Matthew flipped through pages, suddenly convinced that it was better to play along with Templeton than anger him. He was a man on the edge, and at any moment, he could fall in completely.
“Writing the book wasn’t easy,” Templeton continued. “Sometimes I had to write by hand. Other times I used my old Olympia Deluxe typewriter. When I was lucky, I wrote on a computer.”
“I guess I don’t understand,” Matthew said. “Why couldn’t you just use your computer to write the book?”
“Oh, well, I was on the run most of the time. They were after me, of course.”
Matthew closed the book and looked up at Templeton. “Now Mr. Templeton,” he said as calmly as he could, very afraid of his guest, “why would anyone be after you?”
“Because I know things,” he said. “I know things that are now in that book.”
“So this is nonfiction?”
“It is truth,” Templeton answered without addressing the question, “distilled down to its finest essence. The line between fiction and nonfiction is a fine one, after all.”
“But how did you come upon this story then? Do you have sources? Research?”
Templeton laughed. “Come now, Mr. Sellers. Don’t you understand? I didn’t ask for this assignment. It was given to me. By God, perhaps, though the origin is irrelevant. I was fated to complete this task. It is my job to reveal them, for what they are. I am the only one who can.”
“Them?”
The man smiled again, and this time Matthew saw pity.
“Mr. Sellers, the world is a machine, and like all machines, it requires someone to run it. Otherwise, it would spin out of control. Things must be done, adjustments must be made, the system must be tweaked.”
“You’re talking about the Illuminati? Free Masons? Conspiracies and secret societies?”
“No, no Mr. Sellers. Nothing so quaint. And nothing so secret. They walk in the light, not the shadows. Secrets breed questions, and questions sometimes have inconvenient answers. No, they are all around you. Working every day. They are neither good nor evil, as such notions are normally counted by mankind. They stand on the edge of the pit, and stare down into its depths. They do what they must. They do what we cannot.”
Matthew grinned, shaking head, no longer able or willing to contain his doubt. “I’m sorry Mr. Templeton, but I don’t think I buy any of this.”
Templeton rose from his seat and adjusted his glasses. “Read the book, Mr. Sellers. Read it, and then you will know. Belief will follow, as thunder follows the lightning.”
Before Matthew could object, Templeton had turned and strode to the door. He didn’t stop when Matthew called out his name. The antique bell rang again, and he was gone.
Matthew leaned back in his chair and looked down at the book that sat before him. He rubbed his hands along the leather, opened the cover, and started to read.
The Slaughter Man
By Benjamin Kane Ethridge
Time stood still, as it always did in this moment, and he felt neither dead, nor alive. As far as his life went, everything important existed only in this sad moment. Nothing before. Nothing after. He couldn’t decide if he hated that truth, loved it, or just needed it that way. Living in this instant was who he was, and yet, he’d never really been acquainted with that person. Not really.
Who am I?
What do I want?
As the Sticker punched through the jugular vein and dark red flooded over his apron, he saw a minor commotion up the chain. The first bolt hadn’t penetrated the cow’s solid cranium. The shackler, Jackson Turner, jogged over and exchanged glances with the stunner, Carl Cabers. The two men spoke something inaudible over the driving noise of the process line. Carl lowered the captive bolt pistol and fired into the cow’s skull again. Jackson gave a little electrified hop and returned to the side, taking up the shackles for the animal.
Blood flowed from the drains up the Sticker’s ankles and he responded by stepping on a pedal for the hidden sump pump. Further consideration told him this was a bad idea. The abandoned thirty thousand gallon underground tank had been filled to its limit just yesterday. He could no longer use it as a shortcut. The tank had plumbing issues when Sunshine State Natural Meat Processors first built the facility, and so it was capped off but never properly backfilled with gravel per city requirements.
The main drain was hidden from view, under the work table where the Sticker’s gory equipment usually sat. He ran the pump only when work got moving fiercely. The grade in the floor sloped toward that particular drain anyway, so using it enabled him to go faster than the other stickers (who weren’t privy to its whereabouts).
Last week the blood flow started rising under the table. Rather than throw the pump in reverse and send the nasty smelling stuff out to the appropriate drains, he got caught in the workday rush and put it off.
Today, the Sticker just let it be. He would have to be a mortal employee now like everybody else and work at a normal pace. No more super killer, processing twice as many animals as his peers.
A month ago, when Annette had still been in his life, he might have plotted how to empty that tank so he could retain his star quality, and possibly get called up for a management position. That might have made Annette proud of his return to the stockyards. Might have made her see his potential still existed.
Might have made her stay with him.
That wasn’t the reality anymore. Annette was gone and he was free to be as mediocre as the rest of the people working in this land of shit and blood.
Jackson brought the shackle up to the cow’s dangling hoof. It happened with such suddenness the Sticker only saw Jackson falling, arms out like a messiah, and then he was prone on the corrugated metal floor. The cow’s free hoof continued to fling wildly.
The Sticker ran to the thrashing beast, its labored calls louder than the process line. Carl arrived with his bolt gun. He’d already been working on another cow and knew this had to be done quickly. The chain will not stop was the company mantra and nobody took it for granted.
Carl aimed at the cow’s head. The animal shifted its weight, fell off the processing bar and struck him bodily against the side wall.
The Sticker dropped his knife and threw all his weight into the cow’s midsection. Carl broke free; he held his head and blinked spastically before rising on one knee. Jackson still rested on the floor, palm pressed to a spot between his eyes. The Sticker took the bolt gun, put the cow in a side headlock and discharged a bolt into its temple. The bolt retracted and the animal’s body jerked. It swung forward and sent the Sticker into the wall, knocking all the air from him. He pushed off the wall and hurried away from any other attack.
As he turned, he caught a glimpse of Jackson staggering over to the cow’s inert body. He’d already taken up the shackles again. Someone touched the Sticker’s shoulder and he jumped. Carl extended his hand for the bolt gun. The Sticker handed it to him, and then took his knife off the ground and returned to the bleeding floor.
By the time he was set back up, the renegade cow, hanging upside-down in the air by both its ankles now, slid toward him. He stuck the knife just under the jaw and swept across. You didn’t quit, he thought as he watched the scarlet cascade over his mesh gloves and arm guards. I used to value the good fight, sir, but now… look at you. Look where the fight ended.
He pressed the button and the process line buzzed on, the next cow immediately upon him. The Sticker slit another throat and then kicked some accumulated blood toward the other drain. He was surprised the USDA rep hadn’t had more to say about his workspace. Oh well, cleanliness wasn’t his business. He was just here to do a job and get paid. To live out his wonderful life.