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Author Topic: The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker  (Read 433 times)

David Johansen

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The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
« on: October 21, 2010, 11:50:40 PM »
It was always dark in the factory.  The gas lamps were kept as low as the ledger's bottom line.  Ezekiel Croft suppressed a shudder and covered his face with a cloth as he made his way down the wooden steps to the children's quarters.  Even down among the foundations the machinery could be heard toiling above and the stink of sulfer from the coal that drove the factory's mighty engines sank down and pooled in the deep.  Whatever else there was the children had a warm place to sleep.  Light creeping in from the cracks in the ceiling above cast uncanny shadows into the dank and noise-some warren.

Deftly stepping on the drier flagstones among the puddles and pools of oil Mr. Croft managed to avoid any regrettable damage to his new leather boots.  Small, wide-eyed forms withdrew into the shadows as he passed.  His destination was a large room directly below the main furnace.  The heat reminded him of Milton's lake of fire.  He was unsurprised to find the baker waiting for him.  A massive man like an unshaped lump of dough with eyes that gleamed like a rat's and small, deft feet and hands sat among the children in a grubby white smock scarcely paler than the man himself.

"What are you doing down here ?" growled Croft with a sneer.

"Feeding these poor souls." the baker replied in a voice as soft and pliant as his flesh.

"Food from the worker's tables no doubt" Croft roared in a tone that would make even the largest foundary workers cringe.  "I'll have it from your salary!  I'll have you out at last you repulsive lump."

The baker heaved himself to his feet and swayed as he fought to gain his footing.  He was taller than Croft and massive like a boulder towering over a sappling.  His hands fidgeted with a short stick.  "Feeding their souls Croft.  Never do these children see a classroom nor a book in spite of the assurances you give the board at the orphanage.  Most won't live to see adulthood as you well know but those who do will at least have this much."  He gestured at the letters crudely scrawled in the dirt at his feet.

Shaking with rage, Croft spun on his heels and marched away, his coat tails wagging furiously.  Only when the crisp clatter of his new shoes faded across the floor above did the baker dig deep in the pockets of his smock and apron for the things he had brought for the children.  He distributed the cunningly made men and animals shaped in dough and glossy with sugar and egg whites to the sad eyed rag clad children with a gentle smile but his eyes often turned upwards and glared rat-like after the manager.

Ezekiel Croft was an important man.  He took care to dress sharply though the factory was filthy with oil and soot.  The owners were folk of good breeding and quality and put even more weight on appearances than results.  He had risen to manage the factory from the ranks of the book keepers and under his hand productivity and profits had soared.  His enemies and opponents were long since let go or driven out and in his domain his word was law above those of God and king.

Not as a kindness but for the praise of their peers the factory's owners took charge of a dozen orphen children every year.  These were apprenticed, cleaning and oiling the engines in the places men could or would not go as well as sorting the bolts, screws, nuts, and nails produced into their various boxes.  It was well that no-one payed much attention to the number of those orphans who left the factory to make their place in the wider world or the outcry would have come well before Mr. Dickens came on the scene.

The baker had been hired to feed the workers by a previous manager who had himself only left the factory in a pine box.  As far as Mr. Croft ever learned he was a man of no name or station but of all those beneath his heel only the baker dared defy him.  As loathesome and intollerable as he found the lumpish baker the man terrified him in some unspeakable way.  Certainly the kitchen was run with undeniably admirable efficiency and thrift.  The food was good, simple fare, delivered with an artistic flair that made the most of the bland basics allowed by the ever tightening budget.  The men were seldom ill or fatigued and so the baker stayed, however his defiance grated at Mr. Croft's nerves the numbers were just too good.

But as time passed a pattern began to emerge.  Workers dared raise their eyes to him and at times he noticed children smiling or giggling when he normally only noticed them when they obstructed his path.  Though the numbers remained good Mr. Croft could feel is power slipping away to the baker's simple-minded kindness.  The more he ranted at the workmen and plied his cane and boot on the children the more his grasp on their throats seemed to loosen and that would never do.  While it is true some men can lead through inspiration and good will but those who cannot seldom give the notion much credit.  And thus he rose to the battle of his life, thrashing men for smiling and firing those with families to feed.  He culled the bookkeepers mercilessly promoting those who would take the next man up's job for less.  And in time he felt the balance shifting back as a dreadful gloom of despair settled over the factory.

It was with some discomfort that Mr. Croft had to report a small decline in the quarterly profits.  This he blamed on the good folk he had done away with and on their insistance on sending him ever more children faster than he could starve them and feed them to the machines.  This strategm worked particularly well as the factory's owners voted unanimosly to feed new capital into the business to increase production and refurbish the machinery, much of which could be readily diverted into Mr. Croft's own pockets.

