Tying the Knot



My grandfather always butchered his own food. He always said, "I don't need anyone to help me eat!" He was never the humane type either. He would pick rabbits up by the ears and hold them at arms length to play Russian roulette with them. We never really kept bunnies long, at least, with their heads intact. His favorite to kill were hogs.

He would knock them out by hitting them in the perfect place where their skull met their spine, where the spinal chord was exposed for just a few little milimeters, and tie them upside down in his shed. Now, what he did after their squealing faces were pointed toward the defiled floor, I did not know. Mother started to tell me that I wasn't allowed around Grandpaw anymore. That was after we started buying our own, already killed and ready to stew, meat.

When I became an orphan, my mother and grandfather disappeared, I just did not know what to think. I felt lost. I had stolen some of Grandpaw's rope, the rope he tied the hogs with, and that night, they both disappeared. The ghoulish shed winked in the moonlight that night.

When I grew up and got married to the love of my life, we discovered that I still had the deed to my grandfather's house. Mom had saved it for me. So, of course, we moved there! The cozy little home had rotted and started to deteriorate by the time we had arrived, unfortunately. However, Grandpaw's shed stood in the back field, leaning to one side, looking as sinister and grim as it probably looked to the poor hogs that had occupied the inside fences surrounding the building. There were no hogs there now.

"It IS my Grandfather's house...can't we stay and fix it up?"

Now how could my loving husband say no to me? Mending the dying house was not much of a chore, since I was with my husband.

"What's in that shed, honey?"

"I don't know dear, but it creeps me out." And that was all that was said about the shed. Though I always caught my dear husband glancing through the kitchen window at it.

No sooner than we started fixing the house did I realize that there were no animals here. No neighbors. No mice. No birds. The unlively feel matched the appearance of the shed. I thought that was strange, but maybe I should have been thankful. No loud noises, no mouse holes, no shrieking pigs in the back. Until the only living thing that actually mattered to me disappeared. Just like my mother. The only place he could be was the shed, for the rest of the house was still half-painted and empty. Perhaps he went to look in, no matter how much you love someone, you still have curiosity.

I walked up the solemn concrete steps and peeked into the door, careful not to knock it off the one hinge it was attached to the door frame with. A scent of foulness slapped at my nostrils. The only light that managed to break through the darkness was through a broken window and a few broken boards in the walls. The light landed upon a...

The next thing I remember was the bloody concrete floor. But I wasn't touching it, just facing it. Upside-down.

"My love?" I managed to choke through the thick stink of rotting flesh.

A noise cut through the stiff air. A grunt. A single, bitter grunt. A clash of steel as metal was dropped onto the crumbling floor.

"Grandfather?" I asked. My eyes widened and started to digest the horror that surrounded my helpless body. There, in the window light, was my dearest companion, my husband. Sitting right next to my beloved mother who I missed so dearly. She was leaning forward. "Momma!" I exclaimed. I thought she was standing up to come untie me from the metal hooks I dangled from. The sculpture was knocked onto the floor, a pig body, with a human face. "DEAR GOD!" My eyes could not believe what they had just stumbled upon, and so they could not bring themselves to close. To shut out a nightmare I have seen.

"Like it? I say, I quite 'njoy makin' 'dis here creations. Since you done stole my fuckin' rope, I been havin' to use damned animal parts to make new ones," crackled the voice.

It wasn't until then when I felt the ooze of organs wrapped around my wrists.

"Reinforced wit' pig hide," A cold chuckle followed the disturbing statement.

I twisted my hands but I knew I couldn't get out. I fixed my gaze on my adoring husband, now leaning on the human-pig that was once my mother. He had fallen forward also, but his body was no longer limp. He propped his gorgeous head up and the dejected light illuminated his eyes perfectly. The cheerfulness that filled them not even 24 hours ago, had been replaced by dizzying feelings of confusion.

I watched as Grandpaw took a butcher knife to my husband. I watched as my husband was skinned alive. I watched the life fade away from his eyes. I watched his beautiful face, still beautiful, as it was sewn on to a rotting pig's body. Leather thread in and out of the skin that was used to cover a perfect skull. Oh eyes, you have failed to cease the show of horror and block it. Why wouldn't you close?

"You know, I always need help gettin' me some food," I was told as my leather and intestine binds were released and I was lowered to the floor. "This one still needs fixed up." He kicked the butchered man in the floor. So, life alone too much for you now? You didn't need help when I was young, but now that I am perfectly alone you want my help?

I reached to the wooden table on my right. I felt the cold handle of my butcher knife in my hand, and I started to swing...