The Butcher Room

The keys rattled low like a deathbed cough.
Mold in the walls, and the doorknob’s off.
There’s blood in the grout and a child’s faint hum:
“Chop goes the cleaver, now daddy won’t come.”

It was boarded for years but the boards gave in.
The basement grinned with butchered sin.
They found her apron and half a jaw.
Teeth like trophies on the pantry wall.

In the Butcher Room, the screams don’t fade.
They slice through sleep with a rusted blade.
No holy water, no priest’s disguise,
just meat hooks swinging under baby-blue skies.

Her lullabies still haunt the beams,
crooked cradle and crimson seams.
She fed them lies, then fed them steak.
“You’ll taste the truth in every ache.”

There’s a hand in the soup and an eye in the pie.
A mother in grief who forgot how to cry.

Don’t open the fridge if you plan to live.
She’s saving dessert–and you’re what she’ll give.