It had taken Dexter Moser about six years to finally be placed as Sticker at the Cargill Meatpacking Plant.

It was the reason he moved out to Dodge City, and it was the reason he had been working there since he was around 16. Before that, while he was still living with his foster family, he'd worked part-time as a fry-cook by day and a construction worker by night. He'd hated it. Even more than he'd hated the foster home.

Adopting a child into the Garcia family had not been any sort of charity on their part, rather, it was an entirely economical decision, and one that they had done many times before. It was a simple formula, all things considered. Step one, adopt a child, hopefully one already at working age. Step two, receive welfare from the state. Step three, put the child to work. Only marginally less brutal than the foster home. The only difference was that the family was, surprisingly, a lot more reluctant to let Dexter take out his frustrations on the local wildlife.

After the first couple of cats and a few dogs, the foster home no longer cared to stop him. He'd just get more creative—more secretive. Better at hiding. So it was no use.

The Garcia family was stricter. But Dexter, as the years went by, only grew more clever. A lack of any formal education did nothing to stop him as he culled the local animal population. There was nothing he liked better than to watch the light leave the eyes of something that had once lived.

Nothing. Not even his siblings.

He hadn't cared for them at all upon meeting them. Not the least. Much like the other kids at the foster home, they were simply bipedal animals that happened to be able to speak. The difference between a human and a dog lay only in the difficulty of stashing away what was left of them. But he never tried it with the Garcias. At the foster home, kids ran away all the time. Nobody noticed when little Nelly didn't come home one night. Nobody cared. Not to speak of Ken, and Bobby, and Jose.

The Garcias would have noticed. And so, despite never receiving any formal education, Dexter kept himself on the low. And it gnawed at him. The three years he spent with the family, those three agonising years when he could never see a man die, were pure agony for him. His only singular form of solace came in the form of a workplace accident.

It had been so dark, and he really hadn't meant to trip the larger man, but when it happened and his coworker went down for the count, legs kicking strangely and his neck bent oddly, Dexter had been delighted. His face was a perfect mask of worry and apathy as he cradled the man in his arms, looking as though he had something to say but eventually saying nothing. He hadn't spoken since before the foster home.

And with that man in his arms, he had finally gotten to see the stars die again. And it was glorious.

Then he got to sixteen and he decided that anything was better than that joyless "family." By that point, he had saved up a fair bit from what the family didn't know he earned, and using that money, one late summer evening, he snuck out of the house, carrying nothing but the money, his favourite tools and the clothes on his back. But Lily saw him. And she probably would have said something, maybe even screamed, had he not silenced her. He had no choice, really. He was just about to make a quick run for it when he had a wonderful little idea. Although not commonly known for the wits he withheld, this idea truly did make him feel clever.

He slashed open an incision along his arm, spilled some blood nearby, and then bust the door to make it look like a break-in. By the time they figured out how and why it all happened, he would already be far away.

And that he was.

Dexter never did care to read the newspaper, but nobody ever came to bother him, so he had practically been let go. In Dodge City, he was able to rent himself a little apartment in the slums, in the same areas that housed illegal aliens and dopers and everything in-between. And it might have been human instinct, but none of them ever came to bother Dexter. Maybe they could see it in his eyes.

The Cargill Meatpacking Plant was a large facility founded 6 years earlier. The building was grey and hulking, resembling a monochrome rubix cube more than an actual place where humans could reside. There were no windows. But you didn't need to see inside it to tell what was going on behind closed doors. Outside, the smell of sulphur was overpowering. Like rotten eggs. It didn't even take a year for Dexter to get used to the smell.

They didn't even check his identity before hiring him. Otherwise, they might have called foul. Dexter was, by all means, lucky.

They offered a standard course that lasted about three weeks, training him and a number of other new-hires (most of them immigrants, illegal or not) in the ways of the knife. Dexter already knew most of the fine functions. However, here, his luck turned somewhat, as he was forced to work in the one part of the plant he already knew he would despise: fab.

