A space letting more light through, and down which blood and piss and brown scum and sea-water trickled in no hurry, like a spring oozing from a hillside, a living crevice... maybe fifty feet deep and at the bottom of it he saw parts of security guards. the lady perhaps alive, seeming to wriggle with life but maybe just shaken by the twitching around her, The man split open, you could see the yellow fat through the ruptured belly, a mock layer cake of exposed fat and intestinal tissue garnished by a splintered rib...

The carcass hung in the shop for nine days 'til the edges congested and turned brown in the air. People came and went. They bought wafers of beef, pale veal, ham from the slicer. joint, fillets, mutton chops. They took tomatoes and brown eggs, tins of fruit cocktail, cherries, handfuls of green parsley, bones. But no one wanted the meat. It drooped overhead from a claw hook, flayed and split down the spinal column: familiar enough in it's own way. But they asked for shin and oxtail, potted head, trotters. The meat refused to sell. It was cheap, but people seemed embarrassed even to be caught peeking in it's direction. One or two made tentative enquiries about a plate of sausages coiled to the left of the dangling shadow while the yellowing hulk hung restless, twisting on it's spike. These were never followed through. The sausages sat on, pink and greasy, never shrinking by so much as a link. He moved the sausages to another part of the shop where they sold within the hour. Something about the meat was infecting. By the tenth day the fat on its surface turned leathery and translucent like the rind of an old cheese. Flies landed in the curves of the neck and he did not brush them away. The deep-set ball of bone sunk in the shoulder turned a pale blue. There was no denying the fact: it had to be moved. The ribs were sticky and the smell had begun to repulse him, clogging the air in the already clammy interior of the shop, and he could detect its unmistakable odor seep under the door to his living room when he was alone in the evening. So he fetched a stool and reached out to the lard hook, seized the meat and with one accurate slice of the cleaver, cut it down. It languished on the sawdust floor 'til nightfall when he threw it into the back close parallel to the street. As he closed the shutter on the back door, he could hear the scuffling of small animals and strays. In the morning, all that remained was the hair and a strip of tartan ribbon. These he salvaged and sealed in a plain wooden box beneath the marital bed.