How can you measure the value of a human life? To weigh one life against the many, is this a statement of egoism or a pure necessity? One may argue that within humanity lies a peculiar essence known as a 'soul'. A soul which is worth more than all the gold that flows through the veins of the earth. The soul grants to each human their own individuality and differentiates them as someone worthy of love.
These thoughts may all be idle fantasies, pure fairy tales thought up by great thinkers who wished to differentiate themselves from the crude animals that walk the Earth. After all, isn't every living thing only a being of flesh and blood? Limbs pieced together, separated only too easily by the swing of a butcher's blade.
To take lives, one must be cold. One must despise and mock the notion of the soul. For lives must indeed be taken to set the world right. One life for the sake of countless others. One death, so society can continue on. An assassin must cloud his mind, carry on through the night in a fog of certainty. To butcher a pig, to butcher a human, there is no difference.
For if it is not the case, how can one possibly pay back the cost?
The sharp blade of a heavy knife lands on a wooden board. Sinews are cleaved from flesh, and blood seeps down like a river. An enormous hand takes the meat from the bone with all the tenderness of an artist. There is a purpose for each piece of a pig, for each innard and for each piece of skin. Nothing shall be wasted, everything shall be put to use.
He had failed.
He had failed at being a killer, forgotten the most important part. And he had paid the price. Perhaps the lives he had taken were finally catching up to him, consuming him from the inside out like a man consumes a pork chop.
If a killer learns to care, they give the ghosts of each person they have erased from the earth a doorway into their head. No one can live long once the ghosts invade your mind. He had never cared for a single person, not since the day he was born. To him, people and pigs were one and the same. Pigs must die to become food, and people must die so the world can remain steady.
Each piece of meat was portioned into the correct size. Each individual part was sorted so it could be used later. There was a quick swipe of a cloth, and the wooden surface was wiped clean. The blood that was cleaned off would be forgotten by all except one.
For he never forgot a pig, just as he never forgot a person. This was his way of paying penance for the deaths by his hand. Equally departed, of equal value, but never forgotten.
Do not put one person above the other. Do not learn to care or learn to love. To betray his rules meant his mind would soon vanish with the wipe of a cloth.
The knife fell to the ground.
His teardrops followed, splattering the clean tiled floor with a rainfall of salt and misery. His hefty belly shook with each sob.
His first mistake happened on a cold blistering day at the end of november. Not cold enough for snow, but cold enough for the rain to chill straight through your clothes. He should have left the child alone, left it to die abandoned in the cold.
But they didn't.
His second mistake didn't happen all at once. It was a series of mistakes, occurring one after the other. With every meal, every game of cards, every lesson taught and lesson learned, the child became less of a weapon to be used….
And more of a son.
The butcher had butchered enough for the night. The shop was closed, and he remained alone. The neon open sign flickered apathetically, forgotten amidst the butcher's torment. But not a single person would pass by and enter, just as no one would turn it off. No one was there to hear the cries of the butcher, mourning the loss of his child.
For Viv had been taken, snatched out of his hand before he even had a chance to protect him. Never had they expected to have their paths cross with the one called The Strongest. Had they known, surely they never would have accepted the mission. No one would have. He had been taken away, to a place from where he had no chance of returning.
Because Viv was not 'normal', he knew that only too well. And those who were abnormal were torn apart at that place. Crushed, dissected, and eradicated, as if they would cause the world to end if left alone.
He remained alone, his tears piercing through the silent night. Alone, abandoned, he knew that perhaps this was what he truly deserved. To dare to love, to consider himself a father, this was an extravagance a man such as him could never have. It was a mistake he never should have made.
A sin the world could not forgive.
And so the butcher remained, immersed in his eternal requiem of the night.