Chapter One

The theatre sat silently as I watched on. Dark and warm; both in temperature and aesthetic, the walls seemed to disappear and the only thing in the world is the glowing silver screen. Faces jump out, scenes explode and indifferently the ambience remains the same. I sit in the middle seat, of the middle row, watching with my feet up on the head of the chair in front of me, popcorn lazily plotted on my lap, and my eyes glued to the screen. "See the amazing thing about theatre's is the guaranteed silence, the absolute certainty of being enthralled by the picture. It's almost like we ignore everything else outside of the room for 120min to see a show that won't impact our lives in the slightest. We could break this silence but then threaten both ourselves and everyone else in the theatre's experience and interpretation of the film. And too we threaten the image of the average patron of the theatre, as well as our own self image. So do these same rules apply to an empty theatre?" The rows led on for what seemed like forever, red velvety seats, sleek and beautiful, but most importantly entirely vacant. "Do any rules apply to an empty theatre? An empty theatre is a place of chaos, a place where the unruly find themselves, it is very simply a place, for the placeless. A home for the homeless, open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year give or take." The screen goes black and the lights flicker on. "But how might we spend the hours when the theatre is closed? What happens when the show is over? Where do we go?"

I make my way to down the unruly theatre halls as teens and adults, drunkards and puritans unthinkingly congest the foot traffic. Passing signs for movies that look half interesting, or almost entirely unappealing. "The truth is we may all find ourselves in a theatre that is entirely empty at some point or another, but the only question is when you get there, have you ever seen a full one?" Garbage bins overflowing, pizza boxes scattered across the ground and a spill like a small lake of acid sat a terrible hybrid of smells that attacked all the senses, and from the washroom reeked a lingering thought of antiseptic, which the sticky floors seemed to contradict. I walk to the sink and wash my hands, another man walks out of the stall behind me with a look of embittered victory. He'd seen a hell worse than any either you or I could fathom, a greasy squalor coated in butter with kernels at the center of a giant floating pile of refuge. "The truest souvenir from a trip to the movies kids, is what remains." I say with a sly smirk creeping onto my face. "What's that buddy?" He looks at me with an unnatural calm that only comes before a storm has passed, though by his stench I'd say we'd just missed the storm. "Well in your case, the souvenir is sitting in your colon pal." He chuckles dryly at the realization I was talking about his shit.

"That's something nobody can or will take from you." I say. He stands staring forward with an almost thoughtful look on his face, the calm was wearing off and the uneasiness was beginning to set in. Discomfort would creep up his spine in waves. "Good point," He turns off the tap, and then his back to me. "Nice talking with you." As he begins a walk I turn and slam his face against the air dryer on the wall. The shock begins to set in before I pull his head back and slam it again. That god awful noise barely muffles the dry packing sound of meat slamming against a wall. Barely a word is said, or shared in this exchange. Nothing but the monotone of flesh crashing against tile. The flickering and sparse fluorescent bulbs glowed with an eerie green tint that cast his face, or what was left with an ominous shade. It was like something out of a movie; I simply drag his twitching husk towards his stinking stall and rest his head upon the piss stained seat. He murmurs a word through broken teeth but I hardly recognize a vowel of it, not a consonant to be heard. All that's left is the putrid gurgling when I dunk his head into his filth and watch as his body goes limp and flat.

I leave his body doubled over the bowl with his head remaining in the toilet, and I make my way out of the stall. "Don't read me like that. You're as much to blame as I, sitting there with your moral turpitude in the fantasy land of objective morality and your heightened understanding of it." I rinse my hands in the sink and stare down my mug in the mirror. "You could've stopped reading, just as I could've stopped slamming. For all intents and purposes he would've lived a full and fulfilling life, returned to a family, a partner, and continued out his blissful existence until the end of time. But you didn't," I smear the bloody water across my jacket to dry my hands as I make my way to the door. "You just kept on reading; Which means you're as guilty as I am, partner." The door seems to move on it's own as I make my way through it. The main area of the movie theatre has always been an almost pavilion of sorts, an area for people to gather. Here on some ambiguous day, in some ambiguous year, out of place and out of time the only consistent thing is the swarms of people divided by: Culture, Class, Comfort, and Company. Among all the dynamic and fluid backgrounds and scenes, shapes and sizes, when it comes down to it, that's the only thing that remains static about these places. And the squalor of the restrooms, but that's a given for any public restroom, no matter the era.

