Cows

Steven awakens on the slaughter room floor, surrounded by a dozen cows led by the Guernsey. The cows take him through a hidden, city-wide network of underground tunnels to their home: A massive cavern where a herd of escaped cattle has formed a society. The Guernsey explains that the herd originated from cattle Cripps accidentally left in the holding pen one night, and that they want revenge on Cripps. They ask Steven to lure the foreman into the empty slaughter room at night so they can kill him. Steven hesitates, insisting that he can’t be responsible for his death even if he knows what’s happening in the slaughter room is wrong. The Guernsey warns him that Cripps will continue to brutalize him. Steven then passes out and awakens outside the meat plant.

Steven returns home, exhausted in the middle of the night. The Hagbeast, who is ill from the poisoned food, is waiting at the table demanding more food. He serves another meal of his feces to both himself and his mother. The Hagbeast vomits but continues eating, while Steven finds it less repulsive. Afterward, he collapses into bed.

After his experience in the slaughter room, Steven wakes in the late afternoon feeling unexpectedly free from his usual fear. He finds the Hagbeast weakened from the meals of his feces but still alive. He then goes to Lucy’s, where they have sex repeatedly. During their time together, Steven resolves to build a new life with Lucy and a future child in his apartment after his mother is dead. To hasten this, he eats raw meat to make his feces more dangerous for the Hagbeast’s next meal.

The following morning, he finds his mother collapsed and drags her to the kitchen. As he forces her to eat his specially prepared feces, she correctly suspects he is hiding something and threatens to find and destroy whatever is giving him hope. This terrifies Steven, who realizes she could discover Lucy. The Hagbeast then has a seizure and collapses. Fearing she will recover and investigate, Steven flees to work.

At the slaughterhouse, the Guernsey appears and asks if Steven has decided to help them kill Cripps. However, Steven insists that he hasn’t given it anymore thought. In response, the cow warns him that Cripps has something even more brutal planned for tonight and that Steven will have to help them.

After his shift, Cripps appears and leads Steven to the deserted slaughter room. There, Cripps reveals Gummy, naked and bound. Declaring it Steven’s next step toward “freedom,” Cripps hands Steven a pair of secateurs, physically guides his hand and helps him make the first cut, then encourages him verbally as Steven continues the dismemberment himself. The act causes Steven to vomit and collapse in shock. Cripps tells him this was the next difficult but necessary step to change himself, then leaves him alone with the corpse. In a traumatized daze, Steven travels back to Lucy’s apartment. He finds himself standing over her as she sleeps, conscious only of a need to lie down next to her.

Steven awakens feeling empowered and resolves to kill his mother directly instead of continuing his slow poisoning plan. He goes to her kitchen, but she ambushes him, revealing she knew about his plot. She slams him face-first into the floor and pins him with her weight, then loops a rope around his neck to strangle him. Dog intervenes by attacking the Hagbeast’s throat, forcing her to release Steven. She retaliates by brutally killing Dog. Fueled by a lifetime of hatred and vengeance for his pet, Steven attacks his mother and, striking her with his elbow, sends her collapsing to the floor. He drags her to the kitchen, ties her up, and tortures her by pulling out her teeth with pliers. He then murders her by taping her mouth to his anus and fatally suffocating her with his feces. Feeling triumphant and believing he has removed the source of his misery, Steven moves Lucy and her things into the apartment.

Steven grants Lucy’s request to dissect his mother’s body in search of “stones.” While she works, he sleeps, and upon waking, he feels safe and settled in his home, lord of it at last. He finds Lucy in the kitchen, crying over the completely dismembered corpse, having found nothing inside. Steven is secretly pleased, believing her disillusionment will now permanently bind her to him and a domestic life.

After they have sex, Steven carries his mother’s remains to the roof in garbage bags. Overlooking the city, he has a revelation, concluding that the act of killing has been the source of his increasing power and self-determination, just as Cripps had implied. He retrieves his dead Dog’s body, props it up between two chimneys to “witness,” and burns his mother’s remains with gasoline until only ash is left.

Following the Hagbeast’s death, Steven and Lucy experience several weeks of happiness. Lucy recovers and helps Steven transform the apartment into an idealized home modeled on television family shows. With Lucy now pregnant, Steven feels he has successfully willed his dream life into existence. He even sees himself as superior to others that have a successful life, as he gained his through his own strength and will.

However, this satisfaction fades as Steven is overcome by a powerful anxiety three weeks later. He grows increasingly fearful that his fragile new world will collapse, worrying about money, Lucy’s mental state, and his own weakness. After a week of agonizing, he recalls that killing his mother gave him the strength to begin this life. He concludes that to preserve it, he needs to kill again—another “injection of certainty,” as Cripps’s lessons had taught him (119).

After a month’s absence, a paranoid and anxious Steven returns to the meatpacking plant. He finds a strange comfort in the familiarity of his job at the grinder. During his lunch break, the Guernsey cow confronts him through a ventilation grille, insisting that killing has “infected” him and that he is back to help the cows kill Cripps. Steven reveals that he will not help merely set Cripps up, but that he wants to perform the killing himself.

The Guernsey is initially resistant, as the herd wanted to be involved, but Steven persuades it by arguing that he can hurt Cripps more effectively and that the cows cannot get to him otherwise. The Guernsey agrees on the condition that the herd can witness the entire event. Steven instructs it to come to the slaughter room at the end of the day. He then approaches Cripps, who is delighted when Steven says he wants to kill again. With his plan set in motion, Steven works through the afternoon, filled with a tense anticipation for the murder.