The Redemption Factory E-Book

Sam Millar

• Herausgeber: Brandon
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 324

Beschreibung

In a wood at night, a young woman witnesses the murder of a whistleblower by a corrupt businessman, owner of an abattoir. Paul Goodman, a would-be snooker champion who works at the abattoir, has never known his father and believes that he deserted him when young. But he is befriended by the one man who holds the key to the mystery of his disappearance, the man responsible for his death.

Leseprobe

THE REDEMPTION FACTORY

SAM MILLAR

I dedicate The Redemption Factory to Brian, Liz and the “boys”, Jamsey, Ruari and Pearce. A great family, and even greater friends

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE MEAT IN ALL ITS BLOODY GLORY

CHAPTER TWO DREAMSOF DARKNESSAND DELICIOUS DEATH

CHAPTER THREE LUCKY

CHAPTER FOUR A TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE

CHAPTER FIVE FAMILY IN THE BLOOD

CHAPTER SIX STRANGE ENCOUNTERS, SOON TO BE FAMILIAR

CHAPTER SEVEN BOXED IN BOXING CLEVER

CHAPTER EIGHT A DARKNESS OF MINDS SEARCHING FOR LIGHT

CHAPTER NINE GOING TO MEET THE MAN

CHAPTER TEN THE HUNTER IN THE FOREST

CHAPTER ELEVEN WHISPERS NEVER FADE

CHAPTER TWELVE A SECRET SHOULD REMAIN JUST THAT

CHAPTER THIRTEEN DANCE WITH ME, ONE LAST TIME

CHAPTER FOURTEEN TWISTED SISTER? PUSSY CAT?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY, DON’T IT?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN TIDYING UP ALL LOOSE ENDS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN QUIXOTEAND SANCHO

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A STRANGE MIX OF PEOPLE

CHAPTER NINETEEN A LITTLE BIT OF READING GOES A LONG WAY

CHAPTER TWENTY A MEETING OF BATTERED SOULS

EPILOGUE

About the Author

Copyright

PROLOGUE

“From the one crime, recognise them all as culprits.”

Virgil, Aeneid bk. 2, 1. 65

“When a man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”

George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

THE OLD COTTAGE resembled a great boat that had barely cheated the storm. An outsider would laugh at its status, especially if told it were now a prison. But this was as much a prison of the mind as of the body: a psychological conundrum that told the sole prisoner lingering there that if he attempted to escape it would prove his guilt – if, that is, his former comrades hadn’t already determined it.

The tide had left the shore and the smell drifting into the cottage was strong, like bleach mingling with burnt salt. It entered through the torn structure of the cottage, making its presence felt uninvitingly. There were other smells inside the confines of the cottage; of dried sweat, excrement and urine challenging the uninvited smell, competing for second place. Only one odour reigned supreme, gaining in strength as time elapsed: the copper odour of fear …

The prisoner was naked, covered only in shadows, dirt and angry purple welts. His wrists were purple stigmata caused by the ‘strappado’ technique – a torture favoured by South American dictators in which a prisoner is left suspended from an overhanging with handcuffs until they slice deeply into the wrists.

The floorboards where he rested, rose and dipped in an irregular wave, de-crucified by time and wear. A decapitated statue lay languishing in a corner, mottled with age and dung. Webs of silky dust covered a village of cigarette butts and lips of blue-moulded bread crusts.

Cold bit at him, right down to his marrow, making him shake, making him wonder if this was what they were trying to do, freeze him to death?

Abruptly, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of feet on shells. The sound had a thickness to it, muffled, and he knew it was his captors with their wet, sand-covered boots.

The door squeaked open and a sliver of light bleached his eyes, stinging them wet. He could feel the dampness of his bones being touched by the light, a little tongue licking at his skin.

“Eat,” said a gruff voice and he felt a plate touch his exposed feet.

The meagre meals had come intermittently, disorientating, consisting of the same grey and brown greasy matter, making it impossible to distinguish between breakfast and supper. This was deliberate: no concept of time turned hours to days, days to weeks …

Only the ugly stubble on his face acted as a calendar, keeping him semi-sane.

