MicroHorror

A long-abandoned cinema; half a bottle of vodka; for an old tramp called Ken, this was as good as it got. A few other hobos wandered around, getting a warm off the fire (a rusty oil drum that had been cut in half, and then fashioned into a crude brazier), but there was no sense of community; this was a warm place on a cold night, and that was it.

The entire building stank of death, for it had now become a tramps’ graveyard. In a far corner, several large rats were feeding on a corpse, but few took any notice; as soon as they had gorged themselves, the body would be dragged across the room and thrown into the basement, there to rot among the bones of its predecessors; after all, these people were the lost and forgotten of the community; a decent burial meant nothing to them.

Ken drank his vodka, and didn’t give the corpse a second glance.

What does it matter? he thought; We’re no good to anyone.

Torch in hand, the fat man crept into the basement, wrinkling his nose at the stench of death.

Damn place, he thought: but if he could find just one fresh corpse.

A scan with the torch did not bode well; none of these cadavers were less than a week old. He put the torch in his pocket and lit a cigarette.

Things were getting desperate. Business had been slow before, but that outbreak of bovine cholera had been a killer. The papers reckoned the crisis would be over in a week, a fortnight at the most.

Much too late; he needed to keep his customers sweet, and if he couldn’t meet their demands…

“Then I won’t have any damned customers!”

Suddenly a door opened and a body came tumbling down the stairs. The fat man nearly swallowed his cigarette in fright, but if this was a fresh kill, he’d be in business.

Taking deep drags on his Woodbine, he waited a moment before taking out his torch and shining it across the room.

“Ah, a recently deceased.”

A closer inspection revealed that the rats had had a field day; but that was fine, there was still plenty of fat on him.

Pulling on a pair of gloves, the fat man grabbed an arm and dragged the corpse across the room. Out into the alley, and the body was thrown into the back of an old Morris Minor van.

A moment to calm his nerves, and then the fat man got into the van and drove off. He had a long night ahead of him.

Driving a hook into the corpse’s spine, the fat man hauled the hobo off the ground and slid a length of canvas under him. In less than an hour he had fully dismembered the body and carefully lowered the pieces into a vat of acid; it was, he felt, a most effective way of getting rid of a cadaver.

But it wasn’t perfect; for a person’s body fat doesn’t dissolve quite so easily.

This, however, was not going to be a problem.

Midday, and the man was back in business.

“Cheeseburger and a side order of fries, please,” said his first customer of the day.

“Coming up,” said the fat man, pouring another bag of potatoes into a pan of hissing, boiling fat.