The journey home is a bus called the 29A, down a road at 11pm in a city with glowing and hideous stores lining each and every street corner you begin to feel like the city is jumping at you from behind your safe space. Here, in the third row to the right in the back of the bus, the empty bus that you ride every day, for the rest of your life. Gum beneath the seats, and if you feel the grooves of the leather seats you can feel knife carvings of cartoons and symbols that mean something to someone somewhere. That green light seems to follow, and washes over me with a sense of almost daunting persecution. "I mean why should I, a regular run of the mill citizen, feel haunted by these lights? Does the city in someway know and do this out of spite?" The response of silence was almost more annoying than the buzzing of the lights themselves. Handles and hallway, that's the best way to describe your view from your seat here. Nothing really to see or consider, until you look ahead to the only other person on the bus. "What was that?" Asks the driver, her voice barely carrying over the slow droning of the wheels turning and the minor shaking of the bus. "Oh nevermind ma'am, I was on the phone." She looks away with a sense of fulfillment as she is no longer inclined to speak to me, and I look forward with a sense of amusement knowing how impossible that excuse would be to believe someone plainly speaking with their senses entirely unattended to by sensory excitement, no phone on my person. In fact, "It'd be rude to bring my phone with me to the movies." Sadly my excuse had warded off any more interaction with this seemingly nice driver.

I reach my stop without any delay, same 20min drive before reaching my stop, no traffic, no change, no excitement, no fun. I walk out the front door of the bus and thank the driver before making my way to the apartment. Not too shabby, not too cheap, not too old, not too sleek, that was my first thoughts with this apartment. The entrance to the building was nothing flashy; a hallway in an endless number of hallways trapped in my psyche never to escape, nor be remembered. The walk up the stairs gave me time to assess, the walls are coated in a thick and pungent stench of paint and cleaners, though the stairs are wretched and filthy with whatever might've been on the last person's sneakers as they made it up the stairs. "To imagine living in such a place was absurd, but to actually be the one living in it? That on it's own is a hell I wish upon no other than myself." My shoes stunk a horrid odour of death, and somehow I'd yet to even test the limits. The boundaries of what I can do, and what you're willing to read; Can I ask, are you comfortable? I should hope not.

You pass all manner of vagrants and simpletons you'd never meet if you hadn't been forced to share such an enclosed space as an apartment building in a living complex. This building was so full of people, you could the breathes of your closest neighbour down your neck at any given turn. You could smell the sweat as it's being worked up, clinging to every given surface like vapours while cooking; it was like the whole building was alive and breathing. It was almost ironic how the bluish grey walls felt so suffocating and claustrophobic when you could feel them breathing at the same time. Like being trapped in someone's lungs during a cardio workout, the word moist is something you'd get accustomed to. A scruffy man stood at the start of the staircase smoking a cigarette in tattered and worn clothing. An oblivious smile is all he can muster to pretend as though he is acknowledging your existence. The truth is, behind those doped up eyes he would acknowledge a dresser if it were so moved in front of him at a steady and consistent walking pace. Doped out of his mind in a blissful ignorance I pass him, and the pungent odour of his cologne: Febreeze.

