepto paralyze him, when all of a sudden he had noticed the creature was carrying some kind of amputations in his hands, along with a vapor that now was coming out of his mouth in the form of a gulp of air, it had a sharpness to it, one that could sedate, numb him: it seemed as if it was sucking juices from his scabby body, it was a cold, cold vaporcold as numbing ice: Romero jumped up, the spray from his mouth, that came up from his chest, hit his face, hit his table, it seemed to absorb into it like acid. He must had used this before when he fell to sleep [thought the Butcher, and then hed sneak in and paralyzed him into a morbid long and deadly sleep, like he evidently did to the coal men. Then with a swift thrust of the Butche rs hand he threw the knife with speed and accuracy at the center of the creatures forehead.
Like a ton of bricks he fell backwardsstraight backwards with a great thump: bang, wallop, the creature went down. As he examined the creature, it was a foul smelling one to say the leasthe found a piece of paper in his pocket that read Uhluhtc from Moiromma. As he speculated the creature told him, with a dying appearance: that he had been here on earth for some forty-years he had been strandedfor the most part, and needed (or possibly the words he used were liked or got to like human flesh; the beasts words were scrambled with some other language [in descript for the butcher; as I was about to say, he needed protean for his body, which seemed to function better with human flesh, and acquired a liking for human flesh. The ogre tried to explain his planet was not yet discovered by humans that it was at the tip of the solar system [Milky Way, a planet that was mostly ice. Well, Romero knew little of such things, or sciencesespecially planetary sciences, and butchered him up just the same and sold his meat, accordingly, and was put in jail for selling spoiled meatrotten dog meat he was told it tasted like; or so the patrons told the police and Romero went to the dungeons of Brugge, rotting there.
Author/Poet Dennis Siluk
http://dennissiluk.tripod.com
Author:: Dennis Siluk
Keywords:: Short Story
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