While the weary world is creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,
I your lovely soul am keeping
All through the night.
Ah, there, Son, your breath ceases, your struggle ceases, your flesh gives up the ghost.
I watch you flee through the ceiling and heavenward like a rocket. All is right. Once again, all is right.
Glory to God in the Highest.
When Detective Leland awoke, she felt the cold stillness in her arms. She struggled to her feet, clutching the child tight beneath breasts that had not yet even fed it.
“My baby! My baby! Mother of God! He’s dead!”
I know you, Mrs Billings, you with your splendid lawyers bought by splendid money and your splendid not-guilty verdict bought the same way, and the bag of splendid cashmere under your arm. I know you. You have worked hard this year, endured much. You deserve an easy descent. Take the escalator, my beautiful lady. Take the escalator. I have been preparing it for you. Do not mind the slight tugging on your dress. Do not mind the way the teeth separate there at the bottom and give enough space for one masticated human body to be yanked, living, down among the gear work. Do not fear, my sweet Mrs Billings, for this thirty-three seconds of grinding and spattering and thrashing is not nearly as much woe as the store management will have when folk begin to talk of the butcher-turned maintenance-man who lives beneath the floors.