The smell of freshly baked pastries made half of the people in the store come rushing to the display counter. My sweet employees, Chells and Mona, were doing their best to attend them while Matthew and I placed the last of the day's goods on the displays. We would be closing soon and all I wanted to do was to give Mathew the keys to close the shop and rush back home for a good night sleep. Business had been going absurdly well that day and I was exhausted from running up and down attending customers and baking. Even with my adorable little helpers running up and down with me it had not been an easy day at the shop.

"Francis, I need three berry pies and a chocolate cake please" Chells yelled up from the front of the store.

"Will I get a kiss if I bring them over?" I yelled back already picking up the goods.

"Get rid of the beard and I'll consider it." She yelled smiling. I laughed at her antics, but she did kiss me on the cheeks as a thank you none the less.

"Watch out Francis. I'll get jealous." Mona yelled at us smiling her self. I walked up behind her and kissed the top of her head.

"How about I take you on a date someday? Would that help?" She pouted playfully pretending to consider my offer.

"Not fair, I want a date too." Chells yelled back. I laughed whole heartedly.

"There is enough of me for the both of you me belles."

"Yea well get all of you back to work Francis. Matthew is drowning in costumers over there." Mona pointed at the poor boy trying to get the costumers to hear him out from behind the counter. So I walked there to help him out.

They were my little family, my precious children, and I loved all of them dearly. Even with all the play flirting I did, I made extra sure to make them all know they were special in my heart. They were the reason I kept going on.

I was just handing some goods to a costumer when my pocket vibrated. I pulled my cellphone out and checked the number calling me. A lump got stuck on my throat when I recognized it. 'Please not today, not now, not him' was all I could think of when finally picking up.

"Allo?"

"Ill be coming to the shop today, same time as always. Da?" Shivers went down through my spine and settled in my guts.

"That's fine, Ill see you then." I shut the phone off quickly not wanting to hear anymore of that accursed voice. I felt sudden dizziness, my body went cold and I wanted badly to throw up but held myself.

"Francis, are you ok?" Matthew was suddenly beside me holding me up, I didn't even realize I was using the wall for support.

"Merci, just tired I guess." I stud up straight again and walked back to the counter to help Chells and Mona with the last customers. I needed to act normal. My precious assistants couldn't get suspicious or scared. But if anyone discovered what was going happen that night it would mean the death of me.

By the time we closed the shop and my sweet innocent little workers had left for the comforts of their own houses I was dripping in cold sweat and having a hard time standing. I felt terribly sick. I wished very badly to simply go home and forget that cursed phone call. But I had work to be done before the devil arrived to torture me once again.

I automatically walked back to the kitchen to start cleaning and getting things ready. I turned the doe batter back on and heated the oven once again. Settled the trays besides the oven, separated the ingredients that would be needed, just as I did every morning when I arrived at the shop.

But then I went and gathered the hose and the bleacher. The long table was covered and placed to sit beside the floor drain near a corner, and last of all, I walked back to my office to get my instruments from the vault.

Matthew has always believed I kept my documents and my finances locked in that vault for safe precaution, Mona thinks I keep money in there because I don't believe in banks, Chells once asked if I kept a little black book with the name of all the people I have ever slept with in there. My sweet little children, all of them shinning brightly and pure besides me every day at the shop, unaware of what happened inside when it closed.

I opened it and inside stood a fine leathered black case with silver handles. Yet I didn't dare touch it. I left it sitting there where it belonged as I went back and leaned on my chair starring back at the open vault. I stared back at my sins, looked at the horrible monster I had become, I saw the darkness that has been consuming me for years now. The very existence of that case made my skin crawl up and I became repulsed by myself. There stood the case that held a butcher's dream knife collection. All anyone ever needed to butcher, hack, chop, gut and skin. Knives so sharp they sliced flesh like butter and sawed through the bones in minutes. I could even powder bones with some of the things I had in that damned case.

It was the sound coming back from the kitchen that woke me up from my self loathing. The devil had arrived and I was once again going to pay the price for selling him my soul.

As carefully as I could, I took the case out of its prison and cradled it protectively in my arms walking back to the kitchen. And as I walked in, there stood the Russian devil that tormented me. Smiling as always, all scarf and long coat, with a dead corpse already laid out for me on my long table.

"привет Francis. You seem tired." I loathed how the voice coming out of that hell spawned man sounded so sweet and cheerful. How could someone talk so normally with a dead body besides them? But then again, I loathed myself for what I was going to do to it.

I glared at him. "I had a busy day Ivan. And I would like to end this as quickly as possible."

