Who knew he would wake up in a field of blood? Where was this place? Who on earth could know?
In fact, to understand where he was, turning his head would be enough. Everywhere was covered with blood. This building was intense, yet it still felt catastrophic in a way. The walls were molded, and everywhere already had a strange smell of death.
Lim could only understand what was going on right after hearing a scream. That scream was so disturbing that all the blood within Lim had frozen. This couldn’t belong to a human, but an animal. Something was deeply wrong about this place. Lim could sense this deeply.
He directly looked at the light coming from straight. There were big machines and cupboards in the middle of the building. And behind them, there was another room where the light was coming from. He wanted to go to the light, but he hesitated. The scream had come from there, after all. He could never know what was waiting for him there.
What was this place seriously? Was it a tomb? Was it an abandoned school?
He had no other choice but to turn around and try to find another door. However, there was only one door and one path.
Eventually, he slowly walked towards the door, and with every step, Lim encountered another bone. Those must have belonged to the animals. But why were there too many bones here?
After a moment, a terrifying idea came to his mind. He wished it to not be real, but with every step, he just saw how right he was with his instincts. This place was just a slaughterhouse.
Some of those bones still had some meat covered with. This deeply disgusted Lim. Who on earth was causing this disgusting terror here? Everything was damned here.
When he finally arrived at the door, the light was intense. He had to close his eyes to protect himself. He opened the door before this yellow light swallowed Lim whole.
The inside wasn’t very different than the other room, though. The only difference was the lamb that was freshly slaughtered by a butcher. The first thing Lim encountered was that lamb itself.
Its eyes were looking empty. There were no signs of life on its slaughtered body. Its blood was everywhere, too. Even though the animal was already dead, the lamb was still looking as if it was in pain. The butcher, on the other hand, was not reacting to that even a bit.
Indeed, there was a butcher standing next to the lamb. He was an old man who had gray hair, yet his hair was also covered with blood that Lim almost thought that the man had a red hair.
This scene was more than terrifying for Lim. He quickly tried to return to where he came, yet the butcher had already seen him entering. Even though he was wearing a mask covering his half face, Lim could sense that the butcher was smiling. This froze Lim’s blood.
“You finally came, son.” The man said. Lim was terrified by his reaction. How could that man smile in such terrible situation? Was he a psycho?
Lim tried to open the door back with all his strength, yet the door wasn’t opening anymore. By that time, the butcher was also coming towards Lim.
Lim, with a survival instinct, ran around the corner to desperately find an exit. There should have been another door that allowed the butcher to enter here. Yet, he couldn’t see any.
The butcher was walking slowly with the knife he was holding. The knife still had some pieces of the lamb lying on the table.
Lim’s all body was terrified. I am a human, he thought. Why would he slaughter me like a lamb? Was this a dream, he wondered. He looked at his hands just to see everything was real.
He wanted to speak, yet his whole body was frozen. He couldn’t even scream like the lamb that screamed a while ago.
Don’t come, he wanted to say. Yet, he failed as if he couldn’t speak even a bit.
When the butcher finally caught Lim, he took Lim onto his arms slowly. He was unexpectedly gentle. But how could a butcher be gentle? Lim just wanted to vomit.
The man tied to Lim’s hands slowly. Lim was crying desperately all the time. What else could he do in front of a butcher, after all?
He even closed his eyes. He was the one laying above the lamb now. He was the next animal.
Lim was filled with horror. All his brain felt like it had already stopped with this intense fear.
The butcher, on the other hand, was singing a song. This even terrified Lim more.
But what could he do other than waiting for his death?
All this time, Lim’s eyes stayed closed. He was always afraid of needles. Now, he was going to be slaughtered by a knife, after all.
When he finally opened his eyes back, the butcher he saw wasn’t the same. This was a woman. An extremely familiar one. Even though she was wearing a mask like the man before, how couldn’t Lim recognize her?
“Mother?” Lim asked. Did she come to save him?