The fabrication end of the plant—the last half of it—was clean, orderly, and still smelled like manure and cow piss. Workers stood in trim lines along conveyor belts carrying chunks of gradually diminishing flesh. Soon, Dexter was one of them, working the knife quicker than his brain could process the transaction. His body had been trained by the rigorous work of construction, but here, it withered.

His back hurt by the third day of doing nothing but standing hunched over. Then, his legs began to grow sore. A chill grabbed hold of his body and never truly left it. The fabrication process took place in a large room that was constantly kept at an almost chilly degree, and yet, Dexter sweated.

And then, one day, because of some sort of accident that was never put on the records, a placement opened on the kill floor. Dexter took the position enthusiastically.

By this point, his hand was always curled as though clutching an invisible knife. But he didn't care. His hand held no other use anyway.

The fated day had arrived. It was a Monday, early morning. Although Dexter wanted nothing better than to be the Sticker, or even the Knocker, he was stuck with the slightly less glorious job of operating the skinning machine alongside another worker. The process was a bit interesting the first few times he saw it, but after that he had to actively imagine his former family members or current coworkers having their skin stripped off their backs in order to keep focus.

And then the day ended. He had barely even noticed it, but the smell of blood had crept up on him.

On the kill floor, the temperatures kept were often well above 100 on account of the hundreds of animals passing by every minute. The smell of blood quickly became overpowering. But it wasn't until the day had ended and Dexter turned around to actually see this blood that he felt anything. The blood had pooled in a specific container. Blood, several feet deep. Blood splattering almost the entire kill floor. Most of it concentrated around the Sticker, where he stood with a bloodied chainsaw—bloodied knife—in hand, his white apron stained red and his eyes red and-,

Dexter stumbled, righted himself, and staggered once more as his brain bubbled up with blood and rang with the screams of a child. No, not a child—him.

Dexter No-Speak. Dexter Mute. Dexter Do-You-Speak-English.

Not even when the dogs bit back and the cats scratched at him or his adoptive peers punched him with all they had did Dexter scream. But in his head, echoing like a fox scream over a still lake, was that very sound. And it made his teeth chatter.

He did not sleep that night. In fact, there was nothing he could convince himself to do apart from slipping out of bed, breaking into the meatpacking plant, and uncovering the address of the current Sticker. His name was Joe Tillinger. He had dropped out of high school at age 16 and worked at the packing plant ever since it opened that same year. He currently lived in a small house on the edge of town, near the meatpacking plant, with his young wife and two children.

Dexter only learned that last part when he was already there, peering through a window. The time was… he didn't know. Late enough for everyone to be asleep.

…No, not everyone.

Out in front, shaded a little by the nightlight coming from his daughter's window, sat Joe. Dexter hadn't even sensed him. He should have. He could even tell when an animal was watching him.

From the darkness, a pair of sharp but infinitely tired eyes watched him. Then the shadow moved out from the blackness and it wasn't a shadow at all; it was just a man. Joe waved absently to a chair next to him. An empty one.

Dexter's gaze hopped blankly from the empty chair to Joe. In the back of his pocket, his best knife weighed heavy. Nonetheless, he had already been seen. Turning his back to Joe now would only further increase his failure. So, carefully, like a panther stepping into the sun, he approached Joe, moving away from the comfortable darkness and into the tawny light. Joe gestured again to the empty chair, but Dexter wouldn't take it.

Joe merely sighed. "Had quite the fall today, didn't you?"

Dexter considered how fast he could draw his knife. Probably faster than Joe could respond. Joe was far from old, but Dexter imagined he could take him in a fight. Joe's body was slim; weak; tired. Dexter, on the other hand, still clung on to some of his youthful stamina. If it came down to it, he could take him. But even then, Dexter wouldn't let his guard fall. Not in front of another predator.

"Right. Right…" And here, Joe gave another sigh, like he had the whole world on his shoulders. "How old are you, Dexter?"

Was Dexter surprised to learn that Joe knew his name? If he was, he didn't show it.

