The Old Town Butcher

  * * * * *

  Pain once more woke Chuck in the middle of the night.

  Waking in his suffering, with the sweat and stink soiling his sheets, with the pain convulsions stiffening his body and locking together his teeth, had become a ritual during Chuck's nights. The vodka bottle which he carefully marshaled against the pain weakened after each bout against his disease, until Chuck could hardly locate the supply of liquor his aching body required in the Old Town's bartering markets. Liquor was a secret medicine in Old Town, one that had to remain hidden from the Administrators, lest they report its presence in their little notebooks before the doctors arrived to diagnose whatever suffering the liquor masked before installing the drinker as another cog, another component, in the modern economy's industrious machine of caring.

  Chuck swallowed as little of the vodka as he could and leaned back into his pillow hoping to find the sleep that would give him a little rest from the pain flowing through his bones.

  "The pain is very bad tonight, little lamb."

  The lamb bleated sorrowfully back at Chuck from beside the bed stuffed into the residential box's small space. Chuck sat up and faced his reflection in the mirror fastened on the wall in front of him. He expected to see another clump of hair fall from his brow at any moment. He swore he saw how the wrinkles shifted as they grew deeper upon his face. The Administrators and doctors who governed every aspect of Chuck's life in the Old Town had for months overlooked those salient features of Chuck's suffering seen in the mirror's reflection. They had not noted in their books how Chuck's skin turned gray, of how the weight vanished from his arms and his legs. But looking into that mirror, Chuck knew that it would not be long until he could no longer keep his suffering a secret.

  "We'll have to do it soon, little lamb. Well have to do it before they knock on my door when I'm not suspecting. Before they drag me to the hospital and hook me into all their tubes and machines. I have to do the bleeding soon if I'm going to have anything by the time the end comes."

  Pain pulsated from Chuck's hips as he stood from bed. He succeeding in shuffling to the wall opposite of his cubicle's door without tripping over the lamb who nudged against his legs. His cubicle stood on the outskirts of Old Town, affording the single window in that wall opposite his doorway with a view into the leafless trees surrounding the community. Chuck struggled to remember when that forest crowded with gray trees had cast much green. Chuck squinted to peer as far into the shadow between those old trees as he might. He held his breath, hoping to catch another glimpse of those glowing eyes that had appeared in his window since the pain began to pulse through his blood.

  "Don't leave just yet," Chuck whispered through his window. "The little lamb and I are almost ready for you."

  A pair of eyes, points of glowing, yellow light, blinked high between the trees.

  Chuck smiled. "You're still there. You're still one medicine more. We can sleep for one night more, little lamb."

  Chuck shuffled back to his bed. The sight of those eyes glowing in the trees beyond his window eased a portion of his discomfort. Optimism was also a medicine against Chuck's hurts, and he regarded those yellow eyes a good omen.

  He had been delivered his lamb. He still possessed his tools. And those yellow eyes still blinked in the trees outside his window. Such knowledge floated Chuck back into his old dreams.