Howard Bark aspired to be a clothing designer, or at least that’s what he told himself. He was not a designer who lived near the action of the big cities, where like-minded individuals would intermingle and create masterpieces together. He didn’t even work remote for designer brands like Armani or Dior. He didn’t even work for a brand like Old Navy, but considering how events had progressed, Howard would’ve been grateful for even that. No, Howard Bark lived in a small town only a few hours outside of Vancouver where he made clothing for the Monthly Farmers market in his basement. He felt like an underperforming office worker who was politely “transferred” to a less important job site where he couldn’t screw up anything else. Howard had once heard that people would be promoted up to their level of incompetence, and once they make it just past their skill ceiling they stay there. A shelf stocker would become a butcher, which would become a manager, and once they have left their skill ceiling there they would stay for the rest of their pitiful life, “had this happened to him?”. No, it definitely had not, thoughts like those would get one nowhere, an irrelevant thought only for the stupid and the fools who know it to be true.

Despite the distance from Howard’s ideal home, Rejuvenation Springs itself was a quaint little town he had to admit. The city itself was surrounded by peaceful and calming evergreen forests, the trees would sway back and forth lightly which created a small breezy rustle that Howard would listen to for hours. The sky was almost always clear blue and calm with white and gray clouds polka-dotted throughout. As nice as the image was, it was still British Columbia so rain was unfortunately prevalent, although the smell of the town just after it rained was admittedly quite pleasant. It always made a strong earthy tone that would consume his senses. The town was exactly what city folk would say when joking about small towns. Everyone who lived in Rejuvenation Springs wore either red and black flannel or the Canadian tuxedo with a trucker cap dancing between the two styles. It was a main road town, which ran directly through the center of Rejuvenation Spring. Like the clogged arteries of an obese man, the road was heavily damaged and lacked in maintenance. Potholes littered both sides and parked cars forced drivers to crash directly into and overtop the holes to get through, with only large pickup trucks able to ram through the holes with some sense of ease. The town had every essential service lined up next to each other along that road, like a centralized vital system. The Mayor’s office sat right in the middle of the city, “It was the city’s heart” or at least that’s what the Mayor would so often say. To each side of the Mayor’s office were the RCMP building and the courthouse respectively. Further right, past the courthouse was the Liquor store and the gun shop, the joke wrote itself and many spoke it allowed to the clerks who would feign amusement. Finally just past the RCMP building was the grocery store. Everything a man or woman would ever need all in one place, liquor, guns, food, then a place to stay for the night to sober up. Other than the grocery store Howard tried to stay away from that area, he wasn’t much of a fan of the city’s government, much less their guard dogs. The police seemed a bit off wherever he was around. He couldn’t understand what it was he could never place about them. There was the overbearing government, but he was all too clear of that. At least three groups of officers had stopped by only two days after he moved in, they claimed only to come say “hello”, or to “welcome him to our quaint town”, all with the same fake smile shining brightly through their pearlescent teeth. Howard wasn’t even sure where the town dentist was, he had never seen it.  However, he did admit that a large number of communities in small towns were always very welcoming and wholesome so long as you weren’t an outsider. 

All in all, Howard didn’t understand the allure of this town, “not my style personally … a little too plain” he had said to his neighbor. Puzzled, she asked Howard “Sorry, What do you mean?”. Howard explained to her everything, about his life not going to plan, about how he needed to settle here in Rejuvenation Springs for a hopeful but small chance of an invitation from Vancouver, and how he only moved to Rejuvenation Springs because the cost of living in the city was far too high. Oddly enough his neighbor didn’t talk to him after that, he didn’t intend to be rude and dump all his frustrations on her, but that is exactly what came out. It had been a few months since then with nary a word from her other than brief acknowledgments when passing one another on the street. He started to think he probably had been a bit too much. Howard didn’t think poorly of the townspeople, he was just looking for something “a bit more unique?”. Even he wasn’t completely sure that he didn’t hold malice for the townsfolk. Maybe he did think poorly of them, this place was plan F after all. He had alienated his neighbor by snubbing her hometown and the people she had likely grown up with and known her entire life, yeah maybe it was him taking out his frustration on a small quaint town. Maybe there was a small piece of himself that realized this. 

