Splitter by Kevin Winiarz

 

Three heavy bangs shook the door of her one-room workshop within the castle walls.

Smock clean, tools sharp, she pushed wire spectacles up her thin nose, rubbed arthritic hands, and pulled the cold, iron handle.

The winter air was crisp and tiny snowflakes stuck to her greying dreadlocks.

Eyes bloodshot, the Bringer handed her a burlap sack.

Without a word, she took it, and kicked closed the door.

Beside her workstation she dropped the sack, reached inside, and set the first head upon the hard-wood table, a large vice bolted to its top.

Simple things were noted:

Woman.

Young.

Attractive.

She examined the base of the skull.

Clean.

Today, the executioner wasn’t hungover.

She clamped the head between the vice’s metal jaws and squeezed it in tight, making sure the pressure was just right.

Long and brown, the hair reminded her of her first split, her first brain, taken years ago…

She never knew her mother. Her father had been the town butcher, and from the time she could wield a tenderizer, she did just that. She was fifteen when her father dropped dead gutting a pig.

She finished the job.

Beginning that day, she lost herself in a world of metal and meat.

Bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, fat. She knew it all.

Carving, slicing, cutting, breaking, extracting. None were better than her.

From dawn till dusk, she butchered.

Seasons passed. Hair thinned, skin wrinkled.

She never took a husband.

When she saw children on the streets, she smiled. When they entered her shop of dead things and sharp objects, she felt lighter. When it was no longer possible to conceive, she took a day, and only a day, and grieved the loss of a family never had.

The following morning, the bell above her shop door dinged, and in came the Queen, veiled, with a small retinue.

She set down her cleaver, took a knee, and averted her eyes.

Given a sack, she was ordered to split the skull of the head inside, remove the brain.

She did, flawlessly, then handed it over. Without a word, everyone left.

That night, she didn’t sleep, and the next day she received word of her appointment: Splitter.

From then on, heads arrived. Every face told a story of how it got there, as did each brain. Sometimes the stories matched, sometimes not, but the brain always told the truth. Texture, size, crevasses, coloration. It was all in the brain, which was sent away. Where and to what purpose, she never asked…

She scalped the head.

Olive-colored skin and lice-infested hair fell into a large bucket.

With precision, she scraped, chiseled, cracked, and broke.

She scooped out the organ. This one was striking: symmetric creases and deep crevasses. No tumors, no lesions.

Was her brain this beautiful?

She placed it into a vat of violet fluid, a vinegar-smelling concoction also delivered by the Bringer.

Bubbles rose as the brain sank.

She looked into the sack.

Four to go.

A knock startled her.

“Splitter!” said a deep voice. “I have a summons from the Queen!”

She quickly wiped her hands and opened the door.

In full regalia, a size too small, the Messenger held out a scroll just long enough for her to see the Queen’s sigil at bottom.

“Come! Now!” he ordered, taking heavy, ale-laden breaths.

Bald and spotty, his small head, she figured, held an ugly brain.

Still in her smock, she went.

Crows cawed and boots crunched over frost as she followed the Messenger. Haggard castle-dwellers cut quick glances, pointed, and whispered.

A gate to the inner courtyard was raised and she was taken through a stone tunnel. On the other side, the royal side, the Splitter expected well-manicured shrubs, winter flowers, and order. But the Queen’s grounds were dirty, unkempt.

She looked back through the dark tunnel as the gate slammed down.

With a blunted half-finger, the Messenger pointed to the base of a lone, black obelisk.

“Go!”

She went.

Inside the tower she sidestepped rat droppings on a candlelit, spiral staircase. At the top, two men guarded a door, slightly open.

“Enter,” came a faint voice.

Sweat ran down her back and beaded on her forehead.

The door creaked as she pushed.

Garbed in a billowing black gown, the Queen sat in a plush, high-backed chair at the far end of an oval, marble table.

Curtains drawn, candles cast shadows into a barren fireplace.

“Welcome Splitter,” the Queen’s breath fogged. “Close the door.”

She did, and guards thudded down stone steps.

“Clean up,” said the Queen, and motioned to a basin.

The Splitter’s smock shushed and crinkled as she removed and hung it. Carefully, she washed her hands. Her fingers cramped, hurt. They always hurt. With a royal towel she patted them dry, noting her yellow, cracked nails.

“Sit,” came the command.

She eased into a chair opposite the Queen, no more than two dead body-lengths between them.

Both had the same place-setting: a porcelain plate with silver cloche.

No cutlery, no napkins.

“For years you have served me, not once inquiring into my doings,” said the Queen, and removed her cloche.

The Splitter’s pupils shrunk.

“Not one bit of skull, not one fragment of bone have I ever found.”

The Queen picked up the brain.

“Time and again, each arrives, perfect.”

She took a mouthful.

Slime dripped from her chin.

Silent, the Splitter watched her devour it.

The Queen sucked clean her fingertips then ran the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Delicious.”

