The Hole At Smithfield Meat Market
The Hole At Smithfield Meat Market
By T. Dalton
Tom Burns heaved the butcher blade onto the bovine corpse, shearing the ribs in two. Around him, the pounding chaos of metal on flesh and bone, the clank of wooden tables, of meat gawkers hollering their wares and the passerbys arguing over the price entrapped him in the auditory prison that was his workday. It’d been his home as long as he could remember, having followed his father’s profession of butchery in the Smithfield Meat Markets. His father, Bartley Burns, slung blades and sold corpses much the same, till the day an angry bull went loose and impaled him with its horns. The old man lived, but died from pestilence a week later.
This story is a submission to @calluna's Tell A Story To Me contest..
The prompt was: Deep below ground, a portal opens...
Your image choices are always so perfect,setting a sense of atmosphere just right for the story.
The tone you open with here was very evocative of the early life of Thomas Cromwell, the dirty streets of london, the beat of the blade. The punctuated speech creates a instant hook and sense of pace that builds through the story. You paint the setting so well, you can feel the bloodied bustle and buzz of the butchers block.
The descriptions of the hole opening are so vivid, reading it is like its opening up before you. The two levels of horror here just work so well, the horror of the unknown, the hole, what lies below, as well as the very real horror of life in this time period, and the serious consequences of something like losing fingers. These two elements build, and combine so well in the ending.
As masterful as ever!
Thanks @calluna for the prompt and hosting the contest.
And for reading ^_^
Hi dirge,
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Thank you for the continued support, @curie
Lovely stories as always, @dirge. Nice job on the Curie vote as well... You're pretty good. Upvot'd and resteem'd.
proletarian despair
Isn't that what basically los EEUU is nowadays anyways? Peck, Capitalism in general?
Was wondering about the little darkness to the story. The theme explains that for the most part. Great writing skills, though I did see a typo or two. Cheers
Thanks for reading. The 'typos' in the dialog are intentional and signify accent.
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification, mate. Cheers
Hmmm... I think if the story extended a bit further, it would have turned into another Junji Ito-like story. An unsolved phenomena, human sanity and integrity being tested, and more questions remaining unsolved as the story progresses. Almost like a cosmic horror. Are HP Lovecraft's stories the source of inspiration for this work?
I mean I enjoy Lovecraft's mythos (more than his actual writing style, if I'm being honest), as well as Junji-Ito. I guess they inspire me. But I don't ever sit down to try and write like anyone. I just try to take images or elements that are there then put people down and see where it goes.
I had the idea of the meat market as a gruesome corpse processing factory, proletarian dread and suffering, and then some kind of unknowable cosmic horror thing. put them together then see where the plot needs to go.
thanks for reading
I see. Seems your line of thinking is how I also approach my art works. just elements and mix and mash up to see what I can create. By the way, I like the name "Dirge", coincidentally, one of the characters I have in my unreleased and unfinished short stories. Congratulations on the curie upvote! :D
Yikes! A part of me has high hopes for the future at the bottom of that hole.
Your story has captured my imagination. I am sure I will carry it with me for a while. I am already dreaming of further adventures for poor Tom. Hope when he lands it is right on top of old Curtis.
who says there's an end of the hole?
See that's what happens when the story just sucks us in and then ends. The mind wants to travel along the paths you have created for just a bit longer.