by L V Gaudet
The boy is frozen in fear.
Jason releases him with a rough shove, making the boy step back or fall on his ass.
“If you get caught living here it’s not just your ass that will get locked up, got it? You will be sent back to wherever you came from and so maybe will everyone else living here for harbouring a runaway kid. This isn’t a hotel. Every one of them has a record. They will all go to jail over you.” He motions towards the floor above.
Without another word, he turns away and mounts the stairs to go back to bed.
18Slaughterhouse
It doesn’t matter to Michael where he works or what he does. He did a lot of things to survive since he ran away as a kid. He did a lot of things that would shock most people, things a kid has to do to survive on the street.
He did a lot of things before he ran away too, things his father who is not his real father made him do, but those are memories he does not let himself think about.
For now, he has taken a job in a slaughterhouse under the identity of Ryan Crowley. If he was a different sort of person he would never be able to eat meat again after working in a slaughterhouse and witnessing firsthand what goes on there.
Michael is at work, his dark blue-grey coveralls covering him from the neck down, heavy steel-toed work boots protecting his feet, and a large black rubber apron covering most of his front. He wears heavy rubber work gloves. His protective hat that he is supposed to wear is tossed into a corner.
Large goggles with a single unbroken lens of tempered glass protect his eyes from splatter.
He is covered in the gore of the assembly line victims that passed through his hands over the past hours. The work is exhausting, both of body and spirit.
Michael wipes the spattered gore off the lens of his goggles with his sleeve as he presses the button and his victim is dragged away by the heavy chain it’s hooked on.
They each have their own workspace inside the large warehouse building, the killing pits. The walls and floors are gouged and stained with feces and blood.
Metal railings create pens that are packed so tight with cattle that the animals are pressed together and unable to move.
Often that is the only thing keeping the weakened beasts from collapsing and being trampled to death beneath the hooves of their pen mates.
Some still manage to slip beneath the hooves of the others where, desperate to stay on their feet, the other cows low mournfully as they are forced to step on their fallen pen mate, stumbling. The animal on the ground would kick and try to get up, but it would be useless and she dies beneath the sharp hooves stepping on her and the sheer mass of cows bearing down on her, broken and suffocated.
Between the pens is a network of paths for the movement of the animals to the killing pits, gates placed where they want them to stop to better control the beasts.
The building is forever filled with the loud moaning of desolate animals calling mournfully against their cruel treatment.
The animals themselves are so despondent and weakened with illness, neglect, and abuse by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse from the farms that mass produce them that they could not fight back even if the will had not already been beaten out of them before they arrive at the slaughterhouse yard.
The shear senseless violence and brutality of the slaughterhouse sickens Michael. Yes, even him, the man who committed the same sick violent brutality on so many women for not being her, Cassie.
The men he works with sicken him too.
One man, in particular, is especially bad. Trevor Mitchell. Not only is he the angriest, most hate-filled man Michael has ever met, he thrives on it.
All day, Michael watches Trevor in the next killing pit as he himself mechanically drags in and slaughters animal after animal, impaling the dead beasts on the hooks that are dragged by on heavy chains suspended from the ceiling, hoisting them up with the winch, and pressing the button that works the machinery that drags the carcasses on to the next step in the assembly line slaughter and brings a new hook for the next cow.
Cries and thrashing of tortured cows comes from the other pits at times.
Sometimes it takes too many shots to the head with the bolt gun to kill them, the men aiming carelessly, oblivious to the torment of their dying victim as the cow gives a few weak kicks in a final moment of mindless jerking spasms and confused pain.
Michael watches the dead cow in his pit drag away on the chain then turns and makes his way through the maze to the pens.
After hooking his cow to be dragged off, Trevor goes through the maze of metal fencing and gates and opens the gate to one of the pens with cattle packed in. Some just stand dumbly, other animals roll their eyes in their heads and try to shift away but have no place to go and are too defeated to really try.
Michael enters a pen and takes a cow by the head, leading her with the ease of a man who grew up working cattle and knows how to handle them. He has no use for force or abuse. She obediently moves where she is guided.
In the next pen, Trevor yells and swears at the cattle, grabbing a hook similar to an elephant hook, and using it to pull at one cow. She shudders at the painful barb of the hook, eyes rolling and lowing pleadingly as she tries to move away from the pain. Unfortunately, that movement brings her closer to him.
He hooks her again, yanking viciously on the hook, making her take another unwilling step away from the safety of the herd. There is no safety for any of them here, only pain and death.
She moves forward and stumbles.
Trevor switches from the hook to the cattle prod, jamming it hard into her ribs and rump, holding it there with electricity biting the animal’s flesh with burning pain long after it is considered allowable by their employer to inflict this torture on the beasts.
The cow bawls and the smell of burning hair and flesh makes the other frightened cows tremble. The whole place terrorizes them, filled with the stench of blood, death, and fear.
He swears and rages at the beast, beating her mercilessly with the cattle prod until the already broken animal moves.
She does not know what to do or where to go. She only wants to please the humans so they stop hurting her.
