Hands need to be steady. Need to be able to meet each cow head on, stare right back at them. Otherwise the work will get to you. Chew you into nothing, slowly, like a piece of cud. 

When I took the bolt gun back, he said something in Spanish, thinking I could understand because of my skin tone, but I made myself forget a long time ago. Easier to get along with the bosses that way. If the new guy is smart, he’ll force himself to change soon too. 

I got him reassigned to cleanup duty. If he doesn’t quit after a week of washing blood and intestines off the walls, maybe he’ll grow into the type of man we need around here. Maybe then I can show him the finer details of slaughtering, but I doubt it. He looks soft. Raising Junior taught me how to spot that. 

Wonder how he’s doing, my son. When was the last time we spoke? He’s probably getting by. I managed to teach him how to do that much, at least. 

After lunch I get to work without anyone hovering over me. It’s just me and the cows, thank god, and my hands don’t shake. Not once. 

Kind of funny, even when I get close to the cows, I can’t smell them. All my nose picks up is cement, metal, sometimes running water from a hose nearby. When did my brain start to block out the animal smells? Is that something I should get checked out? Getting time off would be a bitch, though, and I’d probably get referred to another doctor. Fuck using time off for that.

I bring down another cow. I don’t keep count because there’s no point. No matter what, they’ll bring more in.

There will always be more.

It’s strange, the way some cows don’t get scared. Some panic, and you need to get rough. But others, they just go along with it, like you’re taking them for a walk, or tucking them into bed. They stare at you like you’re the least interesting thing they’ve ever seen. Almost got to me early on. 

I approach another one, playing with the trigger of the bolt gun, making it click click click before I inevitably press it all the way. She’s beautiful. A streak of white runs up the bridge of her nose, like a racing stripe. Her eyes are brown stars in black lakes of fur. I scratch her chin, run a hand up and down her jawline. They have such strong faces. With my other hand, I place the bolt gun at the center of her forehead. 

 The cow speaks while I’m still scratching her, words pouring hot onto my palm. 

“Thank you,” she says, the two words guttural and wet, a strange regurgitation escaping all those stomachs. Then I pull the trigger and the bolt hits her brain and the stars in her skull die out. She’s motionless on the floor but I dwell on her words. Thank you. 

She wanted to die.

They want to die. 

And there will always be more. 

Then she moves again.

She writhes, a twisting of black and white against the gray concrete floor. With each movement, she forces more blood out of the hole in her forehead. Soon she’s swimming in it. There shouldn’t be this much blood, but it keeps coming out of that hole I made, and she won’t stop moving. The metal taste in the air thickens. I step closer to examine her. 

Too close. 

Her hind legs connect with my boots, and I slip on her blood and join her on the floor. She continues bucking around and starts to wriggle herself on top of me. She’ll crush me soon. I press the bolt gun against the first part of her I can connect with and pull the trigger. I pull it again, and again, anywhere on her body—which should already be a carcass—that I can hit. Soon she’s full of holes and blood gushes out of all of them. She’s got my legs pinned so I keep firing until the new guy comes running up and takes the bolt gun away from me. He starts to pull me out from under her.

“Jesús, amigo, tu piel está en llamas,” he says, and I don’t catch most of that, but I can tell he thinks something is wrong with me. I don’t want to be another worker sent home sick.

 And the cow still isn’t dead, so I snatch back the bolt gun from the new guy and fire it off a few more times against her back. And maybe it’s the heat from the struggle or the warmth from her massive pool of blood, but I feel hot. Real hot. Then I close my eyes. 

Junior is home now, back from the coast. He got a job somewhere in town and they give him weird hours. Sometimes he leaves first thing in the morning. Other times he checks on me before I go to sleep, then heads out the door. Every few days he comes home with a fish in a plastic bag and acclimates it to his new aquarium, leaves it floating in the bag before he releases it into the actual tank. He’s precise about it. 

“I’m working with animals, Dad,” he says. “Kind of like you.” 

I tell myself I should be interested, but he hid my work uniforms and he won’t tell me where they are. 

“They don’t want you coming back to work yet. Not until you’re better.”

“It’s just a little cough now,” I tell him. “My temp is fine.”  

“Do you remember what happened?”

“A cow almost crushed me.”

“. . . you wouldn’t stop putting holes in that dead cow. You just kept shooting it. Over and over until they pulled you away,” he says. 

“The cow wasn’t dead.” 

“Get some rest. I’ll be back later. There’s soup in the fridge.” Then Junior leaves.

