1
JOHN
It’sthe middle of the night when John gets the call. Resigned to answer, he rubs the grit from his eyes, already dreading the long night ahead of him.
“It’s the Butcher,” he says gruffly. He doesn’t use his real name because a call at this hour can only mean one thing.
“Special delivery,” says the voice on the other end, velvety and low, one of Matthieu’s son’s, he thinks, though John cannot say for certain which one. They all sound like their father, slick and seductive, oozing a quaint Southern charm to mask the cruelty underneath. Most “deliveries” are prearranged, so that John can prepare for their arrival. A call like this means someone—most likely the man on the line—has indulged in some spontaneous blood sport.
“I’ll be down in ten,” John says.
“Make it five,” the man replies before ending the call.
John groans into the silent room. He’s got to get out of this arrangement, and soon. His spirit grows heavier with every job, and it was never very light to begin with. His sole companion in life, a black cat named Miss Priss, gazes back at him with yellow eyes and flicks her tail in passive agreement.
Donning a fresh set of coveralls along with his rubber-soled boots, John shuffles downstairs in the near-dark from his upstairs apartment to the butcher’s shop below. The ground floor contains the storefront, a meat locker, a walk-in freezer, and a tiny office used mainly for bookkeeping. The subfloor is where the more delicate jobs are handled, behind a padlocked door with only one key.
He grabs the wheelbarrow with both hands and steers it down the ramp to the alleyway behind the building, unlocks the door and wedges a block of wood underneath it to keep it open. The night is humid and John inhales deeply, smelling urine, sewage, and days-old trash, as well as the fainter scents of the gulf and the dank muck from the nearby coastal marshes.
John is familiar with the aromas of his home in Gulfport, Mississippi just as he became accustomed to that of body odor in the barracks and gunpowder in the field. Some of the IEDs smelled like marzipan, which always surprised him, how something so deadly could smell so sweet. The scent of blood and viscera used to turn his stomach as a boy. Now, his constitution is iron cast. It’s a marvel, he thinks, man’s ability to adapt.
The alley behind the butcher shop is not frequented by pedestrians, especially not at this hour. Only the stray cats who’ve grown used to John’s scraps slink around here at night and nefarious individuals like the one who stands before him now. Matthieu’s eldest, Emile Fournier, lounges against the side of his silver Maserati smoking a cigarette while one of his henchmen pops open the trunk of his car. The henchman hauls what can only be a dead body out of the vehicle’s tiny hatch. Wrapped tightly in blood-stained sheets, the body is thrown casually over one shoulder. The size of the bundle and relative ease with which the man handles it can only mean one thing.
“I don’t do children,” John tells Emile and crosses his thick, muscular arms to make his point known. There are lines he won’t cross, and this is one of them.
“This isn’t a child,” Emile says, holding John’s gaze in a power play he’ll likely win. His eyes are like chips of ice, and his voice holds a similar cold detachment. John knew people like Emile in the service, individuals who got off on killing, who claimed it their patriotic duty, whether their target was a true threat or not.“This is a thief who threatened my life,” Emilie continues, “and a menace to the Hand. He had a very smart mouth and an even sharper blade. Why, it was practically self-defense.” His smile is sinister as he glances at his hired man who confirms it with a nod, as if any of them would dare defy the next in line for the throne. “And we don’t pay you to be curious, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” John says stoutly.
“You seldom talk, but when you do, it is so unpleasant.” Emile shakes his head and says to his hired thug, “The body.” The goon dumps the bundle in the wheelbarrow like it’s mere refuse. John notices a hand peeking out of the bloodstained sheets, small and brown with slender fingers. It reminds him of his mother’s hands, which were so dainty compared to his own.
“This is going to cost extra,” John says, both for the disruption to his sleep and the disturbance to his soul.
“Take it up with my father.” Emile waves his hand like he couldn’t be bothered then motions to his man. “Remember to get the car detailed in the morning. Until next time, John.” Emile winks at him before folding himself elegantly into the driver’s side of his car. As a parting gesture, he flicks his cigarette, still burning, onto the wet pavement at John’s feet right before peeling out of the alleyway.
John reaches down to touch the small hand, holding it in his own much larger one. He apologizes for the sins committed against him, those that have been done to him already and those his body has yet to endure.
“I’m sorry, little one.”
* * *
The subfloorof the butcher shop is well-lit, pristine, and contains all the necessary equipment for dismembering a body. Clinical, functional, and with no personal items save for John’s breaking knives, this space is sacred, the labor done without any spectators. John has no delusions in believing he’s doing God’s work—more likely, it’s the devil’s—but even the dead deserve to have their bodies disassembled in private.
His father owned the butchery before him, and John took it over when he passed, not realizing the mountain of debt his father had accrued, much of it due to gambling, all of it owed to the Hand. They didn’t clear his father’s debts upon his passing. Instead, they transferred the balance to the son. It was him or his mother, so John assumed his father’s obligation, including this unsavory arrangement, which his father had been accommodating in secret for years. John had tried to refuse, but Matthieu was persuasive, as were the gang of thugs who beat him within an inch of his life. He rubs the scar at his temple where they hit him with a baseball bat. John spent a few days in the ICU as a result of that incident, which surely didn’t help his financial situation.
In the end, John fell back onto what he knew best, taking orders.
He lifts the bundle out of the wheelbarrow, bending at the knees to support his back, and cradles it as if carrying a bride. He doubts he will ever marry. His life is not built for romantic entanglements and besides that, women are not to his taste. Anyone he might bring into his life would be at risk from the Hand’s retaliation, not to mention maintaining secrecy around what happens in the basement.
He imagines a hypothetical lover’s fright in nosing around where they shouldn’t, like old Bluebeard with his room full of dead wives. That is a complication John does not desire in the least.
The task of transporting the body is not strenuous. John is still strong from his years in the service, and his day-to-day activities have kept him fit. When he needs a release, he doesn’t go seeking sex as some do, he takes it out on his speed bag or lifts weights in his home gym until the urge passes. Besides, the body can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. John sets it down gently on the large stainless-steel table, pauses for a moment to gather his resolve, then peels away the blood-soaked sheets.
“What a fucking mess,” John curses, bitter and nauseated by what lay before him: a beautiful face sliced all to hell. Long, cruel gashes have been carved from mouth to ear on both sides. The boy must have bitten his tongue because clotted blood still oozes from his lips. There is another grisly gash across his neck, the one that must have ended his life. John doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the boy might have done to “deserve” this. If death were the sentence, then let it be quick. Emile is a monster for torturing him so cruelly. John suspects he enjoyed it.
At least he’s not a child, John surmises. He appears to be in his late teens, early twenties, though with his small stature and lack of body hair, he could have probably passed for much younger when he was alive. The boy’s round face has an innocent quality to it or perhaps it’s just his youth. He looks as though he’s fallen into a long, restful sleep. A sweet, slumbering angel.
John should get on with his work, but his damned curiosity won’t let him leave it alone. Peeling back more of the bed sheet, he finds the boy naked with streaks of dried blood across his abdomen and thighs as well as bruises in the shape of fingerprints. One forearm is swollen as though it might have been broken, and there are more bruises clustered like storm clouds around his ribs where he must have been kicked while curled in a fetal position. John doesn’t want to imagine it, and yet his analytical mind can’t help but recreate the scene. The boy’s slender wrists are rubbed raw, from rope or handcuffs most likely, and one knee is swollen to twice the size of the other with a painful-looking discoloration.