Ask them, said the voice in his head. Ask them.

He despised the tormenting voice. He simply wanted to be left alone. Had he not been tortured enough?

Ask them …

“Can you tell me what’s happening? What the decision is?” He didn’t recognise the raw croak, the Judas sound that revealed his desperation.

The captors, their faces concealed behind masks, ignored the questions, allowing the silence to become heavier, more poignant.

Silence. Of course, thought the prisoner, and he almost smiled. He knew, from experience, that a perfect measure of silence had the potent power to be as ruthless and as terrifying as the actuality. It instilled fear, but so subtle you hardly realised it, until it was too late, touching you right on the shoulder.

One of the captors housed a shotgun on the crank of his elbow, cradling it affectionately like a sleeping child. The prisoner remembered the first time he saw the ugly weapon speckled with tiny freckles of rust that teased out the metal into an uneven surface. Wire wool attached itself to the gaping entrance of the barrel and it reassured him, the gun’s condition. Neglect meant disuse. It was there to scare, subdue. Nothing else.

Only when he realised that it was neither rust nor wire, but blood and hair did the full horror of his situation sink in.

“You should be resting,” said one of the captors, finally breaking the silence.

The balance of words sounded innocuous, almost caring. But the prisoner knew they were slippery and evil, like a snail captured in the sun.

The door closed, chasing out the light. He listened to the footsteps fading, hoping never to hear them again, knowing he would. Soon …

The morning moved on, though in the prisoner’s head he found it impossible to distinguish.

He could hear the dense sound of gulls and the muffled sound of a car, thin in the background. It was raining outside and he listened intently to the fierceness of the rain and tried to picture its needles of porcupine quills battering the sandy ground.

It was music, an oratorical salvation sent to save him, lift his spirits and it made him wonder if, perhaps, God did exist, after all.

But the rain and music faded just as the boots treaded their way towards the door, their silent noise lurching his stomach.

The fear that had slipped a few hours ago, returned, thicker, resting on his chest, affecting his breathing. There was a taste in his mouth, a distinct taste of watered metal, like a dentist drill. Only when he spat it out did he realise he was bleeding.

Good old reliable ulcer, he thought with bitterness. I was wondering when you would show your ugly head …

The aroma of bacon and eggs ghosted its way into the room. It was the most beautiful smell he had ever smelt and his belly growled with anticipation. But quickly the voices came back to torment. A good meal? You know what that means …

A captor placed the food on the floor, before backing away, into the dark. The other one – the one normally carrying the ugly shotgun – remained, watching. The shotgun was gone, replaced by a revolver.

“Why are you doing this to me? What have I done?” asked the prisoner.

Both captors remained silent, unmoving in the fading light, like foxes hiding in the dark, shrewd and calculating.

“At least allow me to look you in the eye, see your faces.” Anger was building in the naked man, an emotional release. It felt good to be human again, to hear his real voice, not some cardboard echo of it. If they wanted him to grovel, cry, they would be disappointed. Bitterly so. “Are you so ashamed of what you’re about to do that you can’t look me in the eyes?”

For the first time that evening, one of the captors spoke, his voice slightly muffled.

“You’re the one who should be ashamed. Not us. You betrayed us, our ideals – everything we fought and died for, by judiciously passing information to the enemy.

I hope it was worth it, all the money?”

“That’s a lie! I never betrayed anyone in my life. I swear on my family’s –”

“Save your swearing. It’ll do you no good – not with us. We’ve listened to your taped confession and the evidence against you. It was compelling. You set-up three of our men to be ambushed and murdered. They weren’t permitted to swear on family lives. Why should you? Now, suddenly faced with justice, you recant?”

“Look at me! Look at my body, humiliated, covered in cigarette burns, my wrists torn and shattered. Even if I said I betrayed anyone, I was tortured into it. Those weren’t my words on the tape. They were the screams of a man being tortured, a wounded animal screaming for mercy. Admit it, wouldn’t you have said the same lies if you were tortured? Sleep deprivation for days on end? And don’t you find it a little perverse that we utilise the same torture methods we quickly condemn our enemies for? Such fucking hypocrites!”