Trevor drops the prod and grabs her tail with both hands, pulling on it painfully with all he has; all while yelling and swearing all his hatred at the world out at this helpless beast.
When she clears the gate, he closes it, keeping the rest of the slaughterhouse victims in the pen.
He moves the cow along the fenced path to his killing pit, punching, kicking, electrocuting, and beating her as they go even though she is moving obediently. At one point he winds up and gives the cow a head-numbing roundhouse kick, laughing callously as he staggers and almost falls on landing. He calls out to the others proudly, as if to display his prowess.
“Did you see that one?” He looks around to make sure they were watching. They look disinterestedly. A few laugh dully. It was nothing special. It’s something they all do for kicks.
Michael’s eyes narrow as he watches, keeping back and slowly leading his cow on.
Trevor beats and torments the cow all the way to his killing pit.
For some reason none but Trevor himself could know, this particular forlorn animal is drawing out of him a particular viciousness.
With his victim in place, Trevor thrills in beating and torturing the helpless animal.
The cow only stares back, suffering the abuse, her stomach heaving with the deep lowing calls of distress, not attempting to either escape or defend herself in any way.
Michael brings his cow into his pit and gets her in position.
Trevor finally tires himself out beating the cow. He drags the meat hook down and impales her on it, hoisting her up with the chain and winch without the consideration of slaughtering her first.
The tortured animal cries out long and low and can then only twitch and low mournfully.
The killing floor men are to move them into place, shoot three or four bolts into their bra
ins through their thick skulls, and put them on the hooks to be dragged to the next room where they are disembowelled and bled in the next step of the butchering process. If the animals are lucky, the bolts do their job and they are dead before being impaled on the hooks.
Fast movement of cattle is expected and they aren’t always dead by the time they are sliced open in the next room to let their intestines fall wetly to the concrete floor.
Watching the torture with a sick feeling, Michael envisions at that moment Trevor being the one dragged in, beaten and tossed around, and then impaled alive and aware on a meat hook to be butchered while still alive.
He turns away from his own animal, bolt gun in hand, and walks over to Trevor’s killing pit.
Michael walks up to the suffering animal and her torturer stops and looks at him in surprise. The cow turns her head to stare at him with pain-filled broken soft brown eyes.
He sees the intelligence there even through the haze of pain and shock and sickness.
Placing the bolt gun to the cow’s head he shoots off four bolts in quick succession, putting her out of her suffering.
Trevor turns to him angrily, raising his fist and taking an aggressive step towards Michael.
Michael raises and points the bolt gun at Trevor’s forehead, only inches away, mimicking the pullback of his arm from the air-powered kickback of the gun and making the poof sound of it firing a single shot. He turns away without a word and returns to slaughtering animals in his own killing pit.
Trevor stares after Michael, his face drained of color and trembling. The threat is clear. Finally, he moves woodenly, pressing the button and having the dead cow dragged away.
He does not yell or swear at or hit another animal for the rest of his shift, struggling to move the animals he has no idea how to handle. He watches Michael warily each time he moves a cow to his killing pit, nervously slaughtering them with what might almost resemble an attempt at mercy.
Michael ignores him as he slaughters cow after cow, mechanically moving and killing them with assembly line precision.
The other slaughterhouse killers keep their distance, their own vile abuse of the animals they slaughter muted for the rest of the shift, uncomfortable with the man who threatened one of their own.
When the shift finally ends and the last carcasses are dragged off, the slaughterhouse men hose down their areas; water, piss, shit, blood, and gore spraying to the gutters where they run in rivers of death draining out to a sewer.
They move to the change room where they strip off their heavy rubber aprons and gloves, tossing them into large bins. They strip off their bloodied coveralls, tossing them in too. The bins will be dragged out later, the aprons hung and hosed off and left to dry, the coveralls and gloves laundered in a futile attempt to wash the death off them.
The men shower the gore splatters that inevitably find its way to their hair, face, and neck, and the stink of sweat and bovine fear off before dressing in their own clothes. The clothes they wore on the floor under their coveralls are bagged to take home to wash. They bring a fresh change for the end of the day, their clothes soiled with blood despite the coveralls and aprons. They change their boots, leaving their blood-soiled work boots in their lockers for their next shift and putting on their regular shoes.
In his exhaustion and sickness at the other men’s callous viciousness, Michael forgets to grab his clean clothes before showering.
Getting out of the shower, he looks down at the blood soaked clothes with a heavy sigh and pulls them on. Now that he is showered and back in the soiled clothes, he doesn’t have the will to do what he knows he must.
Michael glances back at the showers as he walks away, gets his stuff from his locker, and leaves, following most of the others, who are moving faster than him.
More cattle are already being forced into the indoor pens for tomorrow’s shift, packing them in painfully tight. The animals look around unhappily, calling out, afraid of the smell of blood, fear, and death. They are desperately hungry and thirsty, but they will not be fed or watered today either. They are not thought of as living things, but as products void of the ability to feel physically or emotionally.