No, it was something else entirely, he didn’t like the aesthetic of the town, that was it. He desired something more unique. Why did the sky always have to be blue and the forest green? They were beautiful in their own right, with the permanent fixture of large swaying evergreens hovering over the town like a prison guard tower, and the cool light blue sky smeared with a painter’s spilled palette, which splotched away any potential masterpiece into a begrudgingly acceptable acknowledgment that was pretty enough for most people. Howard seemed to think that the sky would look much nicer if, clear in all its uncovered beauty, it turned a soft orange and the evergreens turned a light blue … “No that wouldn’t work”, it would be more interesting if the trees were black. An orange sky that poked through a patchwork of white clouds and pitch black trees with the edges of the leaves, bark, and branches covered in a thin white sap, so the sap would outline the tree in a small almost ethereal aura. While this vision would never be granted to him, it was the middle of June, so the heat would burn the trees and force an orange sky on him one way or another. But this was irrelevant, just a series of thoughts that opposed one another in his head, what to feel sorry about, and life goals that seemingly would never come true.  Tonight he would finally make his mark, a small pathetic unpolished mark maybe but it would be a foothold to claw his way up. He would make this mark… he had to.

The project itself was – Howard cut himself. “Ah dammit, ” he mumbled. A female voice called out to him “Howard are you all right?”. Without a glance at either the wound or the person that called to him, Howard responded, “Uh yup, just a nick”. Howard then looked down at his hand, thankfully it really had been just a nick. He squeezed the cut into the rag stuffed into the front pocket of his white smock and took a glance at the person who called him. It was his neighbor in front of the service counter. She looked concerned, her face contorted to a look of pity at Howard being injured and disgust at the sight of blood. Howard figured she was a heart on the sleeve type of woman with little to no poker face to be found. “Are you sure everything’s fine?” she asked. Howard nodded “Yeah, no all good, didn’t get any blood on the meat”. She exhaled through her nose and shook her head, her eyes locked on the rag “Not the meat dude, you, are you okay?”. Howard walked up to the meat department service counter, and rested his good arm on top of the glass while he kept the other out of view. Howard made an effort to change the conversation, he switched to a more professional customer service persona. “Perfectly fine, now what can I get for you?” He grinned. With a small unconscious shake of her head, she sighed and accepted the change “Ok sure, right… I was looking to get a beef brisket”. “I’m doing a barbeque I’m doing over the weekend, I need it to be about ten-ish pounds”. Howard found her amusing, not in a cruel way but more as a cute observation. While he watched her talk he noticed that, along with that beating sleeve of hers, she also talked with her hands. She mimicked cooking on a barbeque, she grew and shrunk her hands back and forth to indicate the rough idea of size before she finished her performance by recoiling her hands into fists and then into her pockets after she realized Howard had noticed. ”Do you sell full pieces of brisket here?” she asked. “Oh, yeah, we’ve got plenty.” He said. Howard waved his wounded hand in the air “Just give me a moment to deal with this before I trim it up for you unless you’d like me to try one handed”. The neighbor smirked at the joke “No no, go ahead”.

After he bandaged his hand up, Howard grabbed a cut of brisket from the back cooler and slapped it down onto the wet cutting table, he cleaned off the excess juices and began to cut into it. He used slow practiced movements to separate the fat layer down the middle of the brisket horizontally, creating two thinner pieces of brisket. Howard moved onto the excess fat, he cut a small chunk of fat out of each piece at the top, and cut out two larger pieces of fat that hugged the sides. The briskets themselves were oddly shaped but beautiful in their own way. The pieces seemed to resemble the bodice of a dress, a rather small dress, but with a small nick here and a small cut there the piece would have a lovely pleated look.  It could create a beautiful centerpiece of a full dress showing off th- Howard nicked himself again. “Crap” he said quietly.  The neighbor called out to Howard “Really not your day is it?”. Howard smiled and nodded at the remark but would not respond, too embarrassed to look at her. He was losing credibility, one cut is usually fine right? People make mistakes and as such a cutter getting cut is fine, but two in as many minutes, that’s the look of an amateur, an incompetent amateur. A flower too wilted and devoid of care to bother blossoming. She probably understood that now, rightfully looking down on him. Howard felt a pressure against the back of his head, like the hands of a gardener reaching down to pluck a useless bulb from an otherwise beautiful garden bed. Howard calculated that there wouldn’t be enough time to get another bandage to fix himself, so instead he tucked his arm into his chest and finished the brisket with his left hand. Slowly but surely he outpaced the hands that sought to pluck him and finished the brisket. He wrapped it up in some butcher’s paper and handed it over to the Neighbour. “Looks great, I really appreciate it” She said. Howard understood the true meaning behind the words, a polite guise behind a disgusted customer, she would never be coming back again. After she had left, Howard took off his gloves and turned back to the first aid kit in the cupboards, rubbing his eyes with his free hand and sighed“I need to get out of here”.

