The Shambling Pariah of Loved Cadavers

The butcher’s cleaver came down with straight precision, separating bone, tendon, and muscle. Mr. Johan Briggs had closed his shop for the remainder of the afternoon. He’d inherited the little butcher’s shop from his late wife’s side of the family. He’d always hated the fact that he’d married into it. Butchering animals and smelling the fresh blood day after day, had turned him off to eating meat, which had been the center of many jokes and passive aggressive comments, particularly from his father-in-law… back when he’d been alive.

They were all dead now. Unable to mock him for his “lack of masculinity.” Unable to butcher him with their words and terrible actions. The shop wasn’t doing well anymore, but that didn’t matter to Johan. It was, and had never been, his shop. He’d just inherited it through a spiderweb of unnecessary formalities. He had recently implemented a change for the shop, that had transformed it into something… a little more his style.

Johan rubbed his hands on the dirty rag, sticky with fresh blood. He walked past the various cuts of meat that hadn’t been properly stored, and hadn’t been given the chance to be purchased by the locals. The discolored meat was now crawling with maggots, but that didn’t matter. Neither did the stench that would have sent anyone running out of the store, gagging. Johan found the stench soothing. It matched his own rotten soul, mangled from years of abuse. This was the cry for help coming from his core, begging for retribution against the abusers that had wronged him all his life. But this wasn’t the truth. The truth was that he’d been rotten and mangled inside from the very beginning… from the moment he came crying out of the womb… a terrible blood-soaked, fleshy thing, destined for nothing good.

Johan closed the door behind him and made his way down to the cellar by candlelight. Down there lay the essence of his true shop: a privately owned business of dead bodies, caked in a still-perfecting recipe of homemade embalming fluid. Johan had bribed the town’s gravedigger to deliver him the fresh corpses of those who had died. Richard Chamberlin, a young man in his early twenties, had agreed to do this after some much needed convincing. It seemed wrong because it was wrong… but he needed the money, if he were to ever escape the clutches of the small town of Rye in East Sussex. It was 1635, and smuggling corpses, though unholy, was the least of his problems. Not when there were much more dangerous smugglers lurking around of the murderous variety.

The corpses were lined up on the cold, stone floor, wrapped in linen. To avoid any suspicions from the other townspeople, Johan had provided Richard animal parts, which he could put in the coffins to be buried in the cemetery, for loved ones of the deceased to visit. Johan had chuckled at the thought of people sobbing while mourning coffins filled with dead pigs, cows, and sometimes chickens.

“So, what shall it be?” said Johan, speaking to himself, as he ran his dirty fingers through his long and greasy black hair. He ran his fingers along the petrified arms of a dead man, lying lifelessly on the table. Johan moved the candle closer, causing a few drops of wax to drip down onto the corpse’s wrinkled, porcelain skin.

You’re doing it again. Those clumsy hands. I told you. You need an artist’s touch.

“Silence, or I’ll burn you in the fire until you’re nothing but a piece of charcoal!” Johan snapped back at the mummified corpse of his late wife, who was strapped to a chair in the corner of the dark room.

No, you won’t. You can’t lie to yourself… and especially not to me. You’ve never been able to lie to me.

Johan stared at his dead, skeletal wife and raised the cleaver in his hand. He wanted to throw it at her face and shatter her skull, like he did every day that he spent down there in his cellar hideout. “Artist” repeated Johan to himself. He realized then, for the tenth time, like a demented old man, that he didn’t have a clue about what he was doing. He wanted to create something stitched and terrible, yet beautiful… something that portrayed his own image to the world, perfectly. Johan put the cleaver down and went upstairs to retrieve his needle and thread, as well as some knives designed for more delicate work. He went to work, slicing limbs, twisting joints, and stitching together pieces of biological matter that were not evolved to be joined. He was creating an abomination, made from the town’s history. Men, women, children… it mattered not. They were all stitched together using strong threads. Johan even doubled and tripled each thread to ensure that this creature… this masterpiece, would outlast the lifetime of any mortal creature to have ever walked this earth. He worked and worked, hacking and combining over and over again, until his fingers could no longer hold the needle and thread anymore. There was a loud knock on the front door, upstairs.