I shuffle to the kitchen. The house feels warm. It’s weird being warm during the day, not being bundled up at Schaefer’s. My shirt even sticks to my goddamn stomach. I turn on the A/C as I go down the hall. Check the fridge. No soup, only beer. I crack one open. Maybe Junior meant canned soup. 

I check the cupboards. No soup. Just beans. 

Beer and beans it is. I’ll knock out at least one can right now. I can feel my appetite coming back. The lid of the can has a tab, so I rip it open, ready to eat the stuff cold. I take a gulp, just like the beer, and let the beans fill my mouth before I start to chew. There’s something not right about the texture. It’s all mush. I don’t feel any actual beans. I spit it out into the sink and check the date on the can. Doesn’t expire until next year. 

I look in the sink and see a clump of raw meat. 

That was in my mouth. 

A little red stream of blood leaks out of the clump and makes its way down the drain. 

I yack a bit and try to spit out the chunks still stuck in my teeth. I swirl some beer in my mouth and spit again, aiming for the meat mound in the sink. I hit part of it, which breaks off and goes down the drain. I drink the rest of the beer. The cold sits in my stomach and the bite of the hops stays on my tongue. I grab another can and leave the kitchen. 

I guess it’s just beer for now. 

I take my time with the second can as the house starts to cool. I hate being home during the day. I’ve watched all our DVDs. The light coming through the windows is harsh. I miss the fluorescents at work. They’re cleaner. Even. Flat. 

 I stop in the hallway and stare into the living room. Just a couch and a TV, but Junior used to play in there by himself all the time. He drew a lot of whales and sharks on the backs of my old pay stubs. I never took that kid to the beach, not once, but somehow the sea got him. Now he’s back, but I don’t think he’ll stay long, especially after I finish getting better. 

Couch looks comfortable, even with the hard sun coming in, making the carpet so bright I can’t look at it. I sit on the middle cushion and drink the second beer. I feel different, better. I close my eyes, my body cold but my face warm. I remember trying to get Junior to play baseball when he was younger, but he was too scared of getting hit. I tried to teach him to pitch instead, but he was still too afraid of getting bruised by a comebacker. He couldn’t tough it out. I don’t know why I thought he’d take to the work at Schaefer’s. He couldn’t even kill one cow. Shit, I made it so easy for him. I even held the bolt gun in place, but he couldn’t pull the trigger, even after I told him the cow wanted to die. So, I made him wash blood and intestines off the walls and then he headed for the coast. But now he’s working with animals, he says. Kind of funny. 

I nod off with the beer can in my hand, unfinished. Wake up later with a wet crotch. Spilled the damn thing, but it didn’t get on the couch much. 

I’ll clean it up later. 

I grab another beer and sit in my bed. That raw meat must still be in the sink. I take a sip from the new can. I should clean up the meat then clean up the couch. Did I ever learn that new guy’s name? I miss the cows. I miss them talking to me. They always sound honest. More honest than people.  

“Dad, what the hell?”

I open my eyes, which were closed. When did I close them?

“You’re covered in piss,” he says.

“I spilled some beer.”

“There’s vomit in the kitchen sink. It has blood in it.”

“The beans were bad.”

“We don’t have any beans,” he says. 

“I know. They went bad,” I say. 

“Goddammit, Dad.”

I see Junior’s body more and more, but not his face. He won’t look at me. He brings food into my room, asks if I need anything, but he never looks. I daydream about firing a bolt gun into my eye socket while he’s at work. That sure would fuck with him when he got home, make him look at his old man again. I like thinking about it. Having a hole in one eye. Seeing less. Laughing as Junior walks in and sees what I’ve done. Kid needs to lighten up. He’s always taken things so seriously. Stopped laughing at a young age. Sometimes you really gotta shock somebody like that. Scare them out of themselves. 

His aquarium looks beautiful, I’ll give him that. Lots of fish. Lots of colors. Orange and yellow and red, some purple. Submerged in water. Swimming back and forth, back, and forth. Like parts of a sunset trapped in glass. 

Or animals in a cage. Waiting for release. 

I put my hands on the glass. Put some weight against it. The fish won’t look at me either. Would some of them speak if I broke the glass and killed them? Would their words come out in tiny putters while they gasped and suffocated? Would they thank me?

I think I understand why Junior likes having fish. Looking at them makes you feel like you’re outside. Makes you want to stretch your legs. Get some air. 

