Sabotage
He kicked off his wooden clogs, wet mud still clinging thickly to the soles. Tired from the long walk through the sleet and rain, he was relieved to arrive at his destination. His feet could hardly feel the frozen ground he stood on. His fingers holding the key were equally numb. Fumbling with the lock, he opened the door into the darkened house and slid off his leather boots, standing for a moment in the hall.
A hammer strikes metal.
Once inside, the skin on his face quickly became an oxygen-rich bright red. His whole body itched as the circulation returned to his thin limbs, his extremities burning. His unfeeling feet gave him the sensation of walking on stumps, as if his legs ended at the ankle.
A hammer strikes metal.
Sitting down he felt a wave of negativity overcoming him. A realisation οf the inevitability of what he was about to do. He stretched his arms out in front of him, clenching his fists, feeling his mortality thinning.
A hammer strikes metal.
With difficulty, he took off his damp socks and coat, then his trousers, shirt and underwear. He hung his clothes over the fire guard, watching them steaming and feeling himself warming.
A hammer strikes metal.
His mind slipped back to the journey he had just taken. He had never been in doubt about where he was heading. From the moment he had first put on the wooden clogs, he had known in his gut that it would be his own undoing.
A hammer strikes metal.
After shedding his clothing, he reluctantly began to take off his skin, starting gently at the neck, carefully peeling it away from the muscles and fat, tugging a little harder around the joints and knuckles. It was no easy task and he was a perfectionist. He finally placed the perfectly flayed skin by the fire to dry. His concentration didn’t waver as he continued, separating the muscles from the fascia and teasing out the ligaments, laying them next to the skin piece by piece and dismantling the bones one by one. At last his body lay around him on the floor.
A hammer strikes metal.
The only thing left to undress was his head, but with no arms or hands, he now had no chance of doing that. The head was talking to itself, spitting out a string of obscenities, goading him to finish the job and making unintelligible grunts, Finding itself able to move independently, the head rolled menacingly towards the muddy clogs, coming to a stop beside them, eyes up, smiling. It pondered for a moment how it would proceed. Then suddenly it lunged towards the shoes, biting at the wood, clearly set on their destruction. The sabots fought back from the first bite; kicking hard, wilfully attempting to put an end to the head. The battle was intense and destructive.
A hammer strikes metal.
During the long fight, the wood cracked and splintered between its teeth and a large piece became lodged in its throat. It struggled and coughed, wrenching and gasping, unable to defend itself any longer. Its movements became jerky, its eyes rolled back in its head and it came to a final resting place on a pile of sawdust.
A hammer strikes metal.
A ‘Sabot’ was a wooden shoe, worn by textile workers in France at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A saboteur was the name given to those workers who participated in the protests about their poor working conditions, low pay and the inferior quality of the goods that the new automated textile machinery was producing. They would deliberately damage or break the machinery as a direct act of self defence, actively defying the factory owners.
In Britain, The Luddites were skilled textile croppers, who smashed the cropping machinery with hammers when their jobs were given to unskilled and low paid workers. They were brutally suppressed by government troops and after a mass trial in Yorkshire in 1813, more than 30 men were executed or sent to penal colonies.
Nowadays, the name Luddite refers to a person who resists, or refuses to use modern technology.