It’s them. They’re growing suspicious of you. Rightfully so. What the hell is that demonic thing? said his late wife, eyeing the abhorrent abomination lying on the wooden table, dripping with old, discolored blood, and fresh, nostril-stinging embalming fluid.

“What a surprise. You don’t like something I did, just like when you were alive. You and your family. Aristocrats, all of you!”

Do you want to continue this wonderful argument with yourself in this disgusting room? Or, do you want to answer the door before someone grows overly suspicious, as to why their local butcher shop has been closed for five days?

Johan wiped his hands on his bloody apron and walked up the stairs. He unlocked the door and looked outside.

“Hello Johan,” said Mary Chamberlin, who was a local midwife and Richard Chamberlin’s mother.

“Hello” replied Johan without opening the door any further.

“There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. My son has confessed something that is… very disturbing.” She paused to study the reaction which she was expecting to populate Johan’s eyes at any moment. The reaction never came. Johan’s eyes were as black and chilling as staring into an endless void of every terrible thing imaginable. “It’s true, isn’t it?” she whispered beneath her breath, as she took a few steps back. “You did something to those bodies. Why else would your hands and apron be stained with blood? No one has stepped foot into your shop for days! Oh, Mr. Briggs… May the Lord have mercy on your soul!” Mary Chamberlin took a few steps back and then ran away in a hurry, constantly checking behind her to see if Johan was chasing after her.

Johan closed the door and locked it. He even moved a chair and wedged it against the door handle, as an additional measure of security. He didn’t have much time. Very soon, he would be met with an angry town, ready to publicly execute him as atonement for his demonic sins.

You’re in trouble, said his wife’s inanimate corpse, still sitting there in the corner of the basement, as Johan made his way back downstairs.

“Silence!” Johan snapped back, while flexing his hands and fingers. “I don’t have much time. I must complete this beautiful abomination.” He’d stretched his fingers out to dull the pain just enough, allowing him to hold the needle and thread once again. Johan worked until his fingers were raw and bleeding all over the wooden table. He hadn’t had any food or water in days, but that didn’t matter. He couldn’t even feel his stomach anymore, or the pain in his fingertips. He was just a vessel… an artist tasked with the gift of birth through death.

And how are you going to raise this thing? How will you animate your stitched collection of corpses?

Johan thought about it for a moment. His wife had a point. He hadn’t considered how he would bring his masterpiece to life. “I need a brain,” he said to himself, as he grabbed the candle, which was now approaching the end of its life. He shone it at the one remaining body, lying petrified on the cold floor. Johan gritted his teeth when he felt the liquid wax from the candle spray his leg. He was being too careless and hasty.

A living brain, his dead wife added. Johan nodded. But even then, there was a chance that it wouldn’t work. He wasn’t a surgeon or a medical professional who knew how to reattach organs to foreign bodies. He was a butcher. All he truly knew how to do was removing organs and body parts from dead animals. Nothing more. Johan suddenly began to doubt himself. Was he worthy of this task? Was he an artist? Or, was he the failure that everyone had always reassured him he was? There was another knock on the door. Whomever it was, they were a lot quieter than Mary Chamberlin had been… though, the urgency was still there. The knocking continued as Johan made his way upstairs.

“Alright! Calm down!” said Johan, as he made his way up the stairs, groaning and completely out of breath. The knocking continued, growing louder and more impatient. “Jesus!” Johan hissed beneath his breath. He opened the door and was instantly flashed by a surge of blinding light, which was shortly followed by a loud thunderclap that screeched through the dark sky. Johan rubbed his eyes and squinted at the drenched young man standing in front of him.

“May I come in?” he said with a pronounced quaver in his voice. It was Richard Chamberlin.