All Joe did was let his keen gaze travel over Dexter's well-built physique again. "Younger than me, I bet. By far. Are you even legally allowed to work at Cargill?" No answer. "Well, I… guess you don't care. I didn't. They don't. Nobody cares, so why should you, right?" Upon leaning back in his chair, Joe casually exposed his throat. His Adam's apple bobbed a few times. Up and down. If Dexter moved quickly, he could slice his carotid artery and be gone before his lady so much as realised he wasn't in bed. Nobody would know.

"But you should care. You're young. And, sure, so am I, but… Have you got any wife?"

Dexter blanched. His mind instantly left the whole murder business. Wife? He'd never even considered it. Having anyone be actually close to you when you do what Dexter liked to do would be stupidity of the highest degree.

"I thought not. How about kids? A mum? Where's your dad at? Any brothers or sisters?"

Maybe in a different life, Dexter wouldn't even have had to consider the question. But as it was, he couldn't even figure out the basic premise for why he should be asked such a question. Why should he ever have a family?

"Right," Joe said. He sighed, again, probably for the umpteenth time that night. Dexter was starting to wonder if he had nothing better to do with his lungs. "Two years back, I slipped a disc working the deboner. And you wanna know something funny? I was back at work the day after the surgery. And even before that, they had me come in while I was still at the hospital. Just for a few minutes. To make it seem like I wasn't sick at all."

Dexter felt his brows furrow. Why was he telling him this?

"Because," Joe said, abruptly standing from his seat, making Dexter take a step back, "I would like for you to not follow the same fate. I'm in this because if I ever leave, if I get fired, if I can't provide for my family, then I can't be happy anymore. This is all I have. In a sense, you have even less than I do. But that means you could have more. Go elsewhere. Go to Miami, get a job cleaning crime scenes or whatever, I don't care. Just… don't let this be the rest of your life. If you do, it won't be much of a life to live."

And for a few seconds, Dexter just stood there, staring at this man—so young, yet so much older than he was. They stood at the same height. At one time, in a fair fight, they would probably have been equals.

Slowly, Dexter let his body relax. He wasn't thinking about the knife at his back anymore, or at how exposed the man's neck was, or how easy it would be to take him out and then let his family follow suit. He wasn't thinking about any of that. His arms hung limply at his side, right hand absently curled like a claw.

Silently, without giving a single piece of acknowledgement, Dexter turned his back on his senior, and walked away.

His brain sloshed and squelched and it felt like he had blood all the way up to his eyeballs. Pressing against them. On the edge of bursting in a red spray. Dexter, for all his cleverness, only knew one way to release the pressure, and to empty his brain. But there were no animals in sight. Crushing bugs underfoot wasn't enough.

But it was already beyond late, and he had to get to work early. Since there was nothing else he did apart from work, eat and sleep, dotted only by the occasional spree, there was no use in trying to prepare for anything else. Once he came home, he immediately got dressed and headed to the plant. He wasn't the first there, but early enough so that when he went out onto the kill floor, it no longer smelled of blood and manure: only chlorine and steam.

Work. That was all there was.

Dexter worked hard. He was tenacious, as far as these things went. Most other workers cycled through endlessly, few staying more than a couple of months. But like a starved tick, Dexter persevered. He moved from job to job on the kill floor, at some points chaining up cattle, at others stabbing them with hooks, and at one memorable point he was even allowed to operate the stunner. Being the Knocker was, to Dexter, almost as glorious as he imagined being the Sticker would be. Paralysing the animals was almost as satisfying as watching them die.

On good days, Dexter would get to watch a fellow coworker be brutalised or, even better, outright killed. It wasn't too odd. Red blood splattered onto a floor of red and nobody could tell the two apart. Nobody cared to try. Small injuries went unreported, larger injuries were downplayed, and deaths were bypassed, the human life usually getting Cargill fined about 300$ on a good day.

Not that Dexter cared much.

