Man of the Slaughterhouse
The world nearly ended in the summer ten years ago. Yet nothing really ends. It continues onward without care, for it’s not capable of caring. He has come to see it is nothing more than dirt.
Meshullam is surprised that he survived this long. There is no America anymore. This is now the United States of Nothing.
Now he is Schochet. The butcher. The Torah doesn’t allow for the consumption of blood in any form. Which is why they make him slit throats. They want him to despise this life. They want to break him. He won’t let them.
They have another person named Yitzhak, the son of a Rabbi, to give blessings. He was fourteen when they found him. He is now a man but still more of a child. He mumbles the words and watches with a glazed expression.
Once a month he has done this, like a ritual, for ten years. They want kosher meals. They laugh and schedule it on holidays like Hanukkah and Yom Kippur. Whatever is listed on the old calendars they find in desk drawers.
The last woman looks up at him. They will bottle her fluids like wine and write upon the label, vintage seventeen years. He says a prayer for her. It is far better to die than live in this world.
Kashrut is why they do this. An animal must not be unconscious for slaughter. The main artery cut with the sharpest knife.
He is done for now so he leaves.
There is no sunlight in the buildings. Meshullam hasn’t been outside in days. The windows are spray-painted black. Something as simple as a warm California day is kept from him at butchering time.
When the light hits him it’s miraculous. He lets it touch malnourished skin. The vitamin D deficiency causes him muscle pains. They’ve been keeping supplements from him because he sings to children in Hebrew. He could escape, but there is nowhere worth running.
He led a sheltered life as a good Orthodox man. Meshullam shunned the modern world. As a scholar he used to lecture with great knowledge about Israel. Now there is no audience. The temple at which he once prayed was burned to the ground along with the other churches in town. Every offending house of worship was scourged from the earth. Assimilation was once said to be his people’s greatest enemy. It doesn’t matter. There must be so few Jews now.
The restaurant is all that remains unchanged in a once thriving city. The people supposed to protect them failed. He didn’t know who that was meant to be. He just knows that they never showed up.
A young man called Dusty sees the blood that stains his smock from the loading dock. Golden eyes gaze at him sadly. He escaped from the first attacks and wasn’t turned properly. He is still human enough. Dustin stays here to keep his family alive. They treat them like beloved pets.
A Korean woman named Myung comes out the back door for some air. Dustin hands her a towel. She cleans up the wounds. Myung is a table for businessmen at the bar. They eat sushi off her half naked body. She is covered in small scars where a customer wasn’t generous enough to apply healing saliva.
He doesn’t want to see this.
He walks down the street to the latest pile of rubble. He watched over the years, as one by one they tore down the dead neighbors’ houses, pillaging them for all their treasures.
Underneath the remains he sees a stack of books. He looks for some reading material for them and himself. Among the worn Tom Clancy novels is a Harlequin romance. One look and he angrily tosses aside Vampire Lovers with all the other trash.
Then picks it up again. He shakes his head. Whoever could have wanted this? What kind of person would ever have wished for this?