Up the stairs I walk as my hand follows along on the railing, the incandescent bulbs in the stairwell manage to help my headache let up. I was growing weary of existing already and simply wanted to get to a safe place to rest. I walk past a woman crying in a doorway by the stairwell as I walk. I continue up until I finally reach it, room 233. A little bit of prying and the door was open just as it always is, and I make my way into the apartment. Futon couch, block TV, video game consoles in the wall unit with the TV and a stack of movies on the coffee table. Of all the apartments this one had the least annoying clutter, and was admittedly the most tidy. The bathroom was well organized and the kitchen was well stocked, as for the bedroom there only remained one problem. So I stop off in the kitchen and begin searching the drawers, it wasn't long before I stumbled upon the scissors I was searching for. Armed, I made my way to the bedroom. Wooden desk, books on the shelving unit above it, monitor below, dresser with cluttered vhs cases and a bed with all the fixings: Cotton sheets, cotton covered pillow and the owner lying in the bed. He didn't open his eyes until the scissors were in his trachea and at that point, he wasn't able to talk. I simply sat as I watched the crimson horror wash over him and the colour drain from his face. The sheets being cotton meant the stains would not come out so as he lay there hemorrhaging violently from his throat, I begin taking off the fitted sheet and wrapping him in it.

"My best suggestion when finding a new apartment is to cleanse it of the kind of unwanted things left behind from the last owner." I say dragging the wrapped corpse of the ex tenant off the bed, he hits the ground with a meaty thud and I chuckle to myself before dragging him towards the bathroom. "It's important to know how to clean up after yourself, otherwise your house becomes something similar to those portrayed in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses. Meaning any form of guest visitation would be under the pretense it is a one way visit, and that would most certainly kill your social life." His face begins to scrape against the sheet on the tiled washroom floor, rips populating across the sheet. "But it's also important to keep things fresh, don't develop too rigid of a system or else you'll get bored. And becoming bored of committing atrocities is indeed a fate worse than that which meets it's victims." His body slumps against the porcelain bathtub. "Just look at this place, this indeed the home of a conceited asshole." I step back and make my way to the kitchen. "Now the main problem of not being quite too accustomed to a new apartment is finding a cleaver, or a butchers knife," Top drawer, bottom drawer, left drawer, knife block, rifling through the disorganized plethora of hiding spots only tug on the inherent loathing of the past resident. "another problem however is when you need to know what to do with the body, now the expectation is you are of course competent however the incompetent are welcome to attempt this method."

Gleaming like a silvery trophy on the highest pedestal lay a well sharpened, well taken care of meat cleaver sheathed in a drawer. "Now how could something so perfect, be in the home of someone so utterly disappointing?" I snatch it out of the drawer as I march towards the raw meat slumped against the side of the bathtub, head lying flat against the rim and arm stretched over in a lifeless dangle. Staring blankly with a glazed over look of indifference, I can't help but fight a smile. "Now in most cases I'd suggest a bone saw, but when the opportunity arises to use a chef's tools for chef work, well....." I drop the sheath of the floor and flick on the lights. "I'm never one to shy away from a challenge." I grab his hair and press his head against the end of the tub, before reaching to stretch out his arms and legs. "Now it's important to remember that clothing will only get in the way of the fun, and we have hungry mouths to feed, namely me." I place the cleaver down on the sink as I take off my jacket. Rolling up my sleeves I begin to check under the sink for gloves. "When faced with a question of cooking styles I always fall back towards the Sunday morning variety of meals. Some bacon, some eggs, the usual, but we work with what we have so I hope you don't mind if I make my own bacon and eggs." Armed with a cleaver, pink rubber gloves, and a plate from the kitchen, I began to prepare my meal.