“Of course,” replied Johan, moving over to the side to let him through. He gently closed the door behind him. “Here, let me get you a blanket,” said Johan, noticing Richard’s uncontrollable shaking. It was raining cats and dogs outside.

Richard gagged, almost keeling over on the dirty wooden floor of the unclean butcher’s shop. “What in God’s name is that terrible smell!” he yelled, as he covered his mouth and nose with his wet sleeve.

“Oh… Well, that’s some old, leftover meat that I forgot to put away.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s the stink of those bodies, right? Right! What did you do with those corpses? Answer me!” screamed Richard, stumbling all over the place. It was then that Johan realized that he was drunk. He was drunk with alcohol and guilt.

“Why don’t you sit down before you fall and hit your head?” Johan pulled out the chair, which he had originally used to block the front door. Johan was barely able to dodge Richard’s incoming punch when he turned around.

“Don’t you act all innocent! I know what you are. You’re sick and perverse!” Richard’s long, dirty blond hair was stuck to his face from the pouring rain. The rage burning in his blue eyes was immediately extinguished when he caught a terrible glimpse of Johan’s stretched pupils.

Johan turned the chair in his hand, and wedged it back against the front door. He then sighed and the two men looked at each other, with nothing but booming thunder and pattering rain to fill the silence. Richard’s heart began to pound in his ears.

“You-You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” he said with a soft and determined tone.

“Yes. But rest assured… you will live again.”

“Do you have anything to drink?” asked Richard, as he sat down on the floor.

“Yes.” Johan went to the back of the shop and returned with an old and dusty barrel of whiskey. It was a small barrel that sloshed with each movement.

“I have debt. I got involved with the wrong kind of smugglers. They want me dead,” said Richard, as Johan poured him a cup of well-aged whiskey. Richard graciously accepted the cup and took a big swig. He smacked his lips with delight and then laughed loudly. “I’m a dead man walking. When they can’t find me, they’ll go after my mother.” Richard sighed as his vision blurred with tears.

“That may not be the case,” said Johan, refilling Richard’s cup.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I have a way out and forward for you, if you’re willing, of course.” Johan suddenly had a spark in his eyes that made his exhausted body look rejuvenated and full of life.

“I’m still not following…”

“It’s best if I just show you,” said Johan, walking over to the entrance to the basement and cellar. The wooden floorboards creaked eerily, almost as if they were screeching for Richard to turn back. Fueled by curiosity and liquid courage, Richard decided to play along.

“Jesus Christ!” hissed Richard when he saw what was lying on the table downstairs. His eyes shot to the corner of the room, where he saw the skeletal remains of Johan’s wife, strapped to a chair. Every ounce of willpower begged for him to turn back, but his petrified legs disallowed him from making a single move.

“Jesus doesn’t live here. We are in the bowels of the shop… closer to Hell. There’s no turning back, now that you’ve seen it. And don’t think of it as coincidence. It was you who supplied me with these corpses. It was you who came knocking on my door, late at night, with the predicament that you’re in. Don’t you see? This was meant to be! There are greater forces here at work than just you and me.”

Richard’s upper lip quivered. He had no idea how he was supposed to respond to this. Johan’s demeanor suddenly changed. He was running out of time, and he needed to close the deal before it was too late.

“I need your brain. This creature… this abomination needs a brain in order to function. I don’t know if it will work, but we have to try.”

“We? What do you mean w — ” Richard was interrupted by an extremely sharp sensation throbbing in his belly. He looked at Johan’s extended arm, and then down at his own torso. A pointy butcher’s blade was sticking out of his liver. It had gone all the way in, as if he were made of butter. All he could see was the black handle sticking out of him, like a freshly germinated seed. “B-But… how?”

Johan sprang forward, catching Richard barely a second before he’d have slammed his head into the corner of the table. “No, no. We need that head intact now, don’t we?”

Good catch, said Johan’s skeletal wife.

Johan smiled at her. “Thanks, honey.”