“You are finally accepting your fate.” His mother replied unexpectedly. After this reaction, Lim even got more terrified. A part of him knew what she meant by those words. She wasn’t here to save her son, but she was here to complete the task that the butcher left for her.
“Don’t cut me!” He screamed after seeing the knife that his mother was holding.
“You will be purified.” She answered. “You shall be initiated.”
“I don’t want to!” Lim screamed. He was crying desperately.
“I don’t want to!” He repeated himself after his mother didn’t react to him.
“You ignored your nature for quite some time. Do you want to do the same?”
Lim couldn’t even see his mother clearly because of all those tears. By that time, she was still speaking.
“Try again if you can. There is no escape anymore. There is no door here.”
Lim’s body was freezing with horror. His heart was almost going to jump from his body at this intense pace. His eyes were blurry, but his ears could hear her still. With the last strength he had within, he hardly said:
“I am your kid.”
She didn’t even bother to look at Lim as if this was an ordinary scene for her. She was uncannily chill. Like a professional butcher, she had no nerves. She was just there to cut and leave.
“I am your kid.” Lim repeated himself just to stop his mother’s madness.
“No. You are just a lamb.” She replied duly. Lim’s crying didn’t even have any difference between the scream of the lamb in her eyes. When Lim realized this, he could finally see the inevitable end. He had no other choice but to be slaughtered. The knife was being prepared already.
“Stop!” He tried to save himself, yet the rope was tied tightly by the butcher. Which lamb wouldn’t be tied so tightly after all?
After seeing Lim’s attempt of running away, his silent mother stopped what she was doing and looked at him.
“What is wrong, dear? Are you afraid?” She laughed. Then, slowly continued to sharpen the knife she was holding.
Because the death was inevitable, Lim wanted to delay this slaughter by asking questions.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You must serve your masters. This is the fate of lambs.”
“No, I am not a lamb.”
“Look at yourself then.”
When Lim looked at his body, all he could see was the hairy texture of his skin. She was right. His body was turned into a body of lamb. How could this happen? Was this a nightmare?
“No, I am not!” He wanted to deny. “I am your son.”
Yet, his hairy legs and tail were telling the opposite.
“It must be because I am lying on a lamb.” He said between his fast and irregular breaths. “I must have absorbed it.”
“Do you think you just turned into a lamb?”
“Yes!”
“You were always a lamb, never a man.” She replied. “One cannot turn into something against its nature.”
With this, his mother cut Lim for the first time. When the knife cut his body, he screamed like the previous lamb. He didn’t know how, but he found himself running desperately with blood bleeding from his body. He was running like a headless chicken desperately looking for an exit.
There was indeed a door in the building. Or maybe it had just appeared right after the first cut. It didn’t matter. Lim opened it and continued to run. The hallway was full of darkness. Everywhere was covered with the dead bodies of the lambs. Lim was close to being one of them, yet he was still running as if he could run away from his fate.
“You are not a man!” His mother was screaming behind the door. He continued to run until he could stop. This hallway seemed like it had no end. If his mother arrived here, Lim would be ended for sure.
As how he was afraid, she was standing right before him now. How could Lim escape from his nature? He was a lamb now. Halfly cut.
His mother sliced him again.
“You stink.” She said. “The smell of death.”
Lim was all alone now. His stomach was torn up. He could even see some hairy organs from his body. He wanted to vomit, but it felt as if he had no mouth anymore.
With his torn belly, he felt extremely empty as if he lost something that he had kept for years finally. Was it the guilt stored in his stomach? Was it the worthlessness he regularly felt? Was it the shame of being born? Or was it just his intestines? Nevertheless, he was empty now thanks to the second cut.
A part of him wanted to be patted by the knife of his butcher while the other part of him was trying to survive. If he was really a lamb, could he ever escape from being a lamb?
He wanted to be patted by the knife as all the lambs desired once. “Cut me, mother,” he wanted to say. Slice me, tear me up. Destroy this abomination. End all this.