The slaughterhouse men are heading out, chatting and joking about the abuse inflicted on the cows that day, muted by the shock of Michael’s actions. Some make plans. They head for their vehicles.
Trevor Mitchell glares at Michael, filled with hatred for this new guy.
Michael ignores him, getting in his truck and driving away.
“Stupid,” Michael mutters at himself, angrily thumping the steering wheel. “Threatening the guy with a bolt gun? Just stupid! Bringing attention to yourself. You know about bringing attention to yourself. If he reports it, I could lose this job. Worse, it could be reported to the police.”
Slaughtering animals all day doesn’t bother Michael. But the nonstop unnecessary abuse the others inflict on the cows does.
When he arrives home, he parks on the street and just sits there for a long moment. Finally, he gets out and goes into the house.
Hearing the door, Kathy goes into the kitchen before Michael enters. That’s one of the things he insists on. When he comes home from the slaughterhouse, he doesn’t want her coming out to see him. She can go in the kitchen, the bedroom, or the back yard, but she is not to come out until he is in the shower. She stirs the pot cooking on the stove.
Michael goes straight for the shower. He doesn’t want Kathy to see the blood he imagines he comes home wearing every day. Even when he’s sure he got it all in the shower before leaving the slaughterhouse, even with the change of fresh clothes he had not bothered with today, he is always worried there is still more on him.
No matter how well you wash, you still have the taint of blood on your hands.
He has a separate laundry bag just for the clothes he wears to the slaughterhouse. He will wash them himself, without her. She can wash the rest of their laundry, but he does not want her to be upset by the blood and bits of brains that inevitably end up on his clothes.
Stripping off his clothes, he drops them on the bathroom floor. The bottoms of his pants legs are dry where they were tucked into his boots. From the knees to the boot tops are soaked and slap wetly on the floor where they hit. His shirt lands silently on top of the jeans, mottled with wet splotches, mostly around the collar. The red doesn’t show against the black fabric of the shirt, looking only wet.
He picks them up and shoves his bloodied clothes into the laundry bag, taking care to wipe up all traces of blood the clothes leave on the floor.
Turning on the shower and stepping in, Michael stands there letting the hot water rain down on him. He leans forward wearily, pressing his head against the wall in front of him. His hair leaves a bloodied mark on the tile, leaving bits of gore behind when he pulls his head back again. He raises his face to the shower head and lets the water pour over it.
Either he had not washed it all out of his hair today or he had transferred gore from his shirt while pulling it over his head. At this point Michael doesn’t know or care which.
He stands there for a long time before finally picking up the soap and beginning to scrub.
With the gore washed from him, Michael turns off the shower, steps out, and dries off. He wraps the towel around his hips and leaves the steam-filled bathroom behind.
The rest of the house feels chilled after the steamy bathroom and goose bumps raise instantly on his skin.
Kathy is waiting for him.
It’s a very small house, old, with a single bedroom, on the edge of a very small town plunked down in the midst of nothing but farm fields and other scattered small towns for at least a hundred miles. But it is better cared for than the places they have stayed before. Like the others, it’s a rental, paid in advance in cash. Unlike the others, the owner is an elderly woman, a widow, who could no longer live on her own. She moved into a seniors’ home with partial care, the rental income helping to pay the high cost of being in a facilit
y.
Michael sweeps Kathy into his arms and holds her tight.
“I’m home,” he murmurs and bends down to kiss her.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Kathy says.
Michael releases her and goes to the bedroom to get dressed.
I really like this little house, he thinks. Nice little town, quiet, a place we can spend a long time in without ever being found, I think. We can make a good life here, Kathy and me.
He smiles ruefully, silently chastising himself. Elaine Carver, he reminds himself. That’s how I have to think of her now. Elaine Carver and Ryan Crowley. Can’t slip up on the names.
He leaves the bedroom feeling content. They have a new home, new names and a new start. Life is good.
19A Visit and a Reason to Move
Jim’s ancient brown Oldsmobile comes to a stop against the curb in front of the two-story rooming house. He looks up at the dilapidated house.
It seems somehow less tired looking than the last time he saw it. Someone made an attempt to cut the grass and the sun no longer highlights the dirt-clouded nature of the windows.
It takes him a moment to realize the glass is actually clean, the sun glinting off the crack streaking across one of the front upstairs windows.
Jim pushes the driver’s door open on squealing hinges and shifts himself to get out. The car leans with his weight as he shifts it to the apex of climbing out. Swinging his legs out and using the door to pull his large bulk up, Jim climbs out of the car. The car rocks from the motion, settling gratefully back, now sitting level without him weighing down one side.
Jim is not fat. According to his doctor, he is obese and it is going to kill him very soon. If the unhealthy affects the excess weight have on his body doesn’t kill him, then his unhealthy diet will.
Suffering from chronic insomnia, he roams the streets at all hours of the night in his ancient car. He haunts hole-in-the wall after-hours bars and clubs where he has the unpleasant habit of eating things best left displayed in their dust-caked jars like oddities in a curiosity museum. Then he finds himself hunting for all-night pharmacies in search of relief from the heartburn eating him away from the inside.