Thus he was in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood as he returned to work.  The undertaker's wagon at the gate put a little sway in his stride.  Someone had died and Mr. Croft's heart lifted in a hymn to the terror it would contribute to his gaze.  A sobbing worker explained that a worn axle had given way and the flying iron shards had killed a man and two children working nearby.  The chance to kick the workers when they were down was as intoxicating as any liquour.  His vicious tirade roused the men to the task at hand, getting the factory back in order and operation.  As the men returned to work in shock and horror, Mr. Croft stormed towards his office, only going out of his way to kick a rag clad urchin.  As he turned a bend in the hall he came face to face with the baker.  There was blood on his hands and his smock and for a moment their eyes locked in a shock of sorrow and joy and pure hatred.  No words were exchanged nor could any words fill that awful gulf and each swore in his heart that the other would be dead before the day's end.
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David Johansen

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The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2010, 09:01:15 AM »
Managing the affairs relating to the accident and deaths was tiresome and the day was long passed into night before Mr. Croft locked the door of his office behind him.  Though the men had gone home and the lights were out he knew his way throught he twisting corridors and machines by heart.  A fierce pride filled his heart.  Surely Satan himself held no more dread and mastery in the pits of hell.  This was power and glory.

But then what was the flickering light coming from the kitchen?  What defiant outrage could now trouble his thoughts.  Peering throught the keyhole, Mr. Croft saw the baker labouring over dough on his bench, rolling it flat with much grunting and muttering, beneath the light of a single guttering, smoking candle.  In the dim light the baker seemed more like some groteque hog pretending to be a man than anything human and Mr. Croft had to stiffle a laugh as he stood and swung the door wide.

"You're done here baker!"  He shouted exuberantly!  "Wasting company materials on your own gluttony after you thought everyone was gone!  Well, now at last I have you and with you gone I will soon, very soon crush the spirits of all this pathetic, lazy, ignorant rabble.  I will be defied and laughed at no more when you are gone!"

The baker intent on his work ignored the manager, continuing to drone on and grunt as if he were alone.  Incensed, Mr. Croft glanced about the kitchen, his eyes fixing on a small figure crouched beside the stove.

"So, harbouring thieving little rats can be added to your letter of dismissal!" He roared.  The baker stopped and looked at his work as if he were satisified and dusted some flour from his hands.

"Judith is feeling unwell, and I fear her ills are beyond my art to heal."  The baker said softly, in a sad voice.  "Do you know, so many of the world's ills are beyond my grasp."  He shook his head.  "Have you ever seen dough beneath a strong lense Ezekiel?  It is like a world of fierce little animals turning and devouring themselves in endless generations.  Almost biblical, like something out of Revelations.  Do you think yourself an evil man Ezekiel?"

At this the baker fixed his rat like eyes on Exekiel Croft who was sputtering at the impertenance of the baker to assume such a familiar address.  "Do you know anything about the power of evil?  As it happens I do, I was born to weath and status though I dare say I was an embarassment to my family.  No self control, I couldn't stop eating you know?  But as it happens I had a gentlemans education in my youth and more afterwards.  Do you think yourself a very prince among devils?  I can tell you I have done worse.  My curiosity was as insatiable as my appetite and I consumed books with as much fervor as I did sweets.  I had an uncle, who was also an embarassment.  He was a real scholar and his studies were more esoteric and deep than your shallow mind could possibly grasp.  He took to me and I to he and I learned so much and under his tutelage I did such things as a petty fool like you could never understand.  In time we were found out and he was locked away forever in Bedlam and I, I was disowned, disavowed, and set out in the world with no more than the clothes on my back and the dark knowledge in my heart.

Fortunately a good hearted priest took me in and found me a trade and a place in the world.  To my shame, I saw the working classes in their huddled masses and knew I looked on greater nobility than was found in my vaunted family halls and so I dedicated myself and my terrible knowledge to their well being.  Did you think you fed on the terror and despair you wrought here?  Look here on this table, this flat expanse of dough like the world before Columbus pounded and rolled it into shape.  See the candle there, it is very special.  The bodies of the children who died here today provided the tallow that burns there.  Their anger will burn like an eternal light for untold ages.  See the hole there in the roof by the chimney, open to the souless void of the heavens above us like the end of all time and creation?  I have writen terrible things here in the dough in words never spoken by the tongues of men.  I have chanted and sweated and bled here this long night.  Do you hear the twelve bells ringing from the church house in the town?"

Ezekiel Croft shook off the terrified fascination that had gripped him as the bells tolled twelve.  It seemed to him that the child, Judith had walked into the dark shadows behind the stove into an abyss of endless miles and the baker was now standing so close that he could smell the blood and sweat and sweet sticky breath.

"Only one thing remains, the life of a wicked man, a murderer, a hypocrite of such diabolical manner that even hell itself would scorn him."  It was then Mr. Croft noticed the knife and all the blood, so much blood, as he began to slip away.  "And so, I give the children of the world a place of refuge that will long endure in the void beyond time and knowledge."  The baker whispered in a soft, measured voice.  And then, even more horrible than the pain of his life blood flowing across the dough covered bench, the massive baker turned and flowed into the narrow shadows behind the stove, down between creases and cracks in the facade of the world to follow young Judith into a realm of endless light.
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David Johansen

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The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2010, 09:02:53 AM »
Anyhow, that is the story of how The Expanse from "among the beautiful creatures" began.  It came to me a few weeks ago and percolated in my sick little mind for a while.
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