Read Online Cows by Matthew Stokoe - Free Book Online
Authors: Matthew Stokoe
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Psychological, Technology & Engineering, Mothers and Sons, Alienation (Social psychology), Animal Husbandry, Agriculture
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some hideous stew. In one of the pictures the incision was stretched so far open it showed a cross section of abdominal wall. The striations of meat and fat made it look like a piece of bacon.
Afterward the concrete-dusted light of morning fell across them. They stared at the ceiling and Lucy’s cunt leaked the ichor of their beginning into dead sheets. Steven thought of the slaughter room, the recoil of the boltgun, blood and come sliding down the sides of a punctured cow, Cripps in his ass. The act of killing.
“I killed a cow yesterday.”
“Were you trying to look inside it?”
“The foreman said it would change me.”
Lucy laughed softly, sliding toward sleep. “It isn’t that easy.”
The sun hauled its broken-backed way higher into the aching slum air, turning the windows dirty yellow. Was he different from yesterday? The Hagbeast had destroyed him at dinner as easily as she always did. Where was the muscle-charging certainty of action Cripps promised? The slaughter room cow-killing had overwhelmed him to the point of unconsciousness and he expected something in return. But all he felt now as he thought of it was a lingering revulsion at its bloodiness.
It got late and he went downstairs to wash the sardine stink off his dick and have a shit. His ass was sore and all he could force out were small dark pellets that stung his ring and lay heavily under the water like a handful of stones.
The Hagbeast wasn’t up and Steven turned circles in the strange freedom of the kitchen, gathering armfuls of joy at this foretaste of her absence. He drank water and felt it clean him. Then he left for the plant.
CHAPTER SIXTEN
T he bus trapped sunlight that morning, the air in the aisle was hazed with it, and through arabesques of cigarette smoke and the chaos intricacies of floating dust the other passengers seemed less than they had been. Not quite the gods of yesterday.
Steven wondered at the lightness he felt, paranoically fretting he might burst into laughter, right there in front of everyone on the bus, at these first gossamer strokings of happiness—so unused was he to their touch. What brought them? The time with Lucy? The Hagbeast’s first plateful of shit? Or could this elation, this feeling of possibility, be a delayed gift from a dead cow? He flexed his arms, twisting the muscles to see if he was stronger. He couldn’t tell.
Half an hour later, the drifting, window-gazing euphoria of the bus journey evaporated as he entered the process hall. Here things were real again. The weight of the boltgun and the spurts of blood were no longer smooth-edged prefugue memories, but intense and unavoidable occurrences that stuck sharp red fingers of recognition into his head and refused to be ignored.
He walked past the other men with his eyes on the floor, ashamed they might see the mark of the slaughter room on him and know the intimacy of his experience there. He sat by himself at the grinder, staring at the scoured steel work surface, dazzling himself with the million curving scratches that caught light and bent it into a bright flat tangle.
The flow of meat started with the horn and time passed in chunks of bleeding beef. Steven worked hard and tried not to think, because when he did he got confused. He didn’t understand what had happened in the slaughter room. It had frightened him … And yet there had been that flash of happiness on the bus. Now he was frightened again—of the blood and the cutting of holes into cows and the mad, wantonly exposed selfishness of the slaughtermen, and of not knowing what all this had done to him.
When he heard the voice behind him he froze, thinking it was Cripps. But there was too much smoothness to it, too much humid depth for it to belong to the striding, blood-bathed foreman.
The voice called his name again and it came through a lot of throat. Steven twisted quickly on his stool.
Just a white wall and, down near the floor, the ventilation grille. Then movement
Afterward the concrete-dusted light of morning fell across them. They stared at the ceiling and Lucy’s cunt leaked the ichor of their beginning into dead sheets. Steven thought of the slaughter room, the recoil of the boltgun, blood and come sliding down the sides of a punctured cow, Cripps in his ass. The act of killing.
“I killed a cow yesterday.”
“Were you trying to look inside it?”
“The foreman said it would change me.”
Lucy laughed softly, sliding toward sleep. “It isn’t that easy.”
The sun hauled its broken-backed way higher into the aching slum air, turning the windows dirty yellow. Was he different from yesterday? The Hagbeast had destroyed him at dinner as easily as she always did. Where was the muscle-charging certainty of action Cripps promised? The slaughter room cow-killing had overwhelmed him to the point of unconsciousness and he expected something in return. But all he felt now as he thought of it was a lingering revulsion at its bloodiness.
It got late and he went downstairs to wash the sardine stink off his dick and have a shit. His ass was sore and all he could force out were small dark pellets that stung his ring and lay heavily under the water like a handful of stones.
The Hagbeast wasn’t up and Steven turned circles in the strange freedom of the kitchen, gathering armfuls of joy at this foretaste of her absence. He drank water and felt it clean him. Then he left for the plant.
CHAPTER SIXTEN
T he bus trapped sunlight that morning, the air in the aisle was hazed with it, and through arabesques of cigarette smoke and the chaos intricacies of floating dust the other passengers seemed less than they had been. Not quite the gods of yesterday.
Steven wondered at the lightness he felt, paranoically fretting he might burst into laughter, right there in front of everyone on the bus, at these first gossamer strokings of happiness—so unused was he to their touch. What brought them? The time with Lucy? The Hagbeast’s first plateful of shit? Or could this elation, this feeling of possibility, be a delayed gift from a dead cow? He flexed his arms, twisting the muscles to see if he was stronger. He couldn’t tell.
Half an hour later, the drifting, window-gazing euphoria of the bus journey evaporated as he entered the process hall. Here things were real again. The weight of the boltgun and the spurts of blood were no longer smooth-edged prefugue memories, but intense and unavoidable occurrences that stuck sharp red fingers of recognition into his head and refused to be ignored.
He walked past the other men with his eyes on the floor, ashamed they might see the mark of the slaughter room on him and know the intimacy of his experience there. He sat by himself at the grinder, staring at the scoured steel work surface, dazzling himself with the million curving scratches that caught light and bent it into a bright flat tangle.
The flow of meat started with the horn and time passed in chunks of bleeding beef. Steven worked hard and tried not to think, because when he did he got confused. He didn’t understand what had happened in the slaughter room. It had frightened him … And yet there had been that flash of happiness on the bus. Now he was frightened again—of the blood and the cutting of holes into cows and the mad, wantonly exposed selfishness of the slaughtermen, and of not knowing what all this had done to him.
When he heard the voice behind him he froze, thinking it was Cripps. But there was too much smoothness to it, too much humid depth for it to belong to the striding, blood-bathed foreman.
The voice called his name again and it came through a lot of throat. Steven twisted quickly on his stool.
Just a white wall and, down near the floor, the ventilation grille. Then movement
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