Once his shameful shift had mercifully come to an end, Howard walked home, he took the same route as usual. A slightly longer path then needed but a more secluded path away from the main roads so he didn’t feel like he was being watched. After he arrived home he threw his keys, bag, and shoes next to the front door but kept his coat and marched down into the basement. The stairs themselves led directly down into a black abyss, with no light to be found, or at least until next paycheck. The only senses that could be useful to navigate were touch and smell. The smell of petrichor with a lovely hint of mildew lighting his way to navigate as good as any light source could have, so long as he could withstand it. The smell grew stronger and stronger the closer he got to the bottom. His sense of touch on the other hand was not so useful if he wanted to keep his already slashed hands from getting any worse. The stairs were made of old splintered oak wood with probably as much skin residue on the walls as thin wood slivers in Howard’s hands. Using the sleeves of his coat he felt his way to the bottom. The halls were narrow, not even large enough to fully extend his arms. How he was ever going to move furniture back up the stairs was a complete mystery. 

Howard arrived at the bottom of the stairs face first after he had thought he had landed at the bottom one step too early. He left the coat on the floor where he had crashed and fumbled into the middle of the room for the light. He bumped into the string and pulled it after a couple of attempts to grasp it. Finally, the room was illuminated in dim white light. 

Each one had been a pattern used by a designer, a brilliant artist Howard had always admired. The one on the left was an old used fabric. It had been worn, risen, and fallen from fame all before Howard had even been born. The artist had been a designer on the weirder side of the industry. They concocted a darker, larger than life, larger than comprehension persona with his pieces. They Forced more on thin little threads of ideas that would be developed further in the viewer’s mind. Like a painter who used dotted lines for their pieces, the large majority of the piece is there, and what hadn’t been depicted would be filled in by the viewer.

The second Artist focused more on the visceral side,  they focused on what was directly in front of you. They designed for themselves in a way that just so happened to allow them a modest living in the process. They were not obsessed with the limelight, they would of course become excited when their works would get them some acclaim and a modest sum of cash, but in turn not fuss too much when their pieces went under the radar either. They were a true creative spirit. It was a trait Howard aspired to. A trait Howard unfortunately couldn’t see himself achieving anytime soon. 

Howard was exceptionally skilled at destroying his works, creating piece after piece that started from a proud vision and would inevitably be polluted the moment Howard took a second to step back to admire his work. The orange cloud of an idea always seemed to turn into a mess that disgusted Howard, the stitching always seemed to be off, the colors always seemed to clash and the style he used was always that of an amateur, a failure.

“An amateur?” No, an amateur may make many mistakes but beneath it all you can still see the potential behind their actions, as large or small as the potential may be. No Howard wasn’t an amateur, he was a child. A twelve year old still struggling with baby’s first sewing kit. A step down from another step down, he was a failure. The seams and stitching were always fucking crooked! He couldn’t use these fabrics, no, they would be wasted on him, he would butcher them like all the clothing before, and just like all the designs before, they would wind up burnt away and lock up the ashes in a toolbox under his workbench. He was a butcher in design and a designer in a butcher shop. There was always a quote kicking around in the back of Howard’s mind trying to drive a point into his thick skull. “A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others” from The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, page who gives a shit. At twenty-three years of age, Howard was too far behind to keep up with everyone else, he was already a butcher, so why bother to try to be something he was not? And if he is a butcher, then those things on the floor there must be meat right? 

