He disassembled the pink and red carcasses, following well-memorized lines and then arranging them on white tables. Chuck, rib, loins, brisket, plate, flank, shank. So well-rehearsed these movements, he could let his eyes go out of focus and still cut correctly. The only sounds in the room were the crinkle of his plastic gloves, the dripping of pink blood, and the squelch of wet tissue being moved about. Only when his knives discovered a knot, or a piece of flesh fell faster than expected, did he refocus and he would deal with it quickly. Then he could doze off while awake again.

Once the butcher got used to the smells and the feeling of meat, his work became mind-numbingly boring. Take the carcasses, pig or cow or horse or fowl, slice them up the same way every time, make them presentable, wait for them to be taken and replaced, repeat until the shift is over.

His processing area was white like a hospital room, except for the dots of blood that sprayed out of his control. It was cold in the way that paradoxically feels like your skin is burning, but he wore just a t-shirt, plain pants and his apron. The walls were lined with white tables, shiny and wet from washed out blood. He assigned one of them for all his tools, and the rest were like so: one by the door for taking in the meat, one for cleaning and checking them over, one for butchering, and one by the door again for final preparations.

The only way out of the room was a small door at the top of a small flight of stairs, leading to a hallway that looked dark in comparison to the searing white bulbs that helped him see the meat better.

There was also a small square window on the wall opposite the door. It gave a view of the forest surrounding the slaughter house, dark green firs stretching to a grey-blue sky. He looked at it sometimes.

The slaughter house was quite a ways away from any human settlement, so that the blood and odours didn't offend anybody's senses. He had worked there so long he didn't really notice them anymore, unless it was genuinely bad. That usually happened if a piece of meat went bad sooner than expected, turning purple and black and even green. Mutton and lamb also had a rather unpleasant smell to them.

His daily work piled on the table next to the door, a precariously balanced tower of hairless and featherless bodies. Beef, pork, some chickens and ducks. Oh, there's a goose today. He decided to do the goose next.

He stretched his back and rolled his shoulders as he crossed the room back to the first table. His muscles ached, but he pushed through and went right to work. A goose was at least lighter than a cow.

His spine and arms had a constant dull pain in them, deeply burrowed in the fibers. It made it a chore to hang the meat from the hook high above the floor and sometimes his shoulders hurt so bad, his arms trembled so much, he nearly dropped the meat, but he could do it if he just grit his teeth. At most that was what he did. He never groaned or whined or cursed, as it wouldn't make the exhaustion in his body go away, and it wasn't like anybody was there to pity him.

Despite that, he knew better than not to work, or leave before his shift was over.

He finished the goose, then he took a moment to dig his fingers into the small of his back, arching backwards and tilting his chin up until it felt like he was choked. His spine popped and crackled in a way that almost made him moan out loud, but he stayed quiet. When he turned around, another body was added to the pile as replacement for the goose - another cow. He sighed at himself, a cloud of steam rising in front of his face. He needed to stop slacking off. He could relax and nurse himself after his shift was over.

As he went around the room doing his work, he looked up at the window again. The trees were so very green, with branches like black bones and the clouds behind them like marrow. He shook his head at these thoughts, causing an ache in his temple to flare up. Along with the consolation he would rest after his shift, there was also the knowledge he could quit altogether once he gathered enough money. He smiled to himself as he sliced open a thigh, streaked with white and pink marbling, thinking of all the things he was going to do! He didn't have anything in particular in mind, but he was going to come up with something. He tried to imagine and daydream while at work, but more often than not he would fall back into that thoughtless trance. It was fine. He would do it after it's all done.

He finally cleared out the first table and rubbed the side of his torso, a little groan escaping out as he exhaled. His t-shirt and the apron's band were stained orange by what was left on his glove. He allowed his eyes to close, a gentle black replacing the constant white and red. When he opened them, he was not surprised at all to see the table was piled high with meat again, and the other one was bare. He grabbed the carcass that looked like it would fall down any second and hoisted it to the next station.

Aside from the sounds of his toiling away at the meat, our butcher would sometimes hear noises coming somewhere down the hallway. It was always too distant to make out, but he was pretty sure it was voices, like the garbled murmur of multiple people talking at once. Sometimes it sounded like washing machines, or furniture scraping against floors. He couldn't check because he had work to do, so unless he was next to one of the tables near the door he couldn't decipher much.