Richard looked at the inanimate corpse, feeling beyond confused. Life faded from him, trickling away. Johan went to work without wasting a lick of time. Using a saw-like motion, he was able to open the frontal bone of Richard’s skull. It was nasty business, yet completely normal. It felt no different than butchering an animal, ready to be purchased and devoured by the hungry mob. Blood poured and splattered everywhere, giving birth to a renewed kind of aroma inside his workshop. The blood from the other corpses had been dry and stale. Richard’s blood was warm and fresh, adding life to what would otherwise have been a basement consumed by death.

Johan suddenly gagged and retched. His hands were trembling beyond control. He was starving and beyond dehydrated. His body had burned through the last of his reserves.

Just a little more, my husband. You are almost finished.

Johan nodded at his wife and carefully cut open the sack covering Richard’s fresh brain. It was still warm and felt alive, as if all the knowledge that the young man had accumulated was still there, trapped inside those grey matter folds. Johan apologized when he was forced to behead the recently deceased. It was the only way that he could flip the skull around, in order to remove the brain entirely, without inflicting any damage. He cracked the rest of the skull open like an egg, and was finally able to hold up his prize. He then placed Richard’s brain inside a solution of embalming fluid, mixed with Richard’s collected blood. “We need every ounce of wit… every crevice of locked away intellect… every bit of wisdom, if we wish for this to have any chance of working.”

Behind him, there was what at first glance appeared to be a bowl. Upon closer scrutiny, it became evident, that that ossified container was not a bowl at all. Rather, it was a collection of bits of skulls that had been glued together, to create a larger skull. Richard’s brain would inevitably expand, growing almost double its current size, due to the side effects of the embalming fluid. Knowing this, from previous experiments conducted on a variety of animal brains, Johan had opted to craft a larger skull, which was glued and later, would be reinforced with iron nails. Johan carefully removed Richard’s eyeballs and tongue, placing them in the same solution as his brain. He then pulled out his teeth and sharpened them, in order to give the final product a more menacing look.

The rooster crowed three times. It was early morning, and Johan knew that he was almost out of time. There was no rest for the wicked. No food, no drink, no time.

“Alas, the Lord Himself is upon me, during my final hour,” said Johan, exhaling sharply with delight. He wanted this to be over. He was in the process of carefully placing Richard’s fluid-soaked brain inside the crafted skull, when a frantic knocking broke his concentration. It was Mary Chamberlin, pounding her fist bloody against the front door of the no longer functional, butcher’s shop.

“Johan! Johan! I know you’re in there! What have you done to my boy? Open this door, right now… or I’ll break it down!”

Johan continued his work with a calm and steady hand. His wrists and fingers had ceased to tremble once he’d come to terms with his fate. He was now, one hundred percent, a death doctor… a surgeon of the afterlife. He wasn’t mortal anymore. He had slipped through the veil, and there was no turning back. Their pitchforks, clubs, swords, and spears didn’t scare him. Physical pain was nothing.

Once the brain had been placed inside the skull, Johan nailed it shut with some old and rusty nails. He worked carefully, in order to not crack the skull. When he was satisfied with the skull’s foundational stability, he draped the stitched and embalmed skin over the bone, giving the large and unnatural skull an ugly and terrifying face. The creature looked like a mutilated taxidermy gone wrong.

The front door began to crack and splinter, as more townsfolk joined in, aiding Mary’s efforts to break down the door, so that she could retrieve her son. Johan had placed Richard’s bulging eyeballs back into the larger eye sockets of the creature’s skull, and had stitched Richard’s tongue into the creature’s mouth. He gave it some much needed, sharpened teeth, and then took a few steps back to marvel at his masterpiece. Johan’s decaying body was able to muster up one final teardrop. He was proud of himself for completing his work, despite lacking an artist’s touch.