After six brutal years, Dexter was given permanent placement as Sticker after having tried his hand at it a few times. Each time, he worked exceptionally. It was an easy job, really. Knife went in, blood came out. Slice, slice, slice. Five thousand cattle every day. As the years went by, this number had only increased. With little else to do during his days, Dexter took long overtime, hours in and hours out, just letting his body move robotically, like a misengineered animatronic, waving a knife instead of a mic.

And it was Heaven.

But then, after 8 years of working for Cargill, he was abruptly fired. He didn't know why. He didn't know how. During his extensive tenure, he had received dozens of small injuries, and a few larger ones, thankfully none requiring surgery. None he could afford, at least. The gravest injury he'd incurred was when an overheated piece of machinery burnt off the fingerprints off his right hand. But then, as suddenly as he had been granted it, he was out of a job.

To say he was angry was both an understatement and an overstatement. He didn't say a word, he didn't wave his fist and he didn't contend the issue with a judge. But if you had given him a button that would have instantly killed every man, woman and child on Earth, he would have asked for a knife so that he could do it personally.

He only knew he had been fired to begin with because he wasn't let into the plant one morning.

His first thought was to visit Joe. Much like Dexter, the young man had been able to hang in for all eight years, slowly being removed from Sticker duty and eventually going all the way to fab on account of a debilitating workplace injury that left his right arm paralyzed up to the shoulder joint. But, as they said, if you can't use your right hand, use your left. Logically, Dexter knew that the man had nothing to do with his being fired. The man was on the cusp of finding himself in a similar fate. And yet, emotionally, Dexter knew just what he had to do.

"Dexter," Joe greeted warmly, "fancy having you over to visit again."

Sitting in the same place as he often did on sleepless nights, Joe was perched outside the house on the veranda. The predatory glean in his eye had somewhat faded over the years. Dexter didn't slow his pace as he approached.

"I wouldn't mind having you over at an earlier time, you know. It isn't unusual to visit for dinner. Do you eat meat?"

One step, then another one. Now he was in range. Silently, saying nothing, as talkative as ever before, he reached back and removed his knife from the back of his pants. It was his work knife, the same that had no doubt killed tens of thousands of cattle by this point, the same one he spent around an hour sharpening every day, the same that would now find excellent use. In a swift movement, the knife slit across Joe's neck, neatly slicing it in half.

Dexter stared at the slice, numb. In his head, he had expected the blood to pour out of him, splashing onto the ground, draining away into big vats to be removed at a later date. But Joe wasn't a cow hung upside down by his hoof; he was a human. The blood flowed down, his mouth opened, his left hand flew up to press against his opened throat, and he briefly stood up only to sit down again. Dexter watched him, at first unsure, but then he saw how the light started fading from his eyes. And not like the cows. The cows held no intelligence. Their eyes were big and dark and animal. But Joe's eyes were clear and shining and big and questioning and Dexter could read his lips. They said: "Why?"

And it was delicious.

With no sound leaving the man save for the hiss of his lungs collapsing, Dexter felt safe in simply watching. And after a few minutes, his eyes finally became dim as the air removed the moisture. With that done, Dexter quickly entered the house. It was unlocked, of course. The wife, Diana, was in bed. So were the kids. One was a teenager by this point, the other still a child. Silently, moving like an invisible breath of death, Dexter slid through the house, ridding himself of the final possible witnesses. Then, as a final measure, he dragged Joe inside, closing the door behind him. This way, it might at least take a day or two before anyone realised what had happened. By that point, Dexter would be long gone.

After all, Joe's offer of working in crime scene disposal didn't sound all too bad.

Quickly, Dexter returned home. He didn't own much that needed to be packed. A few changes of clothes, what little money he had been able to save up, and his assortment of knives and other tools all went into his backpack. Under different circumstances, he would probably have followed in the footsteps of his peers, moving from city to city, seeking the next big meatpacking plant to work at until his body could no longer take it. But he'd grown tired of seeing cows die. Compared to the exhilaration of killing real humans, they were simply not enough.

And so, he packed his things and left for the bus stop. Every step he took felt heavier and heavier. And then off he went to Miami.