Other times noise came from outside, muffled by the window. His room must be facing away from the main entrance, he never saw anything other than trees. The engines of cars pulling up, the bleating of animals, shouting and cursing. Usually after he heard cars, he would get a big batch of meat to process.

The butcher took a moment to wash his tools, before turning back to the pile. Devoid of hair, fur and feathers, everything looked quite the same. The same pale yellowed skin, puckered pores and red stumps. He usually knew what he was picking up and how to portion it, since everything has bones, organs, muscles, usually in the same spots. But there were some carcasses that made him pause. Was this a goat or a sheep? Why is this pig so small? Why is the flesh on this cow so dark?

But he would quickly go back to work, leaving these thoughts to himself. The more issues he raised, the less time he actually spent working. He had to wash the tools, obviously, but even that took a few precious seconds too long.

He dragged a bright pink pig off the table, trying not to unbalance everything else, when he thought he heard a whistle. He glanced at the door, but the hallway was silent. He looked at the pile of meat and furrowed his brows. A small cloud of steam came out of it. Then another. And another. He stepped closer and heard a shrill, wheezing breath, so quiet his own heartbeat in his ears could cover it.

He pushed away the leg of a cow and saw a chest, weakly rising and falling, painfully shivering.

The butcher picked a knife and plunged it into the pale flesh, scraping against the breastbone and a rib. A sound like the squeal of a rabbit quietly rang out, then it was silent again.

He put that knife away and returned to the pink pig, forcing his trembling hands to follow their well-memorized routine. He was going to work, make enough money, then quit, get out, never see this place again.

Eventually his racing heart went quiet as well, and he resumed cutting, slicing, cleaving and sectioning. He was relieved to feel his eyes glaze over, his hands moving repeatedly over a blur of red, pink, orange and yellow shapes, lifeless and cold and, by the time he was done, identical.

He only stopped when a sharp pain like a knife stab flourished in his wrist. He looked at it and saw no wound, but felt a throbbing pulse, radiating all the way to his fingers. Trying to flex his hand made it worse, a swarm of invisible needles dancing in his digits, making it non-existent.

"Shit...!" He hissed through his teeth, speaking for the first time in days, surprising himself with his own voice. His attention was quickly drawn back to his dominant hand, too sore to hold his tools anymore. He couldn't work anymore.

No, he can. He must. He will simply use his other hand until this one calms down. The pain always goes away eventually, or he gets used to it enough to keep going. He has to work. He has to quit, not be fired.

He forced his wrist to twist in circles and tested what it felt like to hold a knife in his non-dominant hand. It was so strange, but with some practice he could do it. He will become ambidextrous with this occasion.

All these thoughts were interrupted by a sound like an avalanche. One after the other there were heavy thuds on the ground, deafeningly loud in the silent processing room. The butcher spun around and saw the first table was toppled over, carcasses of all sizes sprawled on the floor. One of them rose and stared at him with huge eyes.

He looked like him. The same dark hair and pale skin he could see in his reflection in the window or the blades, the same hands but not calloused yet, the same strong arms and toned shoulders. He was completely naked, his skin quickly turning red and prickly from the cold. He stared at the butcher with a look of horror and confusion.

The butcher stared back with much the same expression. For an awful moment he thought this was his replacement, that he was really being fired. He quickly realized where he came from, the state of his dress and what he had to do.

"W-Wait!" The calf said, holding his hands out in front of him.

The butcher swallowed thickly, readying the knife in the hand he wasn't used to using.

"You don't have to do this!!" He cried out.

He charged towards the calf, aiming for his heart. He ducked to the side and he missed, the knife almost getting planted into the wall. The butcher stumbled over the pieces of meat on the floor and almost fell, crashing his own skull against the wall, but he put his sore hand forward to stop it. Pain like an icepick shot through all the way to his elbow, making his teeth grind shut and tears bubble in his eyes.

He straightened up with great difficulty, feeling his spine crackle, and he looked around the room. The calf ran towards the table with tools and picked the largest knife he saw. He stared at the butcher with watery eyes and bared teeth, shaking in fear but still gripping the knife with all his might. The butcher was blocking the only way out.

They stared for a moment that felt like eternity, then they ran towards each-other at the same time. The butcher aimed for his neck and the calf aimed for his torso. He slashed the side of the calf's neck all the way to his collarbone, earning a gurgled scream. He was about to slash again, but the calf's blade in his stomach suddenly moved upwards, gutting him, a motion he knew too well.

