If You're Going To Do A Job, Do It Right

In the centre of the choas a young boy sat alone. Fear flashed in
his eyes as he touched the steak of fresh blood on his chubby leg but
the emotion was soon replaced by a far more powerful one, insanity. He
looked around, the smile of insane joy now spread right across his tiny
face. The bodies of men and women lay in torn chunks and tatters around
him, ripped apart by the machete still gripped in the stiff, dead hand
of the psycho in the corner, a man killed by his own hand. Suddenly in
the bright doorway a shadow appears, a policeman, his face white and
drawn above his bulky uniform. He glances around the room, taking in
the blood soaked room, he turns back to the boy beckoning with his
finger, calling the child towards him.

As the boy crawled towards the saviour he gets a closer look at the
mangled remains of limbs around him. A frown creased the tiny forehead,
what a mess, he thought, at least if you're going to slaughter do it
neatly. Ragged ends of bones and flesh sprout from under pale skin,
blood spattered randomly across the rough white walls. Even at the age
of two he was a strangely methodical child.

48 years later the excessive neatness was still embedded in that
traumatised child as he neatly sliced into the flabby thigh of Mrs
Bowbersly. Neatly sliced pieces of fleshy body lay in a precise,
straight line across the butcher's counter. He'd visited her house the
night before to deliver her Alf's sausages, she always ordered some for
her little dog on Friday nights, and had discovered dirty plates on her
kitchen table, the streaks of food slowly congealing, breeding germs.
That had instantly caused his temper to flare. Unwashed plates were a
breeding ground for all sorts of bacteria, they needed to be washed
immediately and placed back in their assigned cupboard, leaving them on
the table to rot was simply not the done thing. He knew he had to
simply rid the world of her disruptive presence, once it got out that
it was acceptable for her not to do the washing up straight after
dinner, the rest of the world would be at it too.

While she had been in the sitting room digging in her moth ridden purse
to pay for little Alf's three sausages, he'd opened up her knife draw
and removed a long meat skewer. Now that was a nice effecient way to
get rid of Mrs Bowbersly. He'd followed her in the lounge then, grabbed
her before she had a chance to ask what the skewer was for, he'd jabbed
it up her nose, spiking the metal into her brain. With her body still
convulsing on the floor, he'd savagely stabbed the skewer through the
bone above her upper lip and into her medula, the control panel for all
the automatic body functions. The body stopped bouncing immediately,
although her fat thighs had taken almost a minute to stop jiggling
altogether, her heart stopped, her breathing stopped and almost
instantly her brain shut down. He wiped down the skewers handle with
the lint free cloth he always carried in his pocket for such
emergencies and then using the alley that ran along the back of the row
of houses and shops, dragged the body back to his butcher's shop and
hauled her up onto his chopping board. Now he stood over her cold body,
creating the meat cuts that had become so popular with his customers.
He sliced deeper and thought, such a neat job.