COWS

by Matthew Stokoe

"Our hearts are only two pounds, not much room for love."

"They are the genesis. They create what the rest of you only work with. They know themselves, boy. They looked inside and weren't afraid to drag out what they found. What would you find inside yourself, I wonder?" The hand on his neck moved to rub his shoulders. "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."

And to justify this dependence she would have to call it love.

nostrils wide, snorting in as much air as they could hold, knowing that its taste would soon be lost forever and trying to imprint it on some soul memory so it could be remembered after death, shaken out like a table cloth and searched for meaning.

Steven kissed her hair as she worked, running scenes of the future when she would tend to him with the same devotion she now reserved for the small rat organs. He would lie in a large bed under her kisses and plans for life would flutter down about them like rose petals.

Interesting

But the straightjacket of events tied him to the platform and kept his hand on the gun.

Each of them knew it wasn't real, but both of them needed the deception.

he'd taught Steven that things exist to be taken by man, that a free man lives as the centre of his universe, directing all things to his ends, totally.

What did it matter if they loved each other or not as long as each could be used as a screen against the world?