The weather’s never great here, but right now it’s fine enough. I’ve never minded the heat, or the town. It’s dry and there aren’t a lot of people. You can go about your life without bothering anyone and without anyone bothering you. 

I can’t remember the last time I walked. Just, walked. I let my legs move without thinking, without guiding them. I assume they’ll take me to Schaefer’s, but they don’t. They take me to the other edge of town, to Paloma’s house. Her black hair reminds me of Mom’s hair, when she had hair, before she died. I’d tell Paloma, but I don’t see her anywhere. Damn, she has a beautiful garden. I can see it before I’m even in the yard. So many colors, free.  

I can hear the garden too. The moans of cows and the creaking of greenery. 

The fence is in disrepair and I walk right in. 

The garden is full of flowers and cows. Hard-lined faces float in a sea of blooming foliage. Some of the cows make soft little grunts, as if they’re humming while they walk through the flowers. Other cows chew on plant stems. And the rest, the rest stare at me. 

I walk deeper into the garden. It’s endless. There are so many flowers and cows, and I can smell them. Rich and earthy and dense. 

God, I’ve killed so many. 

In the center I find a well. It’s deep and dark and I can’t see the bottom. It makes a sound like someone’s last breath, which I heard one other time when I held Mom’s hand and let her go. It’s not frightening. It sounds peaceful. It sounds like escaping. 

The cows have gathered around me. All of them stare. Waiting for me to join the garden I’ve sent so many of them to. 

But first, I must go through a hole. Just like they did. 

I aim my body into the well. I become a bolt that will connect with something hard and solid at the other end of the barrel. The rush is incredible and I’m leaving Junior behind but I’m entering a place I’ve sent so many others, and I feel nothing but joy as I say, “Thank you.”

Featured image by Maria Pogosyan.

The post Slaughter appeared first on Los Suelos.

All I could think to say was, “Oh.”

“You’re his emergency contact.”

“Yeah.”

“. . . This is an emergency.”

I looked around my car. All the seats were full, mostly of clothes, but also some vinyl, a couple books, and my roommate’s bong secured with a seatbelt. Through my front window I looked up at an apartment that I never wanted to go back to. There was nothing in there I would miss. 

“I don’t live in Los Suelos anymore,” I tell her. “I’ll be there in about four hours.” 

The worst part about Dad is how he always thinks he’s okay. I pick him up from work because no one wants him to drive, but I can’t stop him from putting his hands out like he’s steering. His arms stay stuck out, hovering over the glove compartment the entire car ride. I tell him about working in Monterey and leave out the bad stuff, but he just hums to himself, like he’s driving home alone. 

I get him home and feed him. He taught me that’s what you should always do with people. Nothing good happens when you’re hungry, and worse things happen when others are hungry. Maybe I should take him to the doctor, but I don’t think they’ll tell us much other than to let him rest and give him fluids, and I don’t think either of us wants to pay to hear someone say that.

We watch old DVDs we’ve already seen, in the living room that’s only ever had a TV and a couch. I used to draw pictures of whales and sharks here. Always loved them. Still don’t know why. We get through half of a nature documentary about endangered animals before switching to an action movie with a lot of CGI. Dad grabs two beers from the fridge at some point and we watch longer. He gets another beer but doesn’t bring me a second. I put on the sequel. The CGI is even worse but the plot is better. 

I go into the kitchen and grab myself a beer but don’t go back into the living room. Dad seems okay now. I walk down the hall and into my old room, which he hasn’t changed, and I sit in a bed whose sheets probably haven’t been washed in years. The whole room smells stale and dries out my nose. As I crack open the beer, I can’t help but be mad at Dad. He made it too easy to come back home, and it already feels like a trick.  

I remember that one of the Clove triplets at Pets, Pets, PETS!!! likes fish in particular, and I hope to use that to land a job. Maybe it’s because the store is open 24 hours, but they’re more eager than I expect; they barely even interview me. Shit, all that time struggling elsewhere, and a job practically falls in my lap when I end up back here. I should have settled for minimum wage sooner. 

The work entails more phone calls than I expect. A lot of questions about lost pets, usually last seen running toward the Bolt Gun Hills. Almost as many calls about owners finding their pets but now they’re acting strange. Darkness, I quickly learn to say; your animal wants to be in darkness. We sell crates for that.  

The best part is the employee discount, but isn’t that always the case? I spent most of my first paycheck getting enough supplies to set up a new aquarium at Dad’s: 100-gallon tank, filters, pumps, some starter fish. 