"It's important to consider how much food you're going to eat in one sitting, because if you cut too large of a piece you're eating miniature steaks as opposed to delicious strips of bacon." The cleaver cuts deep and the blood begins to squirt violently in a blasting steady stream hitting everything in sight, scraping against the bone past a web of veins draining out and coating the meat in viscous sauce of flavour. "Then again if you cut too little, well you're devouring two to three pieces at a time just to satiate the hunger and that's not very ladylike now is it?" Scrape and lift, I begin to peel off the whole of the forearm's meaty flesh. "Fat fuckers are a gift to the hungry, cause in their death there's a cow to reap. But the muscly types only pose tougher meat to the hungry, you can only imagine my disappointment to find that this sorry bastard was more muscular than most." Tracing along the creases in the inner elbow, meeting the middle of the forearm and sliding upwards towards the vein. One last cut around the whole of the wrist and out comes a flat square of raw meat ready to be cooked. "It seems putrid but have you ever seen how they skin deers? Or bears? Rabbits, for fucks sake. It's a sick world of god awful cunts who would skin an animal so small and defenseless for the sake of testing it's taste and turning it into an article of clothing when paired with the rest of his family's hides. Consider this taking back in the worst of ways, and we haven't even gotten to dealing with the cock." I swipe downwards and lodge the knife in the side of the shaft, blood splatters but I just tug it out and swing again. "The cartilage is soft, but is a bitch to cut through with simple swings however..." I swing once more and lop the it off, it hits the floor of the tub limply and squirting juices across the sides of the tub. "Not necessarily impossible, certainly more satisfying when that happens."

I look up and realize something terrifying. "When making bacon and eggs it is so hard to remember the latter, the excitement that comes from the former is too entrancing." I stand up and feel pins & needles in my leg, asleep already. My blood soaked face is caked with sweat already, for my first time out this proved to be far more tasking than expected. "See it's important to have a degree of control, both in a bodily sense but also, control of one's mind." I begin towards the kitchen in a limping hobble, sharp vibrations shoot through my leg each time I step on it. "Pesky things like remorse are so frivolous I suggest you forget them as quickly as you forget about a child in a car on a hot day, leave those lingering slices of wasted effort expended to people of a higher caliber. Now people like you and I? We aren't of the same breed. Remorse only leaves for sleepless nights and lingering delusions of grandeur, and I for one am not easily disillusioned." Drawers, I dig through the one closest to the fridge to find nothing of use but rags and ziplocks. I wipe my face with one and realize he may have leaked more than I could recognize, though the hunger washing over me was tempting me to lick the rag dry. "Now personally, morals are another wasted effort to expend. Why limit yourself when others are so quick to cheapen what you value? It takes all the fun out of life if you're going to waste your time wondering if you fit some kind of standardized understanding of acceptable behaviour. Most polite people will tell you gutting strangers is an obscene act to be abhorred, I'll just tell you my favourite spices to cook the intestines." The drawer to the last's left was more promising, a flaying blade in a sheath, an ice cream scoop, and a metal bowl. "But there's one thing someone with our affliction should be steadfast on preserving, something almost everyone can find agreement on. Always keep hydrated and remain well fed, on what is none of my concern. Though infant's blood like viel, is so much sweeter." Sadly the fridge held nothing but condiments and water, a healthy diet for an anorexic teenage girl, not however fitting for my dinner tonight.

He'd been laying in the tub for twenty minutes now and the blood was beginning to pool, he was marinating. His flesh sat in the pool, caking in the blood. My hunger only grew with such a foul sight. I grab the sides of the tub and drop on top of the fleshy skeleton, with clumps of flesh sparsely populating the track of bones and muscle too tough to get at. Sitting in his lap his company became more and more appreciated, though I think that was easier to say from where I was sitting. "Now when it comes to preparing food you need to be sanitary," I reach for the ice cream scoop resting in the bowl in my hand, and press it against the side of his head. "if someone were ever to ask what part of a person tastes the best? Most would be prone to respond with the thighs, the breasts, ect. But in truth, it's those hard to reach parts that taste so delectable amongst the rest."

