Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They’re in love, so they don’t hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid. - Austin Kleon

^This pep talk was needed to post this. It’s my first attempt at flash fiction. Sat down and wrote it in one sitting. And to be honest, I’m not sure of the point of this scene is. It’s tragic and sad, and yet nothing to learn from it. But I had fun imagining and writing it. I loved writing about this old man, who has been a butcher for a lifetime and isn’t afraid of puddles and puddles of blood. It just takes a horrifying turn.

* * *

      Blood. Under the swinging doors, an oozing stream of blood pushed its way towards his feet. Jack slapped a steak onto the glass counter, “This one is on me, Betty. Go on and have a good dinner with Rick.” When Betty walked out, he turned back to the ooze that now filled the tile cracks. The puddle elevated to match the stained boards. Jack checked his watch. It’s too early.
      “Benny,” he called out to his grandson. “Why you butchin with my supervision?”
      No response from Benny.
      “I’m coming back there and you better not be in your school clothes again.”
      He walked to the front door of his corner shop, locked it, and with the falling sun behind the town’s bank, he flipped the sign around. Closed. Behind the counter, he untied his white apron, streaked with crimson fingerprints, hung it up, and he reached next to it, to another apron. The apron’s cloth was no longer visible. Years of streaks and fingerprints overlapping each over, like a painter’s apron. He shuffled his boots through the ooze, to make sure his grandson knew how to parse the cow.
      He pushed against the door. It didn’t budge.
      “Benny?”
      Nothing.
      “Benny open up.”
      After Benny didn’t respond again, he, in his knee-high boots, shuffle to the front door, unlocked it, and walked down the sidewalk.
      What in the world is this boy up to, he wondered. While shuffling down the sidewalk, he got thinking how in his 60 years, the door locked on him only twice. Once when Mr. Copper, his previous boss, had an affair with a neighbor girl. And another when kids from down the alley were stealing meat.
      The back door was hinged open. He grabbed the handle and pulled it open. The blood run down an incline will led into the alley.
      “If you have your good jeans on, Benny.”
      He held onto a steal sink to not slip from the blood up him. He reached the top. He paused. And staring at the figure that laid in the middle of the room, until his legs gave out under him. The dark image of his grandson’s favorite jeans alongside a butcher knife, buried in an emptying, flow of blood.