Yesterday, I found him washing the walls in the hallway with a bucket and sponge but no suds. He was on his hands and knees, going up and down the wall with the sponge in big strokes, the wet scratching sound echoing down the hall. “New guy won’t cut it,” he said. “Can’t even clean up blood and guts right. There’s still so much blood on the walls. Couldn’t handle the kill floor and can’t handle cleanup duty.”

He isn’t getting better, and it’s almost been a month. It’s tempting to take him somewhere, but I know he’d prefer to ride it out, just like most people here. That’s our style. Wait and see. Ignore it until it goes away.

I head home with a new fish. I make soup while the fish acclimates to the tank water. Dad walks by the tank and looks at the fish, still in its plastic bag, waiting to be released. He taps the glass a few times like he wants to pop the bag, then walks away. 

The quick movement of his fingers reminds me of when he tried to get me to play baseball. He’d throw the balls right down the middle of the plate, at first. I’d think I was getting good at hitting the ball, then he’d throw one at my face. The last time he did it the ball grazed my cheek and left a bruise. 

“That’s what pitchers do. To throw you off balance. You okay?” 

I release the fish into the tank, watch it explore its new home for the first time. It swims faster, then slower, but its expression never changes. I have some soup while I watch the tank. Life idling in water. It seems nice. 

I finish the soup and head toward my bedroom. I peek through Dad’s open door, his television sending flickering blue light through the crack. He’s asleep, and I tiptoe in. I don’t nudge him awake. I don’t tell him about the soup I made. Slowly, quietly, I take his work uniforms out of his drawer and walk out of the room with them, hugging the pile against my chest. I go outside with his clothes. I think about heading toward the trash bin, but I put them in the trunk of my car instead. 

I go to bed thinking I don’t know why I did that other than I wanted to. 

When I wake up, Dad is already searching for his work uniforms. He asks where they are, and I tell him I don’t know, that he’s the one that’s home all day while I’m working. 

“I’m working with animals, Dad,” I say, and I remember the first time he told me how a bolt gun works. “Kind of like you.” 

He doesn’t reply.  He stops searching for his uniforms, parks himself at the kitchen table and broods. He can’t sit quietly, though, because he keeps coughing. He mutters about wanting to go back to work. 

“They don’t want you coming back to work yet,” I lie. I haven’t spoken to anyone at Schaefer’s since his incident. Then I add, “Not until you’re better,” to make it sound more legitimate. 

“It’s just a little cough now,” he says, while continuously coughing. “My temp is fine.” Whether or not that’s the case, he still looks like shit.

I remind him about what happened at the slaughterhouse, but he doesn’t remember it the way it happened. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He’s convinced the cow he kept shooting was still alive. 

“Get some rest,”  I tell him, not wanting to argue. No matter what, it’ll end with him saying, How would YOU know? Were YOU there?   

My shift doesn’t start for another hour, but I leave early so his health and the whereabouts of his uniforms don’t become even more of a thing. 

“I’ll be back later. There’s soup in the fridge,” I say, then leave. 

It starts off slow at the petstore and I spend some time skimming through a rare animal care and feeding guide. I read about local species I’ve never seen but hope to one day. It’s funny how you can live somewhere almost your entire life and still not see all of it. Work finally picks up. Some people bring in cages and take them to the back, not saying a word. A few people come in and share strange stories about their pets. Each one sounds like a pain in the ass to deal with, but they always sound excited and happy to tell me about it. All the while, the animals inside the store caw and bark and meow. The longer I help people, the more the animal noises change. The caws become little screams. The meows become nails scratching glass. The barks become the hum of a cement mixer, which softens the blow of the caws and meows. But the fish, god bless them, don’t make a sound. I stay in the aquatics section as much as I can and try to drink more water than I usually do. 

On my way home, I daydream about lying in bed and getting drunk. I’ll make sure Dad has some of the soup I made and spend the rest of the evening alone. It’ll be a good way to end a not-great day. 

When I get inside, I immediately head to the kitchen to grab a beer. I catch something sitting in the sink and stop to look closer. A big clump of vomit sits there, stinking as it crusts over. The vomit leaks red. A deep, blood red. 

I find Dad asleep in the living room, mouth agape. His pants are wet at the crotch and down one of the legs. I can smell the reek of his dehydrated urine before I get close enough to wake him up. He’s warm and damp.

“You’re covered in piss,” I say after shaking him awake. 

“I spilled some beer,” he mumbles. 

“There’s vomit in the kitchen sink. Looks like it has blood in it.”

