RED MEAT

Link to article: RED MEAT.


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[[include :scp-wiki:theme:foxtrot]]

[[include component:preview
text= 20cc prcns slvn chn qrtns pain
]]

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

[[include :scp-wiki:component:author-label-source start=--
|name=Intercedent]]
**Author:** [[*user Intercedent]]

**[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-intercedency-authorpage Author Page]**

**If you liked this, you would like:**

**[[[FALLOUT]]]:** The United States Federal Government and the SCP Foundation go to war.
[[include :scp-wiki:component:author-label-source end=--]]

[[=image rmimage1(1).jpg size="large"]]

[[div class="dictation"]]

Volkov’s name was called up on the conscript rolls in the long summer of what they’d later title First Chechnya, but back then it didn’t have a number, just a name. 

He was a handsome (just ask his mom!) straw-haired boy of nineteen with bright blue eyes herded into the back of a GAZ-66 en route to Chebalynisk with a rosary in his hand but he wasn’t to be a killer. 

No, not Volkov, Volkov was too smart for war, too kind. Volkov wasn’t to be a killer. Even when he was chosen by the Airborne Forces (chosen, not volunteered, just ask his mom!), he wasn’t to be a killer because he knew all his figures and his numbers and he was going to sit out the war pushing papers across a desk.

Volkov is so lucky now, just ask his mom, again the airborne assault leaves at sunset flying low and slow over rolling hills, again the flak fires in the night again a black tulip flies back home with bodies piled high in its belly but not for Volkov, never for Volkov (just ask his mom!).

Volkov is so lucky that he never had to help the corpsemen scoop up all the bloody guts of his sergeant from out of the foxhole and then jump back in again as the 155mm shells rained down, down, down. Volkov is so lucky that he never had to press his rifle against the temple of his friend and growl in a voice that isn’t his own to not scream, to not scream you fucking bastard or ill  shoot you myself because the insurgents are so close and evac is so far. Volkov is lucky, yeah, (just ask his mom).

[[div class="president"]]

Do you remember Grozny? Do you remember Samashki? Do you remember the hard-eyed boys of sixteen and nineteen and twenty with AKMs on their shoulders and khaki headscarves wrapped about their faces and mismatched camo looted from burning border garrisons rising from smoke-filled streets to hunt the moskal bastards crawling from burnt-out BTRs the boys who cut fingers and ears off the dead and hung them about themselves and 

[[/div]]

Volkov doesn’t. He makes sure not to. He tries very hard. 

He’s lucky, just ask his mom.

[[div class="president"]]

Do you remember that first hit? Winding the rubber about your arm with frost numbed-fingers so clumsy you had to tie and retie the knot twice, pulling with your teeth at the end of the frayed rubber as the dshka rattled overhead and small bits of white plaster dust fell across you like snow. 

The syringes, filled with fire, red flame that writhed and danced sensually against the glass, glowing fire, living fire. Mikhaylov helped you find the right vein but your own hands pushed the plunger down. Your own hands. 

You knelt in the dust slack-jawed and awed as God screamed down from the needlepoint into your blood and bowels and balls. 

You knelt as if to pray.

[[/div]]

[[=image rmimage2(1).jpg size="large"]]

Volkov prays most days now. His is a closed-door service, a private dispensation. 

Georgy is dead, dead and gone, quartered and splattered in the courtyard of a crumbling khrushchyovka somewhere off Shatnoy, Romanov is dead, dead and gone, charcoal splinters stuck to the turret face of a T-72 rusting away in a field of dead wildflowers somewhere by Vedeno, Mikhaylov is gone (gone) but Volkov is alive, alive and well and healthy and lucky (just ask his mom!) so lucky that even though he spent the whole war in Chechnya and then the one in Dagestan and then the second one in Chechnya sitting still, pushing papers he still managed to impress the right people, land a nice cushy job after the war in Zapadnaya, quartermaster. 

Volkov is a penitent and a petitioner and a priest to his flock, just like the fucks in the ортодоксия, though his vestements are olive drab instead of red and gold and his communion is only by needlepoint. 

So it grows, so it goes.

Opium from Afghanistan and heroin from Myanmar and krokodil from beneath every overpass from here to Vladivostok. Enlistedmen shoot up behind barracks and lie on flea-ridden bunks in stupefied piles two or three men high, arms scabbed and peeling. Officers take their coke in neat foil packets that come in airtight boxes of thirty at a time, black and sleek and stamped with silver. 

