The knife clattered to the floor. His hands, numb with cold and slick with blood, couldn’t hold it any longer.

“Now you’ve done it,” said the damned voice in the back of his head. “This will be it for you for sure.”

He quickly stopped down, grabbed the knife, and surreptitiously wiped the blade on his bloody pants. He held the knife up and stared at his hands. They told him to buy gloves, but he had forgotten or maybe ignored them, sure he could handle it.

He was wrong and desperately wished for gloves, but it was too late.

He stared at the body before him, hanging from a chain and draining of blood. Blood pooling on the floor. A lake of blood and he was standing right in the middle of it.

What made him think he could do this? It wasn’t that he was squeamish–not really. It’s just that he never thought about how cold it would be. Or how much blood there would be.

“HEY! What the hell are you doing?” The angry voice broke into his reverie, and startled him into dropping the knife again.

He looked down at the knife lying in the pool of blood then turned on his heel and ran for the door, slipping in pools of blood, but managing somehow not to fall.

And that was David’s first and last day working at the slaughterhouse.