Page 40 of Love You To Pieces

Last time I was in here, I’d been faced with Ariana’s corpse. That was only two days ago, but I mollify my fears knowing that she can’t still be there. That’s impossible, for one. And more importantly, unsanitary.

“Just a look,” I whisper to myself, my face pressed to the warped, rough wood. Out of all the buildings out here, it’s somehow foreboding and the one in need of the most repair. Everything else is clean and fixed up, even if it isn’t new. It all seems well taken care of. But this workshop?

Just like the bedroom upstairs, it’s like a shrine to a forgotten god who hasn’t visited in a while. At least on the outside.

“Fuck it.” I don’t have time to keep waiting around. Wherever Deacon has gone, there’s a good chance he’ll be back sooner rather than later.

Once again, the smell hits me the moment I push open the door, and I briefly wonder how the hell I hadn’t noticed it outside. It’s like a physical blow to my nose, and far worse than anything I smelled in here last time.

“Oh, fuck,” I gasp, my hands leaving the door to clap against my face, covering both my mouth and nose. “Oh fuck, oh fuck—” Bile tries to climb up my throat like ivy, and saliva floods my mouth with the urge to vomit. The odor of rust, or iron, or something else metallic overwhelms me, though when I gasp in air through my mouth, it turns chemical and sharp, like bleach. Below that, there’s a sickeningly sweet note, one that has my stomach roiling and the hairs on my arms standing up.

The table that held Ariana’s body isn’t empty, though at first my brain tries to tell me that everything is okay when I don’t see her face in the mess of…of meat on the table, half of it butchered into smaller, manageable pieces.

It’s just a cow, my mind promises me, begging me to look away. This is a farm. They butcher their own meat.

But it isn’t a cow. I know it isn’t a cow, and my legs take me unwillingly across the concrete floor that feels grimy underneath my bare feet. There’s a drain in the middle of the space I nearly trip over, and when I stumble up to the table, I can no longer let myself believe that the table is holding a cow or pig or hell, even chickens.

Not when a pudgy, thick-fingered hand lies severed, its fingers facing upwards toward the roof.

I don’t throw up, though it’s a very close call. My entire body seems to go hot, then cold, and the world swims around me. All I can do is stare at it, with my hands over my face, as my brain unhelpfully catalogues the rest of the recognizable pieces on the table.

A leg.

A ribcage.

An arm.

Organs.

Organs lay in a pile on one side, dripping blood onto the concrete floor. The smell seems to emanate from them, somehow worsening as I just look at the pile. While I took anatomy classes in college, none of that seems to matter right now. My mind can’t see the pieces as anything other than meat, no matter how I unconsciously try to catalogue the bits of the pile. Something in me says they must’ve come from more than one person, and I shudder at the thought.

“And here we are again.” Deacon’s voice drawls through the room, echoing off the walls. When I look over at him, he’s pulling an apron off a hook on the wall and tying it around himself with the air of someone who does this a lot. His blue eyes find mine, casual and calculating, though he quirks a brow when I gaze at him in horror. “I know Fox told you to stay out of here. But here you are. You really just can’t help yourself, can you, little⁠—”

“Why?” I gasp, my hands only slightly coming away from my face. It horrifies me that he can stand here without looking bothered or putting a hand over his face to mask the smell. “Why did you do this?”

Deacon’s look is quizzical as he brushes by me, and I turn to watch him set a bucket under the pile of organs. In they go, making soft, thumping noises that have me retching and clamping my teeth together so I don’t actually vomit, though it’s a very close call.

“Waste not, want not.” Deacon shrugs. “Just because it isn’t what you’re used to doesn’t mean there’s anything really wrong with it.” I stare at him, nonplussed, and Deacon pauses to eye my expression. “Oh, but we are slow, aren’t we?” He sighs. “Do you need a few more moments to work it out? Or would you like the answer given to you?”

Without waiting, he picks up the bucket and takes it to the door, where he sets it down. But when Pearl comes to sniff around the opening, he gives her a fond smile, reaches into the bucket, and fishes out a lump of organ with his bare hand.

Pearl doesn’t hesitate. The moment it hits the ground with a wet thwack, she’s on the meat and chowing down happily, her stubby tail wagging. I nearly lose my breakfast then and there, and it’s a Herculean effort on my part not to spew chunks.

“Oh, fuck,” I murmur, having to turn away when she crunches down on whatever it is, making a wet, fleshy noise as her lips smack together around the meat. “What are you doing with that?” I ask, unable to do more than gesture toward the pieces still on the table.

Deacon doesn’t answer right away. He moves around the workshop, moving things, picking things up, and finally turning on a hose to swish away some of the gore on the floor that swirls around the drain in the concrete. “You sure you want to know?”

No, I’m really not. But I turn to face him, one hand still over my mouth and nose to protect me from the worst of the smell. Whatever he sees in my face either amuses him or convinces him, though I’m pretty sure it’s the former, and Deacon gives a small snort.

“Well, your friends have been out in the heat and the sun for a few days. That’s not exactly sanitary, you know? But the pigs don’t mind much. Still, I’m not really a fan of giving the neighbor’s hogs bodies that haven’t been properly butchered first. Feels like the neighborly thing to do, you know?”

“The…” I trail off, my blood running cold. I sway, my knees nearly buckling, and I wish I had something to catch myself on. “Hogs?” I finally utter. “You feed people to livestock?” I can’t miss the casual way he talked about butchering humans, making it clear he’s done this before.

Many times, given his comfort around the subject and the way this place is set up for slaughter. From the drain in the floor to the tools and the table; now that I’ve noticed them, I can’t stop thinking about it.

“Not usually. Only the bad pieces, the scraps. Hogs eat everything, you know.” He steps closer to me, the apron around his torso spattered with old blood. “You really haven’t figured it out, Sadie-Rae?” When he’s close enough, he reaches out to tug my hand away from my face. “Just breathe,” he advises. “It only gets better if you can go nose-blind to it.”

“I don’t want to go nose-blind to any of this. It’s awful,” I protest, trying to jerk my hand free. But he doesn’t let me, and when I stubbornly raise my other to my face, he drags that one down as well so that he’s holding both of my hands in his between us in some parody of affection.