I’m proud of you, husband. It’s time. Time to join me in death. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Johan walked over to his wife’s corpse and gave her a hug. He then kissed her, where her lips would have been, had she been alive, and untied her from the chair. He gently laid her body down in her coffin, and kissed her one last time before shutting the lid. He then turned around and grabbed his favorite cleaver and his sharpest skinning knife.

There was a loud crashing sound as the front door burst open, flooding his shop with those that meant to harm him. Johan ran upstairs, not hiding the loud thuds of his footsteps. “Here I am!” he bellowed with rage and pure death burning in his eyes. The townsfolk, armed with knives, swords, axes, spears, and farming tools, were suddenly terrified of their butcher. This was not at all how they remembered Johan. Their shy and weak butcher had truly lost his mind.

Johan lunged forward and swung his cleaver at the nearest person, which happened to be Thomas, the blacksmith’s apprentice. He gave the young man a large gash across the cheek that would remind him of this day, every morning, for the rest of his life. The skinning knife in his left hand found his second victim… a local farmer, who happened to be in town in the hopes of selling some fresh produce at the weekly market. The knife slipped into his ribcage, puncturing vital organs, and leaving him numb, as he questioned his involvement.

Johan sliced, stabbed, and hacked into three more people, before someone finally found the courage to fight back. A young stableboy, barely pubescent, slipped past Johan’s field of vision, and ran his belly through with a dull knife. The momentum was fast enough, and the point of the knife was sharp enough to create an agonizing wound, puncturing Johan’s lower intestines. The boy stumbled back, completely shocked by what he had done. He’d stabbed someone, before he’d even kissed a girl.

Johan smiled at the boy. “Don’t be scared, young man. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of in this life.”

Someone else stepped forward and delivered a cut to Johan’s torso. When he didn’t react, people swarmed him, cutting and stabbing him, like the brutal murder of Caesar. He felt the cold blood pouring out of him as he lay there, looking up at the town whom he’d once fed. Now, they wanted his flesh, pound for pound.

“Stop!” screamed Mary Chamberlin, as she positioned herself directly over Johan’s wound-riddled body. She grabbed the cleaver from his hand and wedged the blade against his throat. “Tell me, that he’s alive. Tell me, that you haven’t done anything unholy with his body,” she whispered. Her gaze was piercing again… the same as it had been during their first encounter.

Johan gurgled loudly as he parted his pursed lips. “H-He… lives. H-He is… more… beautiful than… nature… herself.”

When she saw that he was smiling, Mary Chamberlin lifted the butcher’s cleaver in her hand, and brought it down as hard as she could, splitting Johan’s faded face in two. The townsfolk looked on, horrified, as Mary repeatedly brought the cleaver down on his face, until she and everyone near her were covered in blood.

“That’s enough!” yelled Robert, a baker from the shop next door, grabbing Mary’s arm with both hands. There were murmurs and whispers, as Johan’s unrecognizable body twitched on the blood-soaked floor. The cleaver had not only sliced completely through Johan, but it had also sliced through the wooden floorboards. Johan’s fresh blood trickled down through the gap, dripping down to the basement like scarlet rain. It dripped all over his masterpiece, painting the abomination red.

A deep, growling voice boomed from downstairs, shocking the townsfolk. “No! What… do… we?” drawled the creature, as it sat upright on its master’s worktable. The entire butcher’s shop shook with each giant footstep. “Master!”

“What in God’s name is that?” whispered Robert, letting go of Mary’s arm. The abomination was barely able to fit through the entrance downstairs. It squeezed through with such force, that the walls cracked, breaking wood and shattering stone.

“That — ” Mary’s voice trailed off. The abomination shambled forward, sending everyone but Mary running for their lives. Robert tried to pull her by her arm again. She wouldn’t move. It was as if she’d grown roots inside that hellspawn shop.

Kill her! Kill them all! screamed the disembodied voice of the late Mrs. Briggs.

“Yes, mother,” drawled the abomination, responding to the voice in its large head. No one else could hear the late Mrs. Briggs, not even her husband, Johan… not anymore.

