The summer heat is awful in the shop.
Outside, it's terrible enough. You smell the warm cut of meat before you even open the front door, because the vent above the door is open. It's hotter inside, even as your dad has a fan running for the front area where customers browse glassed meat and hanging chicken. An older woman named Esther who comes here every three days greets you by saying your name. You tug your backpack over you shoulder to ignore her, and you push past the wooden gate.
Your father's best friend Gavriel is behind the counter. He greets you too, and you have to look at him this time, because he'll tell your father you were being rude up front if you don't. He tells you your father is in the back, and you're not stupid because you know that, but he also tells you that you can put your backpack in the office. It's not an office. It's a cramped room your dad and Gavriel keep track of business crap and it's hotter in there than the rest of the shop. When you pass the doorway into the back, you're looking at the floor. There's a bloody footprint on the floor.
From one of the thick wooden chopping blocks, your dad tells you to watch your step. There was a bucket spill earlier. You spitefully step into the bloody footprint and drag your dirty shoe across the tile while your dad is distracted with the bulk of cut meat he's slicing through. You can recognize it as beef. You have no idea how your dad gets cows to cooperate in the city. There's a lot of construction, even in your part of the city. Maybe they're down in the cellars, living and waiting to be cut apart. Your dad tells you to stop thinking about it like that.
You throw your backpack somewhere into the back room. It probably hits the one chair in there, a cheap wooden thing, but it might just hit the through. It's just a bunch of stupid books, anyway. You are thirteen. You'll be fourteen in November. You hate high school and you haven't even gone there yet. Mom's making you read books before you even start. Summer sucks. You walk over to the sink to wash your hands, and then towards your dad, with your bloody shoe.
He wants you to practice. You tell him you don't really need to, but he gets stern when you intentionally cut the necks wrong. You pretend it isn't intentional, but he knows you're pretending. Over his shoulder, he tells Yeshua to bring a chicken. He warns you, by saying your name, that they don't have many chickens today. You say you saw a whole bunch in the windows.
The chicken is a stupid fat thing that tries to walk off the table. Its claws walk in the blood of its kin. It can't even smell it. What a stupid animal. It doesn't even know it will die.
Your father gives you a clean knife. It's not the one he was using on the beef cuts, but a proper chalef. You grin wide, because dad never lets you use his knife unless you've behaved. It's a long one; the blade entirely square. It's not like the butcher knives you see on posters in other shops, but you figure those are just ones the real butchers get. The one behind you is like one of those. You'll get a big knife one day, too.
He puts his hand on the chicken's neck. It tries to peck at his hand, but just looks towards you when it can't push him off. You see nothing going on behind those eyes. You could pick them out like fish eggs and flick them out and the chicken wouldn't even realize it was blind. Because it is stupid and can't think for itself. Your dad is showing you how you're supposed to lay your hand on its body to keep it in place, but you already know this. Listening to him explain crap all the time is boring.
With your name, he tells you to try it. You grab the chicken a little harder than your dad did, so it can panic. But you drag the knife firmly into its throat, listening to how it coughs its final caw. You don't think chicken's can spit, but it gurgles on it before the blood gets into the throat while you drag the knife across. You want to go deeper. Your dad tells you to steady your hand so you don't hack into the flesh improperly, but you want to go deeper. Sever the oesophagus some more. Cut it clean. It's going to lose its head eventually, when it is dead and plucked and salted and ready to be hung by its ugly feet.
Blood gets on your thumb from how you hold it. Your dad tuts when he notices, because when he holds it he never gets blood on his hand, but you did it right, this time. You listen close for the chicken to gargle and spit some more, for it to struggle and suffer, but it doesn't. It dies in your hand, neck squeezed too tight, and your dad takes the knife off you. He has to pry your fingers off the handle.
You can't, technically, sell this one, because you're not 'certified' yet. Whatever certifications you actually need, you don't know. You thought you just had to kill it a certain way. You ask your dad if you can kill another, and he frowns when you say it like that. He tells you that you can't just cut all of them, because they have to sell the fowl. You tell him that you can just sell the bad meat to other butchers, but he shakes his head, claiming it's a waste of time. He's always talked down on the other ones in the city, and you don't get it. Money is money. Who cares where they got it from? Dad should be proud your kills can be sold.
He passes Yeshua the blade to clean and asks him to take care of the fowl. You have a coming urge to grab a second blade and cut into the chicken, cut through its bones and limbs and break it apart so your father will have no choice but to throw it away. Leave it in a garbage bin to rot and fester and grow putrid so the garbage truck workers gag when they throw out the trash this week. You control yourself and watch Yeshua take the dead bird away.
Your father asks if you want to help cut the beef. You feel your shoulders lift a little. You like cutting up beef. You can cut large slices and do whatever you want with the fat because it doesn't get sold. Your father tells you wash your hands, but you don't want to, even though you do. Keeping the blood on your hands and shoes feels like it should be part of the whole process. Walk out of the shop when it's time to close covered in guts and gore and blood so you can remember what you did today.
He says your name to get your attention. You don't give it to him. You just take the thick knife and it feels right in your hand.