They both pushed the other away and clutched at their wounds. The butcher watched the calf grab at his neck with both hands as blood gushed out of his mouth, feeling it rise up like vomit in his own throat. His vision was going blurry and he wasn't sure if it was because of the tears or the blood loss. He tried to keep steady on legs that felt like jelly, when he saw the calf charge at him again. His eyes were covered by the calf's wrist and arm as he plunged the knife into the butcher's forehead, right between his eyebrows.

They crumbled to the floor in pools of their own blood. The only sound was the calf's ragged, gasping attempts to keep breathing. The butcher watched and felt his own blood dribbling out, on his face and inside it as well, down his sinuses and into his mouth from two different directions.

He forced himself up on his elbows. His arms screamed in protest, but he pushed through it as always. He looked down and felt the knife slowly slip out until it clattered on the floor. With a herculean effort, he turned his head to the side and saw the calf was in a similar position. All fours, blood all around him, but still alive.

The butcher grabbed the knife he was given and clutched it through the haze of needles. He will not die here, he is going to quit, he is going to leave.

The calf felt body-slammed from the side, his brain bouncing inside his skull. He looked up to see he was half-way under one of the tables, and that the butcher was straddling atop of him, face completely red. He raised the knife and stabbed the calf mercilessly, mindlessly. It didn't matter where the blade landed as long as it did. The calf bucked up under him, fought to push him off, clawed at his open gut and chest and neck with his nails until his t-shirt and apron were torn apart.

Somehow, someway, he drew his leg between them and kicked the butcher, making him fall on his back. His spine sent a blinding white agony through his whole body, vision and hearing and anything other than pain ceasing to exist for a second. His own scream suddenly filled his ears like a pig's deafening screech, a cut-off audio suddenly blaring out from halfway-through.

Before he could recover, our poor calf pounced on him and sunk his teeth into his neck. His face was a nightmare of cuts, but his eyes were still there, open wide and wild. He felt him sink his teeth into his flesh, then saw his own tendons and veins pulled taut like wires.

He choked out another scream, punching him in the side of the head.

The calf skidded on the bloody floor. The butcher pulled himself to his feet, holding onto a table with one hand and holding his neck closed with the other. Air would not go down and at the same time his chest begged him to cough out the blood. He frantically looked for a weapon, gunk sticking his eyelashes together, when he saw one of the goat legs. He grabbed it and threw it towards the calf's head like an axe, knocking him back down as he was trying to stand.

The room went quiet again, the only sound being the butcher's sputtering. He thought about what a nightmare it would be to clean the place, when the calf lunged for his legs. He pulled him down on his knees and punched him right in the face. The butcher felt his teeth dent inward and pop out of the gums, threatening to tumble down his open neck. Without thinking he punched right back.

Pain became so constant, so omnipresent, the fried nerves gave up trying to signal it. They fought and cut and stabbed and bit and clawed and dragged and kicked and punched and tore with everything and anything at their disposal. Knives, hooks, table legs, pieces of meat, their own meat, their own bones, glass from the window, glass from the lightbulbs, the edges of the stairs. They mangled each-other's bodies until they became unrecognisable lumps of blood and gore and frayed flesh, slipping on blood and pulling each other back up for more.

The butcher drew in a wheezing breath as he got up again. He could feel his brain slipping out through the crack on the side of his skull. He tried to form a fist, but neither of his hands had fingers anymore. They were reduced to uneven stumps, even the bone was dulled down. He looked up at the calf with the eye he still had. He was wobbling from side to side, jaw hanging loose over the cavity of his nose. White steam escaped his mouth and the holes in his chest like a furnace.

He lunged forward one more time, catching the calf's loose jaw between his own remaining teeth, sinking them over his tongue and under his chin. He wanted to suddenly turn his head like a dog, rip it off its hinges, but instead he pulled both of them to the floor. They fell like clay dolls on top of each-other, jagged ribs interlocking, mixing flesh and blood and viscera and splinters.

The room went quiet. They lay down, as unmoving as the upturned tables and the rest of the gore strewn about.

The butcher's eye slowly came back into focus. He looked around his own corpse, stuck in the deathly embrace.

"What?" The calf asked, looking back at him with what was left of his own eye.

"I think we're dead..." The butcher said.

"Oh... Well... What now?" He asked.

"I don't know..." He replied.

He looked up at the window, and then down at the door.

"Can we leave?" He asked.

"I don't know. I... I think so."

"Let's leave, then."

"Yeah."

Neither of them could get up.