“Eat your meal,” said the captor, ignoring the questions.

“You eat it,” taunted the prisoner. “Go on, prove you believe what they said about me. Eat with a good conscience. Let me see you swallow it, just like you’re swallowing the lies.”

The captor walked to the back of the room and looked out the window. He seemed to be studying the incoming waves, their slow movement of formless curls.

“Go on,” goaded the prisoner, encouraged by his captor’s silence. “Eat, drink and be merry with murder. Hopefully, the taste will always remind you of me …”

One of the captors glanced at his watch. “You’ve less than 15 minutes. You should be making peace with God.”

“God? Ha! Fuck all the gods – and fuck you, too! Remove your mask, you spineless bastards. Petrified I might come back and haunt you if I see your cowardly faces? Ha! That’s it, isn’t it, you pieces of shit?”

The captors walked towards the prisoner, slowly removing his mask, allowing the feeble light to expose his features.

“Take a good long look. Satisfy yourself, because this is the last face you will ever see again on this earth …”

It had been almost a week since the captor uttered those prophetic words, but as he sat and listened to the tape again, his belief in the man’s guilt was no longer resolute. Truth be told, his belief in a few things had come under scrutiny lately, creating a residual scepticism totally alien before now. He was beginning to believe things he knew weren’t healthy to believe.

He had listened to numerous taped confessions before, of other traitors and informants begging for mercy, asking for forgiveness for their dirty deeds; but there was something in this dead man’s voice, echoing eerily back from the tape’s grave, that began to gnaw annoyingly in his ear.

No. A million times no. I did not – arghhhhhhhhhhhhh … bastards!

Silence. A few seconds of silence. The captor knew that those few seconds could be days in real time; time to soften the prisoner up, get him to say what they wanted to hear: ventriloquism in the extreme …

He clicked the tape off, pondering his next – if any – move. It was risky, having a copy of the original tape. Doctored copies had been make specifically for the ears of certain journalist and media outlets. They would hear the man confessing his sins, and how professional his interrogators had been. The interrogators’ voices would be calm, human and almost sympathetic. The prisoner’s voice would sound shaky, hesitant; a man avoiding the truth with a million lies in his head, his words stumbling like blocks of wood from his lying mouth.

Of course, very few ever got to hear the official tape, the one with the screams and denials. This would be kept for future interrogators, learning new methods, deciding what worked, what didn’t.

No. The sanitised version was for public consumption; the darker, more telling tape would be archived for the selected few, for the hierarchy.

It should have been destroyed, by now. He had been foolish in keeping it – if only for a few days; if only to ease his conscience …

From a crumbled cigarette box, he produced a cig and placed it in his mouth. The unlit tobacco tasted tired, putrid as the flame engulfed it. Everything seemed to have the same decaying taste, of late. He studied the lighter’s flame, then reached for the tape, bringing the two closer. He watched as the quivering flame from the lighter transformed into a tongue. He waited for it to speak …

CHAPTER ONE

MEAT IN ALL ITS BLOODY GLORY

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

Leonardo da Vinci

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

Pythagoras

PAUL GOODMANFELT like a condemned man while walking across the sodden grass leading towards the abattoir. A rosary of knots clung to his stomach, tightening at each step he took. Rain and cold nipped wickedly against his skin, stinging it. An involuntary shiver touched his spine and bowels, caused not by the weather, but by the thought that within a matter of minutes, he would be inside the building; inside the huge belly of the beast.

The abattoir was located near Flaxman’s Row, the so-called industrial area beside an abandoned train station where dilapidated carriages sat glued together with rust and age. The dark, brooding weather matched his mood as he prepared himself for whatever lurked before him …

Outside the abattoir’s gate, he gazed over the building. It was a mammoth, nondescript grey cement structure, a place covered in soot – darkened stones begging to be demolished.

Dove-grey smoke drifted upward from a massive chimney stifling the air and veiling the sky, like a ghost, formless yet controlled, as if the building was a living being, breathing steam.

