* * *
Bill awoke in a cold sweat. He was amazed that his restraints, that were usually strapped down too tight on purpose by that evil bitch of a nurse, Sandy, were loose. He tested the limits of his freedom, and found that, somehow, he was free. He smiled the first smile of glee he'd had in over seven years. His senses were clear of their normal barrage of mind-numbing drugs, so he danced a little gig in celebration. Funny how all the doors were unlocked, and the nurses and orderlies he came across did not seem to notice him as he walked right out the front door. Was he surprised to find a broken down old blue bus waiting for him outside? A little bit, maybe, but he took it all in stride. It defied all reality, and in his mind, that was the best thing in the world for him, for as long as it would last.
The doors shooshed open for Bill, and a fat man wearing a gown similar to his was driving. The bus was half full, with about thirty or so passengers aboard. Most, but not all of them were wearing either gowns or jumpsuits, and even a couple of black and white as well as orange duds were going along for the ride. Just as soon as he took a seat, the driver slammed the bus into gear, and they went peeling out of the parking lot of Shady Pine Sanitarium like no tomorrow.
Which was likely, for all they knew.
Days went by in a haze, but it was a happy haze. A few more riders were added to the bus's bowels, and they were all just about the happiest folks he thought he'd ever seen. Nobody chatted with one another, but no one seemed to mind, nor did it cross his mind to even think it was an odd thing.
And then, almost as if it were suddenly, there was night. The bus lumbered up a bumpy, grassy hill, and parked under an oak tree as old, perhaps, as Methuselah's great great grandson. The occupants all stood and stretched, as one, and filed out of the bus. They just stood around, waiting, and then, again as one, they headed toward the nearby line of trees. Following a narrow dirt trail, they came to a clearing.
In the clearing was a log, sunk deep in the earth like a stake, and next to it was standing a man, a familiar man that caused the smile to fade from each of the fifty men's faces at once. He smiled at them, and only said one thing to them that entire night.
The man held out a roll of duct tape, and tossed it into the air above the rough, semi-circle throng before him. A hand reached up and grabbed it, and that's when he spoke.
“Bind me to the stake, friend, and when you're done with that, douse me with gasoline and light me, will you? My time is at an end, and yours is only beginning."
The hand that caught the tape, and poured the gas and lit the fire, was Bill's. As the fire began to roar, the crowd of men, for the most part, fled and scattered like the embers of The Fire that burned the flesh from the bones of The Torcherer. Some men cackled madly, and tore at their flesh with their fingernails, falling to the ground writhing in puddles of their own piss, or shit their pants. Some even jumped into the flames, and ran screaming into the woods, the human torches that would start the fire that would burn down the nearby town of Wiloughby. Only four others besides Bill stood and looked at The Fire, but only Bill looked into the eyes of the man he'd once known as Ray.
Ray's eyes were peaceful, for as long as he still had them, and that peace, Bill felt, had somehow passed to him. All the rages and madness of his soul had fled, and Bill felt calmer and more lucid than he thought he might have ever had.
The fire in the clearing faded just as the forest fire had begun, and Bill left the clearing before the flames could find their way to him.
In only perhaps the span of a day, Bill could no longer remember his own name, nor could he remember anything of his life before the night of The Fire. But that didn't bother him much. Bill had found his calling in life. He knew it when he first laid eyes on that oversized cleaver in the hardware store -- where he'd managed to get his first job in his new life -- knew with such pure, unabated joy what he would be doing with the next -- damn near thirty years -- of his life. The rest of his life, in fact.
He didn't know when, he didn't know who, but Bill certainly knew how. He kept that cleaver sharpened and shined with the regularity of a fanatic, though he was, in his own opinion, only a zealot. And thus, one starry night when the clouds were lite and the moon was shy, The Beer Hall Butcher was born on the dance floor in a pub on the outskirts of Milwaukee.
In his own mind, he liked to call himself Bill the Beer Hall Butcher, just to give himself a chuckle, but there was nothing in world that could compare with the joy that filled his soul near bursting with rapture whenever he would walk into just the right. . . He couldn't put his finger on what it was that made one place that special one, but once he'd been inside 99 beer halls -- he'd counted ever one! -- before he found just the right one, and did the thing he did better than anything else. . .
Purely for the joy, and nothing else.
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