COWS

by Matthew Stokoe

had grown shuttered and autistic.

I feel that

"We all have it, that dark core. It makes us men. And if we examine it, if we can bear to hold it up to ourselves and acknowledge it as our own, then it makes us more than men. The slaughter room is where we become complete, boy."

The fact that organs were piled into carts and limbs sheered from carcasses did not revolt him so much as make him aware of his own mortality. How easily he could suffer, at any time of day, some accident that would burst him or crush him or mangle him before he ever got a chance at happiness.

"Because I know how much pus my body churns out. I've measured my shit and my piss and my snot and all the other slime that comes out of me. And it doesn't add up to what being alive pumps into me every fucking day."

In time, when she realised this, she would need someone to cling to, someone to absorb and deaden the impacting horror of her sentence. And to justify this dependence she would have to call it love.

Steven saw her night's work on the floor - a pile of hollowed rats and a plastic bucket of guts - and knew that love was coming quickly.