There was something deceptively quiet and intimidating about the place, something eerily unsettling because it carried no direction of either sound or presence, like a delightful calmness, haunting, yet chillingly causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

Paul steeled himself, unconvincingly, as he walked, trying to settle his stomach with deep breaths, before making his way cautiously to the enormous main gate with its mural of strange, biblical-looking characters.

Each character seemed possessed with exaggerated muscular form of impossibly precise features mixing with harmony and attributes.

“Very nice,” whispered Paul mockingly. An inscription beneath the mural read House Of Redemption. “Creepy. What a place …”

Seconds later, he entered a makeshift office housed by a flea-market table and two battered chairs. The walls, once an enthusiastic blue, were now tired and defeated with only a few drab flakes of paint still visible. Thick films of dust settled on shelves of unread books, most of which appeared to be about butchering.

The place reeked of confinement mingling with a suffocating odour of dead carpet, neglected body odour and the urine stench of flowers left in water too long – a smell normally associated with churches. It made him wonder how any human being could voluntary cope with such stench. More importantly, how the hell would he manage, if he got the job? He didn’t want the job; he needed it.

An unruly pool of shadows lounged in the room as light splintered in from a cracked window resting on the face of an unhealthy looking young woman – who was about the same age as Paul – occupying one of the chairs, varnishing her fingernails. So skinny, she resembled a stick insect. Her head was enlarged, disproportionately, and drooped burdensomely on her skinny frame, like an over-sized daffodil. Tiny bald spots speckled through her thin, greasy hair and Paul noticed a scant line of discoloration where hair had recently been removed.

Her skin was stony-white and moist with perspiration, like the sheen of patent leather. There was something terribly weird about the texture of the skin, though not by the multitude of tiny pinhole-dots mapping her face – presumably destroyed by acne – but by the reflective gleam of light sporadically released from it, reflecting like miniature rhinestones nesting there. For a brief, terrible second, it made Paul think of his mother’s skin, how it always glistened in the morning sunlight as the alcohol rose to the surface, seeping through her pores …

“What d’ya want?” asked the young woman who, not bothering to glance in Paul’s direction, continued on her fingernails, seemingly fascinated by them. A faint odour, like a residue of hospital, of medicines and disinfectant and illness, oozed from an opening in her shirt. Each time she moved, the odour became sharper. It was an odd smell, and made him uncomfortable, gripping him with the feelings of his first day at school, the loneliness which had engulfed him in that imposing place, the shame and humiliation upon realizing he had wet his pants in his anxiety. A simple shame; but a shame that would remain forever.

Paul found the young woman loathsome, but cleared his throat, as if dislodging phlegm would ease the tension with one good cough. “I’ve come for a job. I was told there was one up for grabs.”

“Yea? Who told you that?” She had yet to look at Paul.

“Stevie Foster. Told me on Thursday that there was a –”

“That weasel never told the truth in his life,” she interrupted, still not looking in his direction. Her shrill voice was coiled with resentment and smothered anger. “Told me he had a two-pound dick.”

Paul didn’t know if he should laugh or continue with the conversation. His nerves got the better of him. “No one has a dick that heavy. It would be massive.” He began to laugh nervously.

“Weight? Who said anything about weight? Oh, he has a two-pound dick. His problem is that it’s the size of a two-pound coin,” she replied, not missing a beat. “Stevie’s problem is that he can’t keep a secret or lie convincingly.”

Paul grinned.

“What’s your name?” she asked, boringly, blowing on the dampness of her fingernails.

“Paul Goodman.”

For the first time, the young woman looked up. Her eyes – focused and intent – were the greenest he had ever seen – as green as the skin of an iguana. They looked hungry, ready to eat. But something beyond hunger hid in there. Something cunning and malevolent. “Are you?” she asked, smiling a smile that was neither pleasant nor natural, but smug and slightly sinful.

Immediately, Paul thought of a snake, its bad skin flaking on the table. He wondered how such a massive head simply did not break away from the neck. She looked the type of woman who asked for trouble out of pure boredom.

“Am I what?” asked Paul.