Howard pulled a leather sleeve from the top workbench drawer and laid it out across the table. There were four knives and one honing rod all arranged from largest to smallest. The rod was first followed by a thick ten inch breaking knife, an eight inch boning knife for fish, and two six inch utility knives, one curved and the other straight. He selected the breaking knife along with the straight paring knife and honed them, he scraped the metal into alignment, which broke off any small pieces that stood out of alignment. Howard walked over to the first corpse. The man before Howard was no longer a brilliant larger than life man, who concocted darker abstract art that wowed a young boy and brought him into the same field, it was an old stinking corpse. An abhorrent mass of flesh, and hair. A gaunt, slender figure, with thin limbs that seemed too small for the body itself. The body had been around for far too long and the rot was beginning to set in. Howard frowned, there likely wouldn’t be as many salvageable parts off this corpse as Howard had hoped. He cut into the torso, unseaming it from neck to groin. The gasses of the body belched from the open wound and invaded Howard’s senses, he gagged and pulled his shirt up over his nose. It was a long dead corpse that shouldn’t have been brought back to life to use far past its expiration. After a brief pause for Howard to regain his lunch, he stuck his utility knife in between the skin and the fat and in small light waves of the knife began to separate the two pieces. The two sections separated easily enough, he would lift the skin stretching the fat just a little, to the point just before the skin would begin to rip, and then Howard would use his knife to separate the layers. It took Howard about twenty minutes to fully peel the skin from the torso, making a few mistakes along the way and having to cut away the pieces of rot like the soft parts of a potato. But in the end, Howard was able to get a fairly good looking vest out of the process, with little fat left stuck to the vest to boot. Howard skinned the arms next, he was slowly improving his skill, this time there was no meat attached to the skin. He pinned the vest and arms onto the male mannequin. The vest would serve as an… as an underlayer, like a mesh, and the arms would be turned into opera gloves. The skin around the shoulders would be folded in on itself and sewn in place, which would add a bit more elegance to the piece. It was a start, and he started to like it. It was just a start though, with plenty more that could go wrong along the way.

Howard went back to the first corpse, the meat itself was too old and pungent to use but the bone could still be used. Howard took up the breaker knife and hacked away the meat from the corpse’s ribs. The bones were nowhere near as delicate as the skin so he did not need to be as careful when separating the two. The hard part was dislodging the ribs from the spine. The best method he found was to cut the torso open from the back and then punch the ribs with the handle of the knife. When that strategy came to a quick end with a wet handle and a few more bandages, he resorted to stomping them apart. The ribs were broken in different places leaving an uneven figure but he “ehh whatever”, Howard was just a butcher anyway? He strung the individual ribs together with a drill and some thin steel wire, he placed it behind the mannequin’s head as an… honestly great looking collar.

After Howard salvaged what he could from the first body, he moved onto the second. The second body had not been dead for a while, judging by the way it looked, the flecks of gray hairs in his head and beard would imply late thirties or early forties, but the wrinkles in the skin implied a different older story. It had not rotted away like the first body but instead, it was still fresh, still had potential for amateurs to use. It seemed to be maybe a bit above Howard’s skill level. But as Howard was a butcher, not a designer, the hesitation vanished. He cut deep into the torso so he could see each layer of skin, muscle, meat, organ, and bone beyond that. He separated the skin from the muscle. He took much less care this time as it was the meat Howard was interested in. He then cut the fat off the muscles, dealing with the silver skin was somehow always the most frustrating part for him. Finally, he sliced the meat into large chunks with his breaking knife. The blood and sinew clung onto his hands, which was fine. The blood also stained his clothes, which was much less fine as he forgot to grab an apron. Howard took the pieces he needed back to the mannequin and began to stitch the dress to life. He used the leftover bones to outline a bodice and decided to put the vest overtop of the bones rather than use it as an underlayer, now more as an insulator. He used a similar technique to form a gown going all the way down to the floor and used the meat to give the skeleton of his creation mass, stuffing it like the foam of a puffer jacket. 

Howard took a step back to ponder his work. His natural focused frown curled ever so slightly into a smile. A smile that quivered on the edge of tears. He… he liked it. The dress wasn’t anything amazing far from it, it was definitely something of an amateur’s work, but something that would require upgrading books to get to. The “baby’s first book” could be burned away and placed in that toolbox with all the rest. It felt like a massive weight had lifted off his shoulders. His legs grew weak as the years of weight lifted off him. Light Headed from the change in pressure he stumbled to his workshop stool on failing legs. Howard gripped the chair tightly and chuckled. All this time he had no idea what had weighed him down, he felt light as a feather, he could fly away if he was able to stand.

As soon as the complaints from his legs lessened just a bit, Howard got up and pulled the dress off the mannequin. It had not been fully finished yet, some places still held together with sewing pins, but he had to see it on a body, he took great care to not break any pins that held together the unfinished sections. The fabric itself was quite soft, soft as cotton actually. The colors didn’t clash together like his pieces usually did, a black puffy bodice that faded into a deep red ball gown, with marble white opera gloves that ended just past the elbow. Howard looked into the mirror and snickered, he really was a butcher whether he liked it or not, a Black apron, white arms of a smock, and red all over. Maybe it’ll be the start of a series of butcher-related looks. That could be fun, but if he wanted to show it to the world he would have to perfect it first.