Even the Colonel takes it, sausage-thick fingers stuffing the good stuff deep inside cavernous nostrils, snorting and snuffling until his dozen chins all quiver in time.

Russia is dying, rotting alive, spilling out into the gutters and the bridges and alleys and the stacks. Sclerotic heartbeats drive clots of rusting Ladas through clogged arteries, past splintered concrete skylines jutting from the morass like broken ribs. 

It hurts, everyday hurts, everyone hurts. 

So it grows, so it goes.

The Colonel is meeting with someone today, a new man from the militsiya. Volkov didn’t own the man, not yet, but he owned his boss, and his boss’s boss, and every other man below, around, and besides. 

In his far-off childhood Volkov remembered reading a dog-eared book of natural history that described how oysters formed pearls around grains of sand, layer by layer of insulation to smooth over what could not be ejected. Decency, in Volkov’s experience, was best dealt with much the same way. 

Layer by layer it went, until all that was left was the weeping.

Volkov reflects on these things as he leads four hand-picked men with billy-clubs out of the barracks and into the night. He reflects on these things as they catch the inspector heading back up from the Colonel’s office to the gates, as they pull him bodily into the shadows of an open hangar. He reflects on these things, watching dispassionately at the way the croaking, bleeding lump of meat sputters and gurgles wretchedly across the floor.

[[div class="president"]]
can you see do you know very apologies for breaking your eyes and nose and mandibular foramen and ramus and coronoid process but needed to make sure mouths silent hands still eyes and watching find color red against snow very beautiful needed to make sure you hear next part clear 

thank you
[[/div]]

Volkov stands over the whimpering meat and slowly and carefully enunciates the names of the man’s four daughters, the street where they go to school, the address of his elderly mother. 

Layer by layer it went, until all that was left was the weeping.

Three months later, Volkov finds a letter on his desk, black envelope and a pleasant silver script. It has a name, a number, and a time.

Volkov waits, and dials.

[[=image rmimage3(1).jpg size="large"]]

[[div class="president"]]
BLACK: What do we know about him?

GREEN: He’s a rat. Grasper, thug, peddler. He’ll burn fast and die ugly. Dime a dozen. 

BLUE: He’s creative. Laundromats, tattoo shops, arcades. He sparks, darkles and tincts. Innovative violence.

RED: He’s an addict. Wretched, gasping thing. Saltwater and poison. Cobwebs and spun straw. He spins, turns, drowns. Drowns drowns drowns. Every strand.

BLACK: Bring him in.
[[/div]]

The muscular man, the roller of big cigars, he drips with diamonds, he writhes with rubies, his jacket is leather and his watchband is gold. 

He greets Volkov, shouting over the sound of the helicopter blades as the humid jungle stink slams through the open bay doors like a wall.

My name, the muscular man says, is Carter. 

His grin is curdled butter and vegetable oil slick, rancid and yellow. He asks how was the flight. He asks for a name.

dado, Volkov says. My name is dado. 

A nonsense word.

[[=image rmimage4(1).png size="large"]]

The compound is vast.

It rises out of the steaming jungle delta, five square miles of chain fences and wet concrete and watchtowers manned by grim, sweating men with AKMs and black diamond tattoos blazing on their sleeveless shoulders. 

Carter takes him through it in a golf cart, at speed. He likes to talk, the muscular man. His fat lips chew back and forth framed by unpleasant hairs like the coarse bristles on the backside of a pig. Volkov watches, breathes in smoke. He doesn’t hear a thing.

[[=image rmimage5(1).jpg size="large"]]

Step through hissing doors and push past hanging plastic folds and shield bleary eyes against the glare of the halogen lights. 

Carter is still talking, gesturing for you to follow him up a set of grated metal stairs as an attendant approaches with an ashtray and asks for you to put out your cigar.  

You stand on a viewing deck some stories above. The factory floor is pale and white and absurdly sterile. Carter turns to you and grins his oil-slick grin.

You’re here to watch, he says. You’re here to learn. 

Big bay doors rattle open on the far wall and you lean in against the rails, sweat cooling on your cheeks. 

The blood sacrifices arrive prepackaged. 

They’re sedated, shrink-wrapped in antiseptic plastic, blindfolded, gagged, bound. There's a dozen plastic stickers stuck to the packaging. 