“A good man.” She laughed, but a laugh meant to hurt. “I prefer my men bad. Very bad …” Pushing herself away from the table’s lip, the young woman walked towards a door directly behind Paul, knocking once before entering. A moment later, she reappeared. “You can go in … good man. Shank will see you. But don’t say a word until he speaks to you. Understand? He doesn’t like to be disturbed while he’s thinking.” She smirked, and once again Paul thought of a snake.

Directly outside the door, a burly figure stood, unmoving. He was dressed entirely in black. From ear to ear, a horseshoe of bristles shadowed what little skin his face revealed. His demeanour was that of confident bouncer waiting for some fool to step out of line and there was little doubt in Paul’s mind that this was the legend known as Taps.

He had earned the nickname Taps as a young enforcer for the local gangsters in the neighbourhood. Any time someone couldn’t understand ‘pay up’, Taps was sent to teach them elocution lessons, usually with a baseball bat, but sometimes with only his bare hands, the size of dogs’ heads. The victim would be beaten to an inch of his life, a bloody pulp of bones and blood. Released from hospital, the victim, if fortunate, would emerge balanced on crutches, tap tap tapping his way home.

Taps never once killed anyone – an envious achievement considering the numerous bodies he transformed. Some said he was lucky never to have killed, but they were wrong. Luck had nothing to do with it. He was a professional, a brilliant surgeon-in-reverse who knew precisely when to stop.

Paul smiled feebly and nodded. Taps ignored him.

Shank’s office was badly lit and it took a moment for Paul’s eyes to focus, moving on the blurred features.

On a table sat a bust of a severed pig’s head, its languid tongue resting between yellow and bloody teeth. A tiny plaque beside the bust read: It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend: William Blake (1757–1827).

Skeletal statues lined the room. One particular figure was so repulsive Paul could not look at it directly, momentarily averting his eyes from it.

A female skeleton held a tiny skeletal frame of a baby in its hand. It was a shrine to the Virgin and her son, and in a perverse way, the scene evoked love stripped, literarily, to the bone. The bones had been bleached so thoroughly their lines held dark, almost carbon shadows.

Paul found the scene repulsive, almost sacrilege despite his irreligious views.

Repulsive, yes, but thoroughly compulsive as he glanced at it again, allowing his eyes to rest upon it.

The figure of Shank sat behind a desk. He appeared massive. Even while being seated, his bulk dwarfed the room. His head housed not a stitch of hair and immediately Paul thought of the lollipop-sucking cop from an old TV show. Shank’s skin had the pinkish tone of a healing wound. A trellis of wrinkles covered it in thick layers guarding eyes as dark as the undersides of decayed leaves. He has the look of a total bastard, thought Paul.

A cigar smouldered in an ashtray, long forgotten by its owner.

Shank appeared engrossed in a jigsaw puzzle on the table. It looked like an unfinished picture of an angel.

Paul found it strange for such a large man to be doing jigsaw puzzles – and puzzles of angels, into the bargain. The puzzle held the same withered appearance as the large painting on the outside of the abattoir and similar in design to the paintings on the wall.

“Blake,” replied Shank, as if reading Paul’s mind. “All the pictures in here and throughout the building are from the brilliant mind of William Blake. The greatness of any painting is measured by its ability to keep surprising us, revealing something new every time we go back to look at it. If you look closely enough, you can see a woman’s face on the chest of the angel, over in the corner. If you look hard enough, you can see all sorts of things …”

Shank’s voice was deep, confident with power.

Not knowing what to say, Paul said nothing while he stared at the angel’s chest, searching for a woman’s face.

He failed to find it.

“You’ve come for a job in my abattoir?” said Shank, glancing up from his task.

His eyes are impossibly black, like milk-less coffee, thought Paul. They have no pupils.

“Yes. I was hoping –”

“Hoping? Ha! I would leave that at the door, Mister Goodman. Only reality exists here, not tidy little words like hope. Think you can handle working in a place like this? Think that just any person can work in this place? Think you can work in the House of Redemption?” asked Shank, holding a piece of the jigsaw puzzle between finger and thumb, seemingly debating its niche. “Think you can work in a place without hope, and that you’ve got the stomach for it, Mister Goodman?”