I close his eyes and rest his head back, before reaching into the bowl and grabbing the knife. "You start by removing the eyelids to make your job far easier." I sink the knife into the top eyelids, sure not to puncture the actual eye. I do the same with the bottom and drop them in the tub to float, I sit back and look at my handwork only stared back at by his dead eyes, his left eye stared bloodshot as I sunk the corner of the scoop into his tear duct. I pressed my thumb against the side of his head and slowly dug around until I felt the cornea snap from the pressure. That smell of leaking fluids from behind the cornea only made my mouth water, so I wiggle further until the eye begins to squeeze out of the socket and into the bowl. As for the next eye, I simply did the same. "Now that smell is really what's the hardest part about this job, much like other types of uncooked meat. You can't help but want to help yourself to a taste, but a taste is never quite enough for this kind of thing." I reach into the soup of blood and entrails, lifting up a mound of meat, a pound of flesh. My teeth sink in deep and the texture hits each nerve in my mouth like a cascade of explosive fireworks in the shape of a beautiful shape in the sky on the fourth of July. "The hunger doesn't set in quite like the first time, but that first taste, that first beautiful taste; Well fuck. Nothing can beat that, no girl nor sex, nor drug, nor song could ever touch that feeling of sinking your teeth into the underbelly of human nature. And it's chewy and overtly grotesque shape, so horribly detrimental to your minds perspective of the flavour and the texture." I look up with blood dripping from my lip and the taste dancing in my taste buds as I stare on. "You find me disgusting and yet you hunger more, deep down in that subliminal way we all have to. Like a fiend you're addicted to hearing my intrepid and thorough description, like an addict balancing the benefits and the inherent downsides of their drug of choice, you listen subliminally with an insatiable hunger. One I am more than happy to feed, because I--'' I say pressing his ulna and humerus against his hip. "am more than happy to share my dear, don't you mind in the slightest."

Teeth digging past the thick muscle and meaty flesh, it sinks in and presses against the bone with a force. I could imagine him screaming if he were even alive. "Could you imagine the noises he would make?" I say swaying his arm to the right and watching it slam against the side of the tub. "The screams he would cry and the way his voice would carry?" I laugh to myself in a bitter content and sit back in the bath, resting on his knees as the sunk deeper in a pool of his blood and juices. "Maybe, he would just laugh. Maybe he would cry. A creature like him I sense a great deal of narcissism and I couldn't quite imagine this narcissism carrying into anything less than an appreciation of his tenderized flesh." I grab the side of his neck as I bite the side opposite to my hands. Tiny bits of flesh gripped loosley, and he sat silently as I sunk my teeth in deep waiting for a response of remorse or agony. I stop only to look up. "See that's the curse of the corpse, they don't have that indignant response that the living person can muster so easily; So comfortably that it comes almost second natured." I lean forwards and sniff the scruff of hair on his skull, his face a mangled mess of stretched flesh with bite marks and emaciation, "He looked like death, and that was even more arousing." I pulled on his hair and felt as the cap of flesh and hair loosen, as I bit his boney fleshless neck.

The bathroom door flung open with a sense of lackluster lack of care as I carried out my snacks in ziplock bags to be put in the freezer. "Uncooked meat is the snack of those enthralled in their actions and those unprepared for sickness. I however...." I say as I turn, "I am neither of." The doorbell rings and I shudder with incredulous displeasure, coated in the blood of these lovely victims. "Victims you ask?" I begin walking towards the door; I make a lazy reach for a rag to wipe the blood off my hands and face as I continue towards the door. "You're forgetting about the guy at the movie theatre aren't you? And you sat judging me as I bashed his teeth in." I toss the bloodstained towel on the ground and fling the door open. Staring back at me was a guy looking with concern in a grease stained wifebeater, piss stained boxers and a scratchy bald head outlining his hairline with a scruffy goatee. In other words this was my new landlord. "Hey, buddy. Where's Scott?" I smile with my bloodied teeth and coated jeans with glee. "Oh Scott," I press my forearm against the doorway and lean into a chuckle, "yeah he's getting me to housewatch for a bit, don't worry he left me the rent." He looked back with an air of concern so I just stared back with my smug look of glee. "I mean I can call him later, but right now I'm eating. Is it fine if I get back to you later?" His beady little tried to cut through me like a dull knife in steel, the weak willed are adorable when they try to intimidate. He shrugs and nods then walks away, and as for I? "I close the door," It slams behind me loudly, "and then I pack up food for tomorrow. I do have to get into work at some point, Scott seems like the kinda guy who'd appreciate it."