text: Beneath the collapsed stone wall at the southern end of Bottle Street Cemetery, along a queue of carriages awaiting cargo on Bottle Street proper, is where my grandfather is buried. Three of his known victims are buried a pistol shot away, under a decaying oak tree starved of all sunlight by coughs of smoke in the dockyard beyond. A short row of mossy headstones stand in a patch of overgrown grass there, the weathered likeness of death itself engraved upon all. Joyce DeWitt, 1839-1861, who my grandfather entangled in a romantic affair; Joyce’s twin sister Angelica DeWitt, 1839-1861, who was buried with a beloved pet cat; and the constable’s daughter Elizabeth Thorne, 1841-1861, whose crooked headstone turns away as though petrified even in death. Not long ago, as we drove past the cemetery in snowfall one night before Christmas, my grandmother confided in me that the DeWitt sisters ruthlessly tortured Elizabeth Thorne, and once cornered the girl in an alleyway outside the butchery where she was made to swallow pig’s blood. I am yet unsure of how my grandmother came about that tale, however, as she was quite elderly and demented at the time. My own ink still wet upon the page, I wonder what role she played in such cruelty to disallow the memory to dry. The wall had been repaired once before now, amidst several weeks of deluge in October of 1887. The stonemason’s apprentice, who noticed me watching toil in the mud breathless and soaked to the bone, explained that the Butcher’s grave was much too shallow to withstand the weight of the stone and that the naval batteries along the cape were unlikely to hold fast upon such a murderous sinkhole. Evidently the apprentice knew well his trade, because the wall toppled during the evening of a violent squall this past August. Given enough time, I believe the soil would wash away to reveal a festering gateway to hell. A wagon arrived on Bottle Street early this morning that was leading a blind team through the ghostly fog that veiled the city. It was only once the cargo was unloaded and many blocks of granite lay in a rough pile beside the wall that I noticed the apprentice from years ago. A strange sense of joy overcame me in that moment, as if finally reacquainted to another who understood the true burden of its collapsing. The joy remained untainted by daylight until the discovery of a corner article in the morning paper which the author wrote about an anonymous donation addressed to city hall. “We must respect the deceased, for we too shall yet share their fate.” Though in truth, I paid the government three hundred dollars not to pay respect to my grandfather, but to weigh the rotten bastard down. Because I was murdered by the Butcher’s sick mind and foul action, if only by way of upright reputation. Yet unborn and unable to smile at the day of his hanging, I am able enough to now witness the stoning of a man who deserves to die thrice.