Stomach wasn’t part of the equation – a paycheck was. “I don’t have any problems with my stomach,” replied Paul, his words full of false confidence. He hardly recognised his own voice. It sounded like tin, shaky, cowardly.

Shank gently placed the jigsaw piece into place and nodded to himself. “This place is like a jigsaw puzzle, Mister Goodman. One piece out of place and nothing is achieved. We are all soldiers in the same trench, all fighting the same battle.”

There was arrogance in Shank’s voice that seemed strangely justified as he reached for a cloth to wipe his hands. “Well, tell you what, Mister Goodman. I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll show you about the place, and if you don’t vomit or faint …” Shank smiled a tight smile, forced and devious and immediately Paul thought of the girl with bad skin and large head, the girl who resembled a snake. “Okay?”

Paul nodded.

“Let’s go,” commanded Shank, laughing. “Let us prepare for the shadows of the dead.”

Paul moved for the door, but not before Shank told him to wait, he had something for him.

“Here. Put this on. Don’t want your head getting hurt, do we?” Shank handed Paul a yellow hardhat. “All would-be recruits wear yellow until they have proven their worth. Green is for the apprentices; red for the qualified butchers. Black, like this one I’m wearing, is for the boss. There only is one black hat in here. Understand, Mister Goodman?”

Paul nodded. He wished he were some place other than here. What he would give to be in the Tin Hut, playing snooker, listening to his best friend, Lucky, talking a load of shit.

“Oh,” continued Shank, stopping at the door. “You just could be blessed to spot one or two gold hats. Those are … warriors.” He smiled a scary smile. “They are people who were born to be butchers of creatures … blood and death is second nature to them. They are dedicated to their craft. So, a little piece of advice: if you do happen to see a gold hat – pretend you didn’t. Avoid their attention without causing unpleasantness. That’s one of the important survival skills in here. They don’t like people staring at them. No, not one bit …” Shank laughed.

A shiver touched Paul despite the freezing temperature already mounting in the room and throughout the building. He wished Shank would stop lecturing. It sounded degrading, full of malice.

Resigned, Paul placed the hardhat on his head, knowing it was two sizes too big, and walked out the door and up the stairs, directly behind Shank. He knew he looked stupid in the yellow, oversized hardhat, but realised this was all part of the game played by Shank.

Two enormous steel doors were pushed aside by Shank who, like a ringmaster, indicated for Paul to enter. “Feast your eyes on the beauty of death and you will know that this place has no equal.”

Hesitating, Paul stopped, as if to take a breath of air.

Shank grinned before pushing Paul ahead. “Doubt is the gate through which slips the most deadly of enemies, Mister Goodman. Hesitate, and you die. Surely, we don’t want that on your first day, do we?”

Reluctantly, Paul entered, and immediately felt as if an invisible hand had slammed against his stomach. The place was massive and held no boundaries. It was breathtakingly horrible, like the Sistine Chapel blooded by barbarians, seething with rage in a hideous frenzy of activity. Its dank coldness reeked with tension and void of all things human. The massive floor was littered with sawdust chips speckled red with imperfections while above him thousands of withered electric wires hung dangerously like spindly skeleton bones on a giant spider. There was a sense of danger about the place; a sense that someone was going to be killed before the day was complete.

Ruddy violins of sheep carcasses captured on unforgiving ‘S’ hooks dangled grotesquely from above, mingling with dead, cello-shaped cows, like a bizarre scene from Hieronymus Bosch marrying the surrealism of Salvador Dali.

More of the same type of biblical paintings, such as those in Shank’s office, lined the walls. There seemed to be hundreds if not thousands of them, and like those intense displays, the eyes in the surrounding pictures seemed to stare at him – at everyone – like sentinels on duty, illuminated by garish fluorescent lights.

Workers were saturated in blood and moving in perfect harmony, as if part of some farcical play performed for an invisible audience. They all seemed to be talking at once.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please!” screamed Shank, his voice rising above the skull-rattling noise of machinery.

But if the workers heard his voice, they showed nothing, continuing with their hacking and sawing of meat, some of which was dead, some of which was clearly not.

“A contestant has entered our domain, our magical kingdom of life and death. He believes he is our equal. What say you?”