“Richard? Is that you?” said Mary Chamberlin, staring into the stitched abomination’s eyes. She recognized those blue eyes, even though they were bulging and bloodshot.

The abomination standing in front of her appeared to be stitched together from at least a dozen corpses. It stood almost eight feet tall, with arms sticking out of its back as well as its torso. It had two giant arms and legs, that were made of many limbs and bones, stitched and nailed together. Without any hesitation, the creature grabbed Mary by her torso and lifted her up with tremendous strength. It squeezed her so tightly, that all the air in Mary’s lungs was expelled. She couldn’t scream or move, as her bones began to crack. Her physical self was becoming undone, trapping her soul with this unholy horror.

It ate her, chewing her alive… consuming every last bit. The scent of bile mixed with embalming fluid was overwhelming. Johan’s wounded victims, who couldn’t move anymore, looked up in awe at the towering terror standing over them with legs the size of large redwood trees. It had no mercy.

“Please! Don’t!” screamed the local farmer, clutching the puncture wound which Johan had delivered between his ribs. The abomination snapped his back, pulling his head clean off with incredible strength. The rest of the wounded victims fell silent, as they accepted their fate. There was no pleading with this creature. He was not of this world.

Once the abomination had consumed all the fresh flesh and souls within the butcher’s shop, it dragged its heavy body over to the rotten meat, which Johan had neglected to store properly. It ate every last bit, until nothing organic remained within the shop, except for Johan’s mangled corpse, and his wife, who was still neatly tucked away inside her coffin downstairs. The creature dared not eat its former master.

The sign hanging over the shop, which read, Briggs Butchery, fell to the wet and muddy ground, as the abomination made its way outside, barely able to squeeze its way out of the narrow front entrance. The townspeople shrieked and screamed as the horror shambled its way through their streets. The winds picked up, spreading the horrible stench of decay, disease, and embalming fluid, blanketing the living. If you listened closely, you could hear the ethereal wails and torturous screams of those who had been recently consumed… for their souls were now delicately interwoven within the cadaverous hive.

Those who were lucky enough to flee, fled the town of Rye. Those who were not, were devoured like June drop apples. No care, no mercy, as if life had no value at all. No one knows what became of the creature, after the massacre of Rye. Some say that it was finally brought down by some brave warriors, who sacrificed their lives to slash and hack the creature to bits. Others say that the creature finally became undone by its own hand, as it moved too violently and greedily through the streets, tearing its stitches and iron nails, spewing decomposing body parts into the muddy rain. These were all speculations as to what could have happened… but none offered the truth.

The truth was witnessed by one person. Someone with a keen eye and the patience to not panic, while everyone else ran around like headless chickens. It was Thomas, the blacksmith’s apprentice. After his scuffle with Johan, he’d ran out of the butcher’s shop, and had climbed its walls. Thomas loved to climb, ever since he was a little boy, and he was good at it. He had scaled the building and was sitting on the roof. The abomination had not seen him. It hadn’t occurred to the creature to look up. Thomas, his right cheek still bleeding from when Johan had cut him with the butcher’s cleaver, had watched in silence, as the abomination hunted down citizen after citizen, placing their heads into its disgusting, toothed mouth, and chewing them like hollow chocolate Easter eggs. The butcher’s shop was by no means a tall building, but it was high enough for Thomas to see where the abomination shambled off to, after it had killed everyone in its path. It had casually strolled into the countryside, without a concern in the world. It owned this place, and any place that happened to touch its giant, stitched feet. The footprints left behind in the mud were so wide and deep, that it looked as though a dinosaur had made them. Thomas had ducked at the last second, when the abomination turned around one last time to ensure that it hadn’t accidentally missed someone. Its mother had, after all, given it clear instructions on what was to become of the town of Rye. It had failed to spot Thomas, and the poor boy’s heart pounded in his chest, as the creature continued to shamble through the countryside… the ground shaking less and less with each retreating footstep.