“The beans were bad.”

I haven’t gone grocery shopping this week. The only food in the house was the soup. How did he not see it?

“We don’t have any beans,” I say. 

“I know. They went bad,” he mumbles again.

It’s going to take a while to clean him up and make sure he’s alright.

“Goddammit, Dad.”

I release some shifts to make sure he doesn’t need to be driven to the hospital in Merced. I feed him more and more. More soup. Sandwiches. Ice cream. Anything. I fill him with calories that can help him fight off the sickness he has. He eats anything I bring him without question. Seeing him shovel it all down, hearing his gulping, seeing the crumbs and drips accumulate on his stubbled neck—it’s hard to bear, and I avoid looking at him, let alone touching him, but I think all the food is helping. He seems more content to just be home, daydreaming. 

He doesn’t need to go to the hospital.

He wouldn’t want to go, anyway. 

After another big meal, he gets up and walks around. Another good sign. I watch him from a distance. He stops and stares at my aquarium. His shoulders droop and relax. I let him enjoy himself in front of the tank while I grab a beer for myself—the last one from the current batch—and lie down in bed. It’s not even the middle of the day yet, and I don’t usually nap, but everything’s catching up to me. Been tired more and more. Maybe I’ll eat a lot of food too and see if it helps. 

I dream about the last tank I had. The one I kept in Monterey. Just a 50-gallon, but damn was it beautiful. All those clownfish, and the forest of anemones I built up. Loved that tank—the one my roommate tampered with after I did that thing, that thing I never should have done. I don’t blame him for not being able to forgive me, but I didn’t expect him to go straight for my heart.  

God, it was terrible coming home to all those fish floating at the top.

I wake up, the memory of my dead fish still fresh, superimposed over my blank bedroom walls. 

I really loved them. 

I get up and look for Dad in his room, but he’s not there, then I check the living room. Nothing. And he’s not in the kitchen either. 

Then I reach my new tank. I watch all the life inside it. Everything in there–the clownfish and damselfish and the green water chromis and yellow watchman goby–all of them are alive because of me. I watch them going back and forth, back and forth, from one side of the tank to the other. 

Like a small town. 

Maybe their eyes will tell me if they’re happy here, but all their eyes are solid black beads. 

Just nothingness in there. 

I move without thinking. I grab a hammer from the tool bench in the garage and come straight back to the tank. I smash a hole in the center of the tank then run my hands along the perimeter of the hole, pulling at the glass and helping the water gush out faster, widening the hole until there’s no chance anything will survive. I leave before the water can finish pouring out, before the fish finish dying, and while part of me feels like this is all a dream a larger part of me keeps thinking I don’t know why I did that other than I wanted to.

The sun is warm on my face and on the new cuts up and down my arms. It’s time to leave, like Dad and the fish. In no time I’m at the edge of town, at Paloma’s house. I never took the time to get to know her well, but I’ve always thought her garden was so beautiful. I look for her but don’t see her, so I enter her garden. The fence is broken anyway.  

Flowers surround me. They’re wonderful. In their natural habitat. Unthinking and free. I walk in further, reaching a well I never knew was there. 

I look down into the well. At first, it’s pitch black, but then I make out a faint figure in a red sweater. My stomach drops and then my body goes numb. 

Dad’s down there. 

It hits me hard. He’s gone. I know it. I think about screaming for help, or calling to him to see if he’s okay, but those things should have been done a long time ago. 

“Dad,” I say. “I think something’s wrong with me.” 

The wind picks up. The flowers and plants dance, mocking me. My hands and arms hurt so much. My knuckles are torn and raw. Glass shimmers in the wounds. I can’t think of a single part of me that I like and it’s a terrible feeling and I fall toward the only person that’s ever been a constant throughout my life. I hear the rushing of waves but it’s me that comes crashing down. I expect everything to turn black, for all feeling to stop, but it doesn’t.

It’s worse than that. 

I hit the bottom hard and feel everything. 

Bones break, but I’m alive. I’m on top of him. He’s still, gone. I have no choice but to embrace him with my broken limbs. Shock helps with the pain. I stare ahead and my eyes start to adapt. The well doesn’t end here. There’s a small tunnel, leading somewhere underground. Maybe, just maybe, I can crawl to whatever that place is. 

But, for now, I hug Dad as my eyes continue to adjust to this newfound darkness. 

It’s been so long since we’ve been this close.

His sickness brought us together.

Featured image by Maria Pogosyan.

The post House appeared first on Los Suelos.