The workers were as bloody as the mangled wreckages of meat they hacked at, and distinguishable only by the tiny whiteness of their eyes, teeth and fingernails. They continued working their endless preparation of death as if they were immune to the question uttering from Shank’s mouth.

Paul’s nostrils began to flood with a stomach-churning smell. The same stinking stench from outside the building came at him with force, but more powerful in its taste of rotten flesh, and of fear and hate oozing from the ruins of carcasses and their tormentors.

One group of workers, their faces obscured by the steam rising from giant mugs of tea cradled in their massive hands, sat comfortably in a corner, seemingly immune to the chaos all about them, talking, reading newspapers roughly handled by reddened hands. Other workers devoured meals of fried eggs and freshly slaughtered meat, wiping their stained mouths with bloody, ragged handkerchiefs and soiled aprons.

Paul felt his stomach move at the thought of eating a creature he had seen alive minutes ago. How could their stomachs hold down the food? He felt his head go light and wondering if he was going to vomit, if his resolve would evaporate?

Swiftly, he remembered Shank’s warning about fainting and vomiting and he willed himself to win, not to succumb. He needed this job, badly. He would not leave this terrible place without it.

“Are you feeling okay?” asked Shank, grinning. “You look pale. Perhaps we can arrange a visit for some other time? It’s nothing to be ashamed about, Mister Goodman. Many are called, but few are chosen …”

Paul barely collected himself sufficiently to frame a thought. “Thank you for your concern, Mister Shank,” he replied. “But I’m fine. More than fine …”

“Good!” replied Shank, slapping Paul’s back. “That’s what we want to hear. Isn’t it, ladies and gentlemen?”

No one heard. If they did, they did not answer.

Shank walked ahead, talking loudly, his voice filled with pride. “My abattoir is the biggest single killing unit in the country. The major activities involved in the operation of the abattoir are slaughter and chilling of carcass product, boning and packaging, as well the drying of skins for leather. Nothing goes to waste here, Mister Goodman. Nothing.”

Moving swiftly, Shank walked towards a cluster of open doors, followed closely by Paul.

“Over there, to your left, are the by-product rooms housing dripping, fertiliser, oil, sinews, hoofs, hair, glue, bones and horns.” A sound kept interrupting the flow of Shank’s words, a sound so soft it was barely perceptible, of muffled voices emanating somewhere from inside. Only the terror in the sound sharpened its appeal to be heard. The voices weren’t loud, but their clarity grew.

Paul traced the sound from some place near the upper entrance, an independent floor governed by a cluster of red-hats who stood menacingly about like a hierarchy of Spanish Inquisition cardinals about to pronounce death on a heretic. There was an absence of movement, a core of quiet and stillness complete, as if they were waiting on a photographer. He had the edgy feeling that all the activity must mean something, even if he couldn’t make any sense of it.

As if in trance, Paul followed the sound, followed its Pied Piper magnetic power even though he didn’t want to and for a brief moment he thought he saw the flash of a gold hat and felt his resolve being undermined a little by Shank’s words not to look at the gold hats, as if they were Medusa, capable of turning flesh to stone.

Turning his head slightly, Paul watched as bewildered creatures entered one end of the large room, only to emerge naked, humiliated and dismembered at the other atop a large conveyer-belt slithering its way ominously in his direction. The workers moved quickly on the creatures, in a frenzy of activity, infected by the fervour, their hands gesticulating like traffic cops on too much caffeine.

The gold hat was screaming instruction at the workers. “Keep it tight, Raymond, you stupid fuck! The cows are trying to leap over the barrier. Stun the bastards, will you!”

Galvanized by the smell of blood, some of the cows, in a futile attempt to escape, were attempting to leap the barrier. Raymond, a tall skinny young man looked confused by the rush of cows heading dangerously in his direction.

“Careless, Geordie!” shouted Shank angrily at the gold hat. “Bloody careless. They’ve squeezed out of the stunning tongs and head bars. You’re in charge, but you’re losing control of the situation. The animals have taken over the farm. Fix it!”