The Splitter’s heart sped, and she stared at her warped reflection in the cloche as the Queen rose and came to her side.

With a pale, clammy hand, she took the Splitter under the chin.

“Look at me,” said the Queen, and removed her curly auburn wig.

Veins bulged at her temples, her shaved head lumpy, like sour, coagulating cream. Eyes glazed and mouth lined with canker-sores, mucus hung from her nose.

“My… my Queen, w-why have you summoned me?”

The Queen turned the Splitter’s head back to the place setting.

“I need you for a new job, a special job,” and she removed the silver dome.

Nausea swept over the Splitter.

“Delicate, the skulls of fresh-born require a certain… meticulousness,” said the Queen.

The Splitter could barely get out the words as she studied the tiny, curled body.

“M-my shop, my tools.”

The Queen wiped her nose with one of the Splitter’s dreadlocks.

“Not to worry. A private workshop has been set up, your old instruments are being brought, and, if needed, new ones will be crafted. From now on, you will reside here, on the royal grounds. With the fresh-born of peasants, you will have weeks to practice.”

The Splitter’s eyelid twitched.

“Practice?”

The Queen took the Splitter’s hand and rested it upon her belly.

It moved.

“For months I’ve been preparing it.”

She guided the Splitter’s hand around her midsection.

“Untainted by the world, by thoughts, it will free me from the chains of age, of stale ideas. Once out, you will excise the brain immediately.”

The Splitter adjusted her spectacles.

“I… I need to keep sharp. All meat. Pigs, sheep, goats. Leave them to me… I need to keep sharp,” she repeated.

“Of course, my dear,” said the Queen, and belched. The Splitter cringed at the smell as the Queen gestured at the plate, “Now, get to work.”

Days became weeks, nightmares became reality.

Every few mornings, a Bringer came to the Splitter’s isolated workshop.

With a specially crafted toolkit, which she kept in a deep wooden box, she worked, improved.

No more preservation vat.

No more violet-colored, vinegar-smelling concoction.

Once extracted, the small, underdeveloped brains were taken away, with haste.

And, as she had requested, the Splitter split skulls of livestock too, and not once more did she see the Queen.

One night, under a full moon, the Splitter woke to shouts and curses. She sat up in her straw bed and listened. Steel on steel. Then, silence.

The next morning was the coldest that winter. While in the stable, the Splitter was summoned. Her hands throbbed as she gathered her things and made her way to the obelisk.

Beyond the gate, she glimpsed a huge crowd, brandishing fire and weapons.

Box in hand, the Splitter hurried up the spiral steps, past the guards, and closed and bolted the door.

Inside the chamber, a worktable and vice had been set up; a birthing room, with splitting station.

Opposite the station, in a black robe, the Queen reclined in a chair, legs open, a basin on the floor beneath her. Toes curled, hands clenched, thick veins spread over her head.

It was just the two of them, soon to be joined by a third.

The Splitter set her box on the table, arranged tools and trays, put on her smock, and adjusted the vice.

Even with a fire burning, breath fogged.

The Queen groaned.

Screams and clangs sounded outside.

The Queen moaned and pushed, pushed and moaned, birthed the child as the placenta dropped into the basin.

The newborn breathed the cold air and cried.

Shouts and bangs came up the staircase.

“Hurry!” yelled the Queen.

Composed, the Splitter cut the umbilical cord, swaddled the baby in a blanket, and, her back to the Queen, set the child upon her workstation.

Tools clanked, and infant cries stopped.

The chamber door shook.

“Hurry! The brain! Hurry!” shouted the Queen.

The Splitter gave it over.

The Queen took a ravenous bite, barely chewed, and swallowed.

The mob smashed inside and paused at the site: Splitter in bloody smock, the Queen with brain in hand, placenta at her feet.

They charged.

Dragged from her chair, a noose fitted around her neck, bits of flesh flew from the Queen’s mouth as she screamed and thrashed.

“Wait!” yelled the Splitter, “Open the b–,” but a fist knocked the wind out of her.

A second blow put her down.

Her spectacles crushed, the mob stomped and spit.

“Murderer!”

Pulled to her knees, the Splitter’s head was rammed into the vice.

“Justice!”

Fissures spread across her skull as metal jaws squeezed.

“Suffer!”

They tore her clothes, threw open the windows, and the last one out broke off the handle on the vice.

Head clamped, ears running blood, the Splitter stared at the wooden box.

“No…”

Tears flowed.

Crows arrived.

They landed on the workstation, jabbed the box, knocked off the lid.

A weak cry came from inside as the hungry murder perched on its edges.

Except one.

It hopped atop the Splitter’s dreadlocks, and pecked.

Back in the stable, rats gnawed at the open, empty head of a sheep carcass.

Below in the courtyard, surrounded by the mob, a child, a second, slid out of the hanging Queen.

Earth, indifferent, split its skull upon impact.