Work Text:
I.
Nowadays, it's a two-step process. They use carbon dioxide or an electrical shock - that's one. Then, they slit it's throat- that's two. All the pigs are slung up on a mechanical pulley and processed in an orderly row. One, two. One, two. One, two. They die quietly and cleanly.
Kate dies loudly.
'For fucks sake,' sighs Zack. 'Can't you get it to calm down? You're going to stress the meat. PSE meat is inedible. Don't let this all be a waste.'
Kate cries. Pig's don't have human vocal chords, of course, but they can still cry; awful guttural snorting and screeching and whining. Her eyes are wild - black and shiny - and Brad knows with absolute cold certainty that she knows what's happening. That she knows what he's done.
Zack looks at Kate. Kate looks at nothing.
Thirteen year olds don't get bolt pistols. Thirteen year olds don't get carbon dioxide.
Brad takes a step back, and the knife in Zack's hands is red, and Kate's side is red and the floor is red. Kate isn't crying anymore.
The room smells of copper and meat.
'That wasn't so hard, was it? A+, chōṭā.'
Brad stares at the still form of Kate's corpse and says nothing.
'You're such a fucking pussy, Brad,' Zack says tiredly.
Across the room, blood leaks steadily from the slice in Kate's neck. Zack sighs.
'Get a hose.'
II.
It's a bad month.
That's why we seperate them by size and colour-
Work, lectures, study, sleep.
Work, lectures, study, sleep.
Clinging on to the routine with white-knuckled fingers stands him through October, and delivers him through to November.
188. 120. 70. 0. 64.
Work, lectures, study, sleep.
Work, lectures, study-
-so, marketing isn't an art. It's a science. One might even call it psychology. Take this-
He cannot deviate. Cannot blink. Cannot misstep.
Latte, no sugar. Latte, sugar. Black coffee, no sugar. Tea. Coffee with cream.
If he misses one, he's going to miss another. He's going to miss them all. He'll sleep in and might end up in bed forever and ever and ever and he doesn't known if he'd be able to get himself up again.
-the infamous merger-
He's getting firsts. He's a 'wonderful' assistant. He's a 'great' cashier. His academic advisor is 'impressed with by his dedication and hard work.'
Fucking asshole-
Brad rushes home and throws up in the dorm bathroom.
December is the worst.
The cold sets in. It creeps into his bones and sets them icy hollow and clings around his ribcage in pin prick droves.
-when you trade in stock for spesific company, using knowledge not yet disclosed to the public, we call that-
He's curled under his duvet, wearing a long sleeve T-shirt, a short sleeve T-shirt, two sweaters and a blanket. The ceiling tilts dangerously around him. Brad doesn't have the energy to care.
He's still cold.
Black coffee with sugar. Latte. Tea. Cappuccino.
He can't read. Can't listen to music. Can't sleep. If he could focus- if he could take five minutes and breathe- he could get out of bed. Get back to studying. CAC 40 Index-
30F. Cloudy.
He tracks a spider as it crawls lazily across the cracks in his green-glaze vision. The room tilts again slightly, and the spider is still there, fat and content, a bold black paint splatter on the cracked and dusty ceiling.
-and i told him not to do that! Can you believe that? What a nut job right?-
From then on, that's what he does. Work, lectures. Bedroom, spiders. He can't study anymore. His desk chair is putrid cold and his pen keeps freezing midway down the page. But class is easy. He'd be wasting his time. He's still getting top grades. He's fine. He's fine.
-not to be confused with embezzlement, which is spesifically distinct by-
There are three spiders. Brad doesn't give them names. Big spider, little spider, stick spider. One, two, three. The big one builds a web in the corner. Brad doesn't take them outside. Sticky silk string stands destitute. Brad lets them starve and watches.
Counting sheep, counting spiders. Counting spiders, counting sheep.
As we round the end of this deal, and of this year, I want to take a moment to-
Brad remembered when he'd been little, on the library floor, cramped between the bookshelves. He'd read about that man who had been trapped in a cave; licking the walls for water and eating spiders for food. It was a fable, right? He couldn't remember the moral. He couldn't remember the title.
I'm going to die, he thinks with one hundred percent clarity. I have to. I can't go on like this, I can't. I don't want to do this anymore.
100, 100, 0, 0, 82, 210, 0
Big spider crawls along it's web and blurs and stutters on the ceiling.
Golden handcuffs and golden handshake-
The web is half-collapsed in the corner, and the string spells out nothing. Charlotte's web. Remember? The cruel irony of it all. He tries to imagine Kate meeting his spider, but all he can imagine is her lying still, blood dripping down her neck.