Without hesitation, Geordie grabbed the stun gun from Raymond’s hand, pushing him backwards towards the crushing beasts, regardless of his safety. There was a unity of purpose in Geordie’s movements.

Seconds later, the spa spa spa sound of the stun gun began, isolating the brain of each creature as the tiny metal pellets hit home at the back of the skull, devastating all feelings in the body.

As each beast buckled to the ground, it was quickly set upon by the angry butchers, raging that the creatures had humiliated them in front of Shank. Most of the cows had their throats quickly slit, but a few not so fortunate suffered a slow and agonising death of stabs wounds to the body. A bloody highway of intricate veins and vestigial nerves were strewn everywhere, some ticking with shock.

“Look at them move, Mister Goodman. It’s almost like poetry in motion,” said Shank, admiringly. “You know, sometimes I think they see the faces of their wives in those cows …”

Paul said nothing. He was numb. He had never witnessed anything on this scale before, never imagined this was how his Saturday fry originated. He felt shame, disgust and hatred for the grinning faces. He had no other option than to look away.

“It’s a great form of anger-management, is slaughtering,” continued Shank. “I could make a fortune selling this therapy – and it would work. Not like the nonsense of sitting on a couch and telling some shrink your problems. How can sitting on a couch and making a fool of yourself be beneficial? It’s all baloney. Voodoo magic and hogwash. No, this is the real thing. None of my butchers go home with anger in their hearts. It’s all released here, in the Bloody Garden of Eden. Isn’t that right, Geordie?”

Geordie turned to face Shank.

“Who’s this idiot? Another tourist come to visit Grisly World?” asked Geordie, ignoring Shank’s question. “And why is he staring at me? Think I’m a freak, Idiot? Never see someone wearing scaffolding?”

To Paul’s horror and disbelief, Geordie was a young woman. Steel leg-braces looped the outside of her legs, and as she walked menacingly towards him like darkness on the move, her limps becoming more pronounced in their vertical stiffness. Her eyes were mirrored bullets, lethal in their intensity and savagely focused, bleaching the depth of his bones. Shadows jiggled on the wall behind her, seemingly human, following her every move. She seemed to have deliberately set her face into an expression that no worker could misinterpret: don’t fuck with me, it screamed. Now it said to Paul: fuck off; your kind isn’t welcome here …

“Easy, Geordie,” said Shank, grinning at the look on Paul’s face. “Calm your arse down. I don’t want you killing a would-be recruit on his first day. This is Mister Paul Goodman. He’s passed all the tests. Almost. Hasn’t fainted once. Hasn’t even shit his pants. He’s defeated the lot of you.” Shank laughed. It was full of scorn and disdain for Geordie, for the workers.

From a gold container, Shank removed a cigar, sniffed its leaves then lit it. The tobacco crackled, and for a second, his face became invisible, lost in the mist of smoke.

“Has he, indeed? Not shit his pants? Well? What are we waiting for?” said Geordie, her eyes never leaving Paul’s. “He’s either with us or against us. Time for Paul the Baptist to find out if he’s a heathen or a butcher. Take him away!”

They came at him from every direction, like ants, their hands grabbing and pulling him to the ground. Within seconds his clothes were ripped from him and he was carried trophy-high, naked. He felt he was losing his mind, as if this was one of those nightmares you awake from only to find yourself paralysed with fear at what your mind has done to you, recognising it as valid and real, but that perhaps it never really existed to begin with.

“What? What are you doing?”

His mind wasn’t working right, as if it were wrapped in putty. Everything was soft and filtered, even the noise around him. He felt like he wanted to throw up but didn’t have the energy. He became light-headed. The sensation was one of floating away. Somehow, it was important that he stay on the ground. He blinked his eyes to try and clear his thinking. There were white spots behind his lids. They turned black when he opened his eye. He watched them, dancing across the ceiling. What was it about spots? There was something important but he couldn’t remember. Maybe it would come back to him, he thought and closed his eye, once more. He screamed to be released, but the mob only screamed louder, laughing, encouraged by his fear and helplessness. Now he felt as humiliated and as naked as the beasts whose deaths he had witnessed a few minutes ago.