Flashback The Maddening Red

[Petro Lion]

Timestamp: 35th Fall, 495 AV

It was a morning like many others. Petro, once again in his reclusive nature, worked alone, locked in a small room attached to the slaughterhouse. The one window in the square work post was the only light that prevented him from cleaving his own fingers in a sightless mistake. Ever since people knew the bloody job he did between those wooden walls, most avoided risking an accidental peek through the window, worried the guts from fish, pigs and cows would hurt their nightmares. Even Petro's dreams were starting to warn him about the very same issue, though he tried to ignore them most of the time.

His skinning knife kept ridding dead headless cows of their skin and hide, while the large cleaver in his left hand later divided the hooves and muscles from the good meat, all thanks to his quick butchering skill. The poor wooden table, so ruthlessly lashed by countless cutlasses over the years, seemed to cry the blood out of its edges, painting the very same ground where Lion would gain his fair salary every day.

Once another cow was set to go, Petro peeked to the ground to see which bucket would he put the chops in. All the containers on the floor were filled with blood, except for the scaleless fish and the good pieces of venison, being those the only two that needed a higher higiene level. After putting the pieces of meat delicately inside the recipient and making another bucket tilt and spill some overflowing blood by throwing four hooves inside it, Petro hung the leather on a string for the few blood that it had to trickle out.

Proceeding in his work, as usual, he displayed another bucket filled with large fish, of which he would have to rid of their heads and flakes. He pressed the first one with his left hand against the table as he lift the right one with the cleaver, preparing to execute the dead fish. Bam! The head was split from the body in half a second and Petro was free to skin the rest of the fish without having to look at the troublemaking mouth wound that most fish had that forced him to imagine the pain they must have felt when they were taken from their home.

The knife was hovering firmly above the table when the once golden sunlight turned into a red tinted mist, as if all the blood in the room had vaporized.
- Not again... No...
As he turned back to the window to verify if it wasn't somebody tricking him, Petro was forced to drop his knife on the pool of blood in the ground when he saw with horror that the walls seemed to melt in dense scarlet drops. Blood? The room seemed to be turning into blood and flooding with the same substance. Helplessly, Petro knelt down, staining his trousers with the red substance and folded his arms tightly in fear. In a desperate attempt to free himself from the trauma's grasp once more, Lion put one of his hands on the table and stood back up whilst breathing heavily. Step after step, he slowly got closer to the only way in and out of his "office", the locked door. Lion's shaking hand fished the key from his black jacket's pocket and after three exasperating inaccurate tries, the door would be unlocked again. Petro faintly walked out of his office as the pool of blood in his room was now emptied as the red pond stretched through the ground beyond the door. A few slaughterhouse workers stopped their work to see what Petro had, though he wasn't feeling half as chatty as he was in the common introverted mood, and he didn't answer any of them.
- Petro, is everything alright?
In fact, the young butcher avoided even looking at his coleagues, since he had noticed not so long ago that while he had those crisis, he would see them as the muscles beneath their skin.

Every two steps he took everything seemed worse. It came to a point that he couldn't even breathe, feeling he was sinking in a melted bloody floor, though that didn't make him stop his escape. A ledge that led to a less dense pool of blood made him realize he had managed to get to the docks and the sea. After getting on his all fours and seeing his reflection, with red eyes of course, Petro shaped his hands like a shell, picked up a piece of salty water and bashed it against his face. Once, twice, five times, until he was able to see the beautiful mix of blue and green that the sea truly was. The frightening unreality was gone, for now. Turning his face up, he closed his eyes and let the sun rays try to cure him.
- I'll get over this... I will get over this...

[Taylani]

XP Award!

Petro Lion:

Lore:

• Past Trauma revisits
  

Notes: These are comments.

Comments :

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TAYLANI