Howard looked deeper into the mirror and noticed a small error in one of the stitches in the bodice. It was wrong, completely wrong. It was crooked, a small error most people wouldn’t be able to notice, but anyone versed in design would catch it right away, he was sure of it. He studied the dress further. There was another crooked stitch hidden in the base of the collar, then he found another, and another, and another. Again and again and again. His so-called magnificent collar was uneven, dipping down on the left side very noticeably, how had he ignored something so blatant? The color was faded on top of it all. The skin from the corpse wasn’t so soft either. “Fucker should have moisturized more.” Exactly like the rest of Howard’s dress was another failure. “Fuck!” he screamed as he laid into the mirror with his fist. The mirror shattered into dozens of pieces and scattered across the floor reflecting his mistakes in many new angles. The pain in his hand was immediate, his smart choice would likely require stitches. Howard signed “Dammit” and grabbed a rag from his workbench to tie his hand up. He walked back up the dark, dank staircase, pinballing himself up them, and somehow managed to hit at least one side of the wall at every given opportunity.

Howard took his keys from the coat rack and flung open the door only to see his neighbor standing in front of him with a balled fist in the air. Howard recoiled instantly. “Oh, sorry I was about to knock,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you”.” No no, It’s all good, force of habit” he responded. The neighbor and another younger man stood behind her looked Howard up and down. Howard hid his wounded hand behind himself to not start that conversation up again only to realize they hadn’t been looking at his hand. He hadn’t had time to change and completely forgot he was still in the dress. He’d have to endure the humiliation and go to the clinic in the dress. He would burn the dress when he got home, until then maybe this was a punishment of sorts. Maybe the embarrassment would finally kill the boy craving a life of design leaving just one man left. His cheeks grew red, his fists clenched and he drew his good arm into his chest, ready to defend himself from an onslaught of questions and ridicule.” Uh… what, can I do for you?”. The neighbor and the young man checked Howard up and down, they looked at the dress through every angle until she stepped uncomfortably close. The neighbor opened her mouth to speak with a smile she couldn’t quite hide, exhaling and abandoning the attempt “that’s a lovely dress, I love the colors, where’d you get it? Shopped online?” Howard took a step backward “no, I uh made it”. “Wow! You definitely have a knack for it, I thought you were a butcher? Or is this your real job?”She asked, unconsciously she took a step forward. Howard paused at the question, he struggled to answer it, he didn’t know the answer himself. The neighbor interrupted Howard’s indecision “It’s complicated,  got it, moving on”. “What I actually came here for was to ask you if you would like to join us for the annual Rejuvenation Springs potluck tomorrow, I realized a couple minutes ago that you’re new here and likely wouldn’t know about it”. “It would give you a chance to meet most of the town and even make some friends”. There would be a bunch of people you age, like my sun here”. She spoke like a mother explaining to her child how important it was to make friends on the first day of school. A real far cry from the “you’re not here to make friends you’re here to win” mentality he knew all too well. The neighbor’s son took another step up the stairs to greet Howard. Short combed hair, a pair of circular glasses. He wore orange khaki pants and a striped black and white shirt. He waved at Howard with a slightly embarrassed smile. Howard considered how much of a mother the neighbor had been to a complete stranger and could understand his embarrassment, he had probably been dragged up to say hello by her as if he were a child.“I’ll be there” said Howard. “I’d love to”. The effects of his basement tantrum began to pull at his arm. He winced, sucking air, and revealed his injured hand. “But I got to deal with this right now”. “Again?” she asked. Howard nodded with a sheepish smile. She sighed “You cannot be trusted with knives, come on I’ll drive you.”. 

Howard attempted many times to wave her off but to no avail. The three of them got into the neighbor’s car and drove to the local clinic. Along the way Howard formally introduced himself to them as they did in turn, finally after months by himself he met Beverly and Beverly’s son James. Beverly used to be a seamstress and knew all the terms Howard had used to answer all her questions about the dress. James was a university student one or two years younger than Howard, he studied English and had come home for the summer to be a “freeloader while I still can”. The car was filled with chatter the entire drive to the clinic. They parked just in front of the clinic next to the dental office. Howard had to talk his way into being allowed to go into the clinic alone, he then thanked them and got out of the car. This town didn’t seem so bad to him after all. Only now after the chatter had stopped did Howard notice that it was an especially breezy day and the sky seemed to have no clouds in sight. The rustle of the leaves made the sound of pure ecstasy. Before the car could pull out Howard turned back to answer Beverly’s earlier question, he called out to them confidently “Hey!”. “I’m a designer, not a butcher”.