The technicians peel them off one by one, careful not to tear. Then comes the scalpel, sliding through the dotted line on the plastic cover. One two three cuts and the bundles are freed from the boxing, still cocooned by cling-wrap. They squirms slightly as the cold scalpels graze against their skin.

The technicians heave the things over their shoulder, making sure to lift from the knees. 

You watch one in particular, the one nearest to you. His hand drifts over smooth, plasticine flesh, feeling the gentle rise and fall of breath, squeezing absent-mindedly. The thing twitches again.

Down it goes, into the middle of the ritual circle, into the center of the grooves so cleverly cut, guidelines and gutter both. Sterile laminate altar. Then come the leather straps, padded. 

The thing is twitching now, fingers opening and closing, breath fogging against the wrapper. He makes a mental note to thank the anesthesiologist. Sometimes the things come overdosed and then he has to sit awkwardly, scalpel in hand, waiting for it to come back round enough to feel. 

[[div class="president"]]
it's always been about the pain.
[[/div]]

Cloud blue eyes flutter open beneath plastic and he's there to meet them. Sometimes he thinks of what the thing must see in its final moments, the psychopomp, all in white, polarized goggles haloed by the halogen lights with scalpel in hand. Sometimes, in the dark, his breath comes short and fast and he hopes the thing has a conception of what God is, if only in its last moments.

The generator thrums to life and down comes the scalpel. He watches it fall. Sliding gently against its neck, down to the red x inked onto its skin right above the carotid. 
 
he takes a moment to grip its chin gently, turning its head with those wide cloud blue eyes to avoid excess spillage. cloud blue eyes stare up at him and he wonders if it knows. (in the dark he knows it knows and smiles.) his breath comes short and fast. 

the scalpel slides in.

[[div class="president"]]
God but the blood is gorgeous. Red like sunset fire red like rubies red like embers red like all the beauty in the world stark against porcelain and steel, all the beauty in the world boiled down to that small moment as the steel sinks in and whisks out and the thing gurgles and thrashes on its sterile plastic board. 

It flows beautifully, into the grooves and the gutters and down into the drains past the generators humming to life past the sigils and the circles.

It becomes fire, glowing fire, living fire, red flame that writhes and dances sensually against the decanter. You watch as the red flows. A line of saliva dangles from your slack lips and hangs there, glistening.

it flows unspeakable.  
[[/div]]

What do you think? It’s a good process, reliable. We have the best scientists, the best technicians. I can guarantee fifty kilos of product with every cycle. What we’d need from you is distribution, obviously, as well as certain, ah, procurement guarantees.

Please. You’re not a stupid man. You know exactly what I mean. 

[[=image rmimage6(1).jpg size="large"]]

Volkov asks for part of his fee up front. Carter grins, and pushes the syringes across the desk, one by one. 

Volkov takes them up with trembling fingers, face slack. 

Carter extends his hand. We look forward to working with you.

dado shakes it.

[[div class="president"]]
Do you remember Grozny? Do you remember Samashki? Do you remember the faces of your friends, like snowflakes boiling in the heat of high summer, do you remember the face of your mother as she sent you away with tears in her eyes, do you remember the glory, do you remember the terror, do you remember the faded flags and falling towers and all the useless pride, do you want to remember? Do you remember bleeding in the snow, in the fields, from your eyes, from your mouth, the concussion of artillery fire, do you remember waking up in cold sweats and subject and property. Do you want to remember?
[[/div]]

Do you want it to mean anything at all? 

No, dado says, and presses the syringe down. 

He’s lucky, just ask his mom.

[[/div]]
------
= **<< [[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/strikefall| STRIKEFALL]]] ||RED MEAT|| [[[fallout|FALLOUT]]] >>**
------
[[=]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box
|author=Intercedent]]
=====
> **Filename:** Buffalo_skull_pile_edit.jpg
> **Author:** Intercedent
> **License:** Public Domain
> **Source Link:** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg]

> **Filename:** PENTOSTAMP.png
> **Author:** Anorrack
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0
> **Source Link:** [https://imgur.com/a/budl6AE]
=====
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]
[[/=]]
[[module css]]

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.characters-info p {
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.us {
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    --color: #8c148c;
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.van {
    --color: #4b2;
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.bar {
    background-color: var(--color);
}
[[/module]]

RED MEAT

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