After such great pain, he couldn’t stand up again. Maybe right after accepting the pain of suffering, the third cut came. It was the most painful one. With this pain, Lim had lost his ability of thinking. He couldn’t see anything, hear or smell anymore. All there were blurry sounds and visions. The death was near.
Maybe that was why he was crawling as if he could be saved. The last effort of stupid lamb.
When he opened his eyes back, there was an empty and white room. No blood or any flesh. No wounds. Just Lim and his mother.
She was looking at him with a knife she was holding. When she showed the knife to Lim, she asked a question.
“Lamb or knife?”
Lim unconsciously took the knife. After he touched its holder, the sounds of lambs made his ears bleed.
He found himself again in the same room. This time, he was the one who was wearing a butcher apron, though.
He was mindlessly slaughtering the lambs. Every lamb was screaming with horror. They were being torn apart by Lim himself.
Every lamb he was mindlessly slicing was extremely familiar, though. Their eyes... they reminisced Lim his own eyes.
Lim was terrified. He wanted to throw the knife. Yet, as if the knife had already become a part of his hand, a sin he couldn’t get rid of, Lim just failed. He cried with the screams of every dying lamb. Especially witnessing their dying eyes, his own eyes, was the hardest of all.
When he saw his mother again, he screamed at her. Yet, she just smiled.
“You chose.” She simply said.
“No.” Lim argued. Maybe for the first time, he was filled with pure anger.
“I only chose what you allowed.”
Lim’s mother’s eyes looked different after hearing it.
“Good.” She replied. “The initiation is going well.”
When he opened his eyes again in the white room, he saw the same scene as before. He was doing this for eternity. He was either killing the lambs or becoming the one. He remembered all.
He awoke among carcasses this time. All the lambs were slaughtered, and there was no denial or resistance anymore. Lim was a carcass too. Hundreds of them swayed in the cold dark, brushing against one another like pendulums.
Indeed, Lim knew those faces. All of them belonged to him once. One of them was from the time he was six years old playing behind their yellow sofa, and another was from his fourteens when he first interacted with those old men. Another was fifteen. He was lost with lust and his growing desires. Maybe that was why he was okay with being groomed by those masters at the age of sixteen. The one on his left was from his seventeen. He was still crying because that old boomer had rejected him. How desperate he was. His body had already rotten, yet the tears were still fresh on his face. He had even accepted a tiny amount of love back then. He was crying for a married man who was not much than a pervert, yet Lim was still compassionate enough to accept him. It was weird to see his own young body from that time after all those years. Eventually, with the need for love, didn’t he become meat now? The one on the right was from his eighteen, right after his first kiss with a stranger he just met. Even though he had washed his mouth for an hour, that disgusting feeling couldn’t disappear. Didn’t he meet that man again? Didn’t he allow that man to touch his own legs? The carcass’ face was covered with water, yet his legs were full of semen.
Among those carcasses, some of them were still young, and others were old. Some of them were surrounded by guilt, some by shame and others with disgust. Moreover, some of those carcasses were full of pervertness too. The times he gooned to his bullying, the times he fantasized being brutally destroyed and erased by homophobic men... the times he turned on after being called slurs. The times he became a slave and worship men... the times he was ready to give up all his rights, all his humanity and all his honor. The times he consciously betrayed to his own kind, his own boyfriend for the sake of his perverted fantasies... He was indeed turned into meat at the end.
How could he have the audacity of telling his mother “I am a human! Not a lamb!”?
He had already left his humanness. When his mother came again, he looked at her crying.
“Why? He asked. This was not a question directed to his mother, rather it was directed to himself. Why am I doing this? Why do I want to suffer more? Why do I want to become meat?
“These are all the ways you survived.” she said.
“Which one is me?” Lim whispered.
She patted her son’s head.
“The one still asking.”
Lim was ready for an ending now.
“This one will remove what remains.” She comforted Lim.
Lim asked:
“What remains?”
“The one who thinks he is being harmed.”
She made the final cut. Instead of pain, Lim split open into light. Every hook fell empty. Where his body hung, had nothing left anymore
.