Brad doesn't make it to the bathroom. The vomit into the wastepaper basket is all bile.
30. 0. 0.
Stupid fat fucking pussy.
His dad would kill him if he saw him like this. What the hell was he doing?
The exhaustion has become a wild animal. It lives inside him, buries himself in his chest and chews against his stomach. It squirms the whole day long. It eats into the space behind his eyes.
The mirror looks at him, hollow and dull. Purple carves his eyes from pale undertones. A man looks at him.
This man is still ugly, and Brad doesn't know who it is. He covers the mirror with a towel.
All he knows is that he's cold and tired-
To ask if there is some mistake/ the only other sounds the sweep/ of easy wind and downy flake-
And he's so tired of being cold.
Black coffee. Latte. Black coffee, sugar.
January emerges with ugly inevitably, and February slugs in slowly in its wake.
It's the 13th of February. His spider is alive. His spider is still alive. The web still looks empty, but the stupid round dot is lounging in the corner, twitching it's thick black legs with satisfied glee.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have promises to keep-
'It's my birthday tomorrow,' Brad whispers to the spider. 'I'm turning twenty.'
So fucking stupid. Brad has evidently gone swerved past the part of losing his mind, and nose dived straight into insanity.
He didn't really have the energy to care.
200.
His spider was still alive. His stupid stubborn bastard spider was still alive.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And
miles
to
go
before
I
sleep.
III.
When Brad was thirty-three years old, he got a cat.
'Got' was a generous word, in a way. It implied a more active procuring rather than- well, rather than the world's most flea-ridden, chewed-ear mongrel clambering through his half-open kitchen window and upending his bread bin.
Five minutes later, Brad had a very angry cat hissing at him from inside a cardboard box.
Fifty minutes later, Brad had learned that the cat had fleas, gastrointestinal issues, half a tail, only one working eye, and about nine years of age. He had learned she was 'real hardy,' flattened her ears when she was grumpy, had a little brown patch shaped like a heart on her back foot, purred when you pet her just behind the ears and didn't have a microchip.
Two and a half hours later, Brad owned a cat bed, a proper cat carrier (based on the judgy looks, cardboard boxes were a real faux pas), two bowls, a scratching post, a handful of toys and the world's ugliest cat.
He called her "the cat" or "strange creature" or "weirdo" for the first two days. Then he realised that he wouldn't be able to call that out his front door, or list that on a microchip, and relented to calling her Molly instead.
Molly was a really good cat.
She was smart, for one. She knew how to open doors, and short of locking and bolting them, there was no way of stopping her getting in the room of her desire. She knew how to open cupboards and was frightening adept at opening cardboard boxes. (Pots, pans, blenders, mugs and bowls got moved down to the lower cupboards, whilst food moved up to the top shelves). She knew how to use the litter box; how to turn the tap on to climb in the sink and sip the water (which worried Brad a little, because as a cat she didn't seem to understand water bills, or turning the tap back off). She knew where the warmest spots and best hiding places in the house were and how to use the kitchen light switch. She knew when Brad was upset, and when he was happy. She knew how to lie next to his chest and just purr, when he lay curled up on top the bedcovers staring at nothing.
She was a survivor as well. The vet had been right with 'hardy.' She shook of the fleas in a record-breaking month, and gained healthy weight back in three. Brad discovered her fur was meant to be silky soft, that her eyes glowed, that her nose and paws were wet and pink. She was still five miles outside the realm of any cat beauty contests, but she looked bigger, stronger and heart-achingly alive. She yowled for dinner every night like it might not come, tried to dip into all the food bins, and staggered home with voles and mice dangling between her teeth (she had an astonishingly success rate despite the blindness and her age (Brad was secretly rather proud, but much to her fury still didn't let her eat any of them)).
She liked watching nature documentaries (which Brad understood) and football (which Brad did not). She coveted bread and cheese over all else, which Brad found beyond confusing for a predator carnivore, but gave her small amounts on Christmas and Thankgiving in tactical compromise. She would chase anything tied to a string for hours, which Brad wildly enjoyed and he idled with one hand over a keyboard and one dangling a toy rat on the days he worked at home.
-
The knife slipped.
He was cutting onions and the knife slipped. Razor sharp skin slit splitting along the side of his thumb and curling in towards his palm. He didn't yelp. Didn't say anything. Then his chopping board was soaked in his blood and he was dully gripping his wrist - when had he dropped the knife?- and he realised that he still hasn't moved, and if he doesn't move now the blood is going to soak through and permanently stain the wooden board.
