short story.

Thomas walked through the cavernous space that was the Rutminster abbatoir, his footsteps echoing round the rusting walls and pillars, soaring upwards until they dissipated into the murky gloom of the ceiling. Filthy, slimy puddles that it was best not to inspect too closely stretched across the floor, willing him to walk through them, jump in them like an excitable toddler after a rainstorm, a gruesome parody of his childhood hobbies.

The abbatoir had shut down 7 months previously, leaving him and a lot of his friends and neighbours unemployed. It hadn’t been the nicest workplace he’d ever seen, but the money had been decent, the banter constant and the post-work pub sessions friendly enough. However, people were eating less and less meat. Most of Britain’s abattoirs had already shut down, as farmers were forced to turn their grazing lands into fields suitable for growing cereals; because of high food prices, the farmers were still doing well, but many butchers and abattoir workers had been put out of work. Now only the buildings remained, vast cathedrals mourning their bloody past.

Thomas shivered, snapped out of his reverie, and skirted round the edge of a particularly large puddle; rust-brown in colour, it was completely opaque; his fertile imagination was already envisaging large tentacles creeping across the floor after him. This place was creeping him out. Why the hell had David wanted to meet him there? What on earth was of sufficient interest that they couldn’t just meet up in the pub? In fact, why had David wanted to meet him at all? They didn’t get on that well; David was always poking fun at Thomas, laughing at him, getting other people to giggle at his insults and put-downs. There was no real reason for this; David was just a malicous bully, pure and simple, and he’d decided, years ago, to make Thomas the butt of all his jokes and insecurities.

“…Dave..?” He half-whispered, half-called. “You here, mate?”

“…ave….ve..e…..mate…ate…te” came the mocking echo. A drop of moisture fell into a puddle with a loud ‘plop’, startling him. He couldn’t see much: it had been late afternoon when he arrived, and now the dusk was gathering itself swiftly, ready to lay down its nightly blanket of chill and quiet.

“Bugger this for a lark” Thomas muttered to himself. If David wasn’t going to bother showing himself, he was going to get to the pub sharpish, try and relax in the friendly company of people he knew. As he turned round, straining to see the exit in the gathering dark, he saw a scrap of white by his feet. He leant over to pick it up: a passport photo of a middle-aged woman; pinched, pale face, small eyes, hair scraped back so much she looked constantly surprised. David’s wife. It must have fallen out of his pocket.

“Dave? Where are you? Stop pissing about, alright?”

No answer. Once the echoes died away, he cocked his head, listening carefully. Nothing. Well, Dave had obviously been here at some point: the photo didn’t look like it had been mouldering on the ground for months. However, he obviously wasn’t there anymore. Thomas decided it was time to call it a day.

He slipped and splashed his way back to the door, pulled at the latch and…nothing. The door was stuck fast. Shit. His mobile was in the car, his wife didn’t know where he was (he thought that maybe this would be a chance to earn some cash-in-hand work, some pennies that she didn’t need to know about), and it was almost pitch-black in the building. He swore again, loudly, and kicked the door. It shuddered under the impact, but didn’t give way. He leant against it, gathering his thoughts. He was getting peckish; remember he had a banana in his jacket, he munched on it whilst thinking of how to get out. He could hardly see anything now, and the huge black space in front of him was making him more nervous and creeped-out than any man would admit to. It felt like he was back on stage in the school play, with a vast audience sitting in an auditorium, watching his every move, waiting for him to speak. Only the audience was hostile, inhuman; there was no drama teacher there to prompt him, tell him what to do. His mother wasn’t in the second row, willing him on. He was completely alone, and trapped. His mouth was dry, his head pounding. He had to get out of there, before he completely lost it. The bile was already rising in his through, as the smell of the bloody puddles suddenly overwhelmed him. A smell that he had been used to for 11 years was now threatening to make him cry like a lost little boy. He was terrified.

Feeling tears pricking his eyelids, he slid to the floor, curling into a ball; with his ear against the door, gave in to his fear, crying and sobbing to himself. No-one was there to hear him. He was all alone.

Something shifted outside; it sounded like footsteps just outside the door.

“H…h..hello?” His voice quavered like a decrepit old woman.

There was another noise: something was definitely there.

“Who is that? Dave, is that you? Dave you wanker, open this door now!”

As he said it, the muffled sounds turned into peals of raucous laughter, hooting in amusement at his predicament. Something on the door clanged, and it fell open, spilling Thomas out onto the tarmac. He looked up into the faces of David, Terry and Ian, other mates of theirs. They were slapping each other on the back, wiping tears of merriment from their eyes. They’d set him up. Bored with sitting at home waiting for employment agencies to call, they’d turned to winding people up, vandalizing cars, starting fires in fields. And now they’d done this to him. They’d scared him shitless, listening to him getting more and more scared, and seen the tears of fear that were still damp on his face. They’d wedged some kind of tool into the door handle, preventing it from being opened from the inside. The terror that he’d been feeling dissipated; in his core was a need to hurt someone, make them hurt and cry and feel as shit as he did; they were laughing at him, screaming words at him, insulting him. His right hand grabbed hold of something heavy, and he launched himself at David, trying to scare him into shutting up. He hit him, again and again and again, not noticing that Terry and Ian weren’t laughing anymore, that David was screaming and crying and…nothing. David slumped to the floor, looking at Thomas in a funny, unfocussed way. “Wha…?” he managed, then fell silent, as bloody streamed down his temple from a jagged, hairy gash in his head. There was a small pile of grey blobby stuff on his shoulder, oozing slowly down his shirt. Terry and Ian just stared at him, looking sick.

“Yeah, who’s laughing now, you bastards?” snarled Thomas, glaring at David, breathing heavily, hands by his sides. He dropped the icepick and walked slowly out of the carpark, dripping with David’s blood. “Who’s laughing now, eh?”
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 18:38, Reply)