His hands were cold.
He was watching the blood swirl as it ran against the tap water and spiralled down in a thick ruby whorl when Molly yowled.
Brad hadn't heard her enter and he'd never heard her yowl like that.
'What's up with you?'
Molly leapt on to the counter and yowled again, loud and mourning.
Brad furrowed his brow, and turned off the water. The bleeding had trickled to a steady seep. Slowly, he reached his uninjured hand up to Molly.
She leaned forward, sniffed his hand, then yowled again, and again, and butted up against his chest.
It took Brad a second to realise. And, oh. Oh.
He reached across the counter and wrapped his hand in kitchen roll to stop blood dripping on the floor while he hunted down a bandage. Then he paused, reached his injured hand up to Molly's face, and pet her with the other.
'Is this what you're so upset about, hm? A tiny little scratch? I'll live.'
He probably should have used a bandage, but he didn't have any, so he layered two band-aids on instead.
And if Molly curled up against him that night, and didn't leave his side for the next few days, Brad said nothing.
-
Brad had had Molly for two years and four months on the night of the fateful call.
'Brad? What's going on! How are you?'
'What do you want?'
'I can't check in on my little brother? Where are you working these days?' Zack asks, liltingly.
'No, to both.'
Zack laughs. 'I asked you a question, Bradley, don't be rude.
Just then, Molly leaps down from the sofa with a mrow!
''Was that a fucking cat?'
'You're probably going senile in your old age. I didn't hear anything.' Fuck, fuck, fuck. Brad digs his nails into his palm and thanks God that Zack can't see his face.
'Yes it was.' Brad can hear Zack smiling from down the phone line. 'This is priceless. You have a cat now?'
Molly meows. Again. Brad wants to scream at her that's she's sealing her own fate, that's she's digging her own grave with her unwitting tiny paws.
'It's my neighbour's. What the hell do you want me to do about it?' Brad asserts smoothly. 'I'm not telling you where I work, so if you don't have anything else to tell me, go away.'
'You know I'll find out anyway, you might as well save me the trouble. You're always so difficult. But, if that's how you want to be.' There's a faint tapping that Brad can't quite decipher down the phone. 'Dad says hello.'
Brad moves his tongue in his mouth, but all of his words jumble and stick bitterly against his throat. His chest hurts.
'Nie mogę w to uwierzyć! A fucking cat!' Zack chuckles and the sound is cut short by the long, dull hum of the dialtone. The line goes dead, and the living room is horribly, unbearably silent.
He gives himself half an hour.
The quicker he goes, the more of a headstart he has, just in case. Just in case. He isn't even sure Zack knows where his place is, but he has no doubt he could find it, probably within an hour if he wanted. And that's in the unlikely scenario that he hasn't already found it. That he doesn't already know.
He slides down the wall till he's sitting on the floor and starts frantically googling. He's already pretty sure of the one he's going to go to, but if there are better options, he should know.
He makes up his mind in ten minutes.
He holds his fingers out to Molly and she trots across the room and butts up against his hand. He scratches under her chin and tries to immortalise how it feels against his fingers. She's heavier than he used to be, when he lifts her into his lap. She looks a little antsy, like she'd rather be playing, but she let's him stroke her, purring. His breathing is too loud in the still living room, too loud and ragged, and his cat is in his lap, and his hands are trembling against Molly's fur, and Kate's blood is splattered up the cream living room walls.
All Molly's stuff is in the bedroom. He'd always kept it all in the bedroom, out of line of sight from the front door. Twelve minutes to pack. Twelve minutes.
-
'-ay, sir?'
'What?'
'Are you sure you're alright, sir?' someone is asking him.
Molly is in his arms, and the chubby black-haired woman is staring at him and the shelter is good, it's good, it's good. No-kill. High adoptions.
'I'm fine,' Brad says blankly. He looks at the woman. She has a blue scrunchie on her wrist. 'She's friendly. And she's fine with kids.' Brad actually had no idea if that was true. Other than his elderly neighbour, and the vets, Molly had never known anyone but him. 'Make sure you take her microchip out. And she likes cheese.'
'Alright, but again, we really need-'
He shoves Molly into her arms. 'I have to go. Don't say you saw me. And give her a new name.'
'Sir, this is highly irregular-'
Brad doesn't look back.
He stops by a charity store on the other side of town and drops of all of the stuff that he didn't leave with the shelter in a clear plastic bag outside. Vacuums the entire house, top to bottom. He's been careful digitally. He's not an idiot. There are no photos to delete.
Brad crawls into bed at 1am and his heart beats out the rhythm; she's alive, she's alive, she's alive.
The bed is colder than it's been in months.
He falls asleep holding a tiny slip of fabric between his fingers. Innocuous. Unremarkable. Untraceable.
He dreams of nothingness.
The next day he tucks the fabric square into his shirts drawer.
Zack doesn't visit until two months later. Cats aren't mentioned.
IV.
Darkness rushes up and up-
Brad?
The nothingness is so achingly comforting and he's falling and falling into it-
Brad!
And he could fall forever, just inky void and-
Jesus, man. What is going on with you?
Zack? It can't be Papa. Mom isn't here. But he can't be late for school, he can't-
Brad opens his eyes.
His arms are heavy. His back aches. His room- this room- smells of vanilla, and the walls are too bright.
He sits up so abruptly he almost tips his chair over. When he blinks, there are eyes a foot from his face.
'Jo?'
'I thought you were a cunning shark,' she says accusingly. 'Sharks hunt their prey down to the end. They don't fall asleep on the job like kindergartens at nap time.'
'I thought we agreed we had retired that metaphor. Also, sharks, the actual animal, do sleep. You know that right? First grade biology.'
'That's not the point. Why are you sleeping like a little baby?'
For all his objections to the little baby part, Brad actually thought it was a pretty good fucking question. Why the hell had he been asleep? He didn't remember falling asleep. He barely even remembered going into work. He had been taking notes, right. Then he had cleaned the top floor. And then... and then...? He had sat down for a second? Why had he done that? He couldn't think. Static fogged his brain in thick clouds. His mouth tasted sour. He needs to figure out what- why-
'Did you drug me?' is what comes out. 'Because that one is definitely a federal crime. For the record.'
'What!? No! I'm not that obvious. Why would I even want to drug you anyway!?'
'To do things behind my back that you didn't want me to see.'
Jo stares at him with wide green eyes.
'If I wanted to do stuff behind your back, I could just wait until you had gone home, Brad. Or wait until you were busy.'
Brad nearly says but I'm the janitor, I'm here later than you, or I guess so, or what devious plots are you pulling behind my back then?" But all three of them get caught up in his brain before they can make it to his mouth, and he just stares at her dumbly.
Jo wrinkles her nose. 'You're being super weird. You know that?'
Brad checks his wristwatch. 8:36pm. His finger brushes against a thin line on the outer edge of his thumb that curls in towards his palm.
'What are you still doing here?'
'David wanted help finishing up a project. Plus, my stupid roommate's looking after a stupid dog, and if I meet it, I'm going to get saddled into looking after it too.'
'You have a roommate?'
'I'm a personal assistant living in California, Brad. Of course, I have a roommate.'
'That's fair.'
'He's a pussy.'
'I had a feeling you might say that,' Brad says, flatly. He stands up. 'You go find David and stop bothering me, then. I'm getting back to work.'
Jo looks at him with something careful in her eyes he doesn't recognise and pauses on her backwards walk to the door.
'Do you have any?' she blurts out.
'Any what?'
'Dogs or stuff like that. I don't know. Pets.'
'Since when were you interested in my personal life?'
'I'm not, I just wondered. Dick.'
'Jo.'
'Sorry.'
'No. I don't have any pets.'
She meets his eyes meaningfully. 'Because of Kate?'
'Because I'm an adult man who doesn't need another creature to be subservient to me to eek some sad enjoyment out of life.'
'I always thought of you as a tropical fish guy, somehow.'
'What is it about me that screams tropical fish?'
'I don't know, you were the head of monetization at some stupid nerd game company. It just seems like that sort of person would have fish.'
'Well I'm not head of monetization anymore, and I don't.'
Jo is still looking at him; observing him. He's a little bit proud, but it also makes his skin itch.
'Go bother David, Jo. I'm fine.'
'Whatever,' Jo says. Her ponytail swishes as she turns around.
'You should get a pet. Be a cat dad or something. It keeps you sharp. And stop falling asleep at work. It's unseemly.'
She smiles sweetly at him (she's clearly way too proud of her use of the word "unseemly." Brad wonders where she picked it up from), and stalks out the room.
Brad watches her go in silence and waits until she's around the corner to stick his tongue out at where she has been.
There's a spider in the far ceiling corner. Brad catches it gently in his hands, and sets it outside to hunt.
Whose woods these are, I think I know./ His house is in the village though;/ He will not see me stopping here/ To watch his woods fill up with snow.
The spider is going to live.
Brad is going to live.