He pouted mockingly. "You're never happy to see me, why can't you greet me with a smile like your customers?"

Without dignifying him with an answer I settled my case an arm's length from the table with the dead body so I wouldn't need to move so much. By the time I opened it and saw my own reflection on the blades my body no longer felt tired and I was suddenly calm. It always sickens me later how calm I get when I'm about to butcher up a body.

Ivan just stood there besides me, smiling like always, watching my every move. That used to scare me at first, but now, not even his creepy smiling got to me. I picked my gutting knife, turned to face the body laid in front of me, and started my work.

The blade entered the body easily, and once you got the blade inside, gutting the corpse and removing its insides was actually quite simple. I already had plenty of experience gutting off unknown bodies, ripping the organs from the body, and feeling the blood cover me.

The smell of the flesh and death, the feeling of the still warm flesh being squished between my fingers as I rotated my blade inside them, the feeling of blood, and all those foul things inside the human body would simply make me sick.

I worked mechanically, chopping off the limbs into smaller pieces. Once in parts, it's easier to think of it as a pig instead of a person. Stab, cut, slash, repeat. It didn't even take long to dismember it and start to remove the flesh from bones. Blood covered me, pooled on the table and dripped on to the floor. But it didn't matter, blood could be washed off. And all I had to think of was the movement of the knife. I would think about the blood and the guts later.

I would never ask about the bodies Ivan brought. He has never answered. I wouldn't even think of them as human bodies anymore when Ivan arrived with them. Back then I would throw up before and after the deed was to be done. Back then I was still human myself. Now these corpses were just animals, and I was just a butcher. That happened after I recognized one of the bodies Ivan had brought to me one night.

The poor Vietnamese girl, I couldn't even remember her name. She had worked at the shop with me, one of my first employees. She went missing one day, and four months later Ivan walks in with her on his shoulders. I cried the entire time I worked my knives on her. I was never able to see these pieces of flesh that I chop and butcher as people after that night.

Ivan's creepy childish voice interrupted my thoughts and movements. "You know, if you really put yourself into it, I bet you could get rid of it in less than an hour."

I looked up from the pieces of flesh that I was chopping into his devilishly amused smile. "Are you in a hurry perhaps?" What was I suppose to do? You didn't get rid of a fully grown men's body in less than an hour. Especially not the way I did it.

Ivan just shrugged. I went back to work separating flesh from bones.

"Dose it bother you?" I cursed my luck. He was in a damned talking mood. That was a first, but I was not interested in talking with the devil that haunted my dreams and made me feel less human after every visit.

"What?" I kept my eyes on the flesh, my knife making steady progress into the meat.

"You know, doing this. Dose it bother you?"

"Ah, you mean to be used as a butcher to cover up the murders of the Russian mob." I made sure to look straight into his eyes and put on my most sarcastic smile. "Oh, I just love it you know. It's a wonder I worked so hard to be an honest baker instead of being a butcher in a pig's farm."

Ivan frowned at me. Guess he noticed the sarcasm. Maybe now he would shut up and let me finish my damned job. It was always dangerous when people asked too many questions. He should know that by now.

"Then why do you do it?" I groaned with frustration. Why had he suddenly decided to play twenty questions with me? For five years, all he had done was stand there and watched me work to make sure the job had been done and occasionally help me, all of them with the minimal of communication possible. Why had the devil suddenly take an interest in me?

"Didn't your boss warn you about asking questions?" I made a show of hacking a large piece of meat from the body to punctuate my sentence. I would never be physically intimidating to a man like him, but maybe being covered in blood and having a butcher knife on my hand would help me shutting him up.

Ivan shrugged and smiled at me again. Guess intimidating him was a lost cause. "It doesn't really matter since he's dead now."

My knife faltered a bit. For a second I felt the urge to stop everything and ask for mercy, to finally be able to fulfill my dream of getting rid of those knifes and to never have to see a dead body again. But the urge died quickly enough. If Ivan still came here, it meant that I was still trapped to their services. I would still be their butcher. At least Ivan got quiet again.

Soon enough I had separated all the flesh from the bones, and all the pieces including the guts were chopped up nicely. The remaining bones were gathered and set on my special grinder to be powdered. I walked to the sink to wash my bloody hands before I started adding ingredients to the doe mix. Once my hands were on the doe I went back into being a baker. Making meat pie had never been a favorite of mine but it had dramatically dropped from my list once I started doing this.

Preparing the doe and seasoning the meat to hide its unnatural origins had been tricky at first but I had already developed a special recipe for it. It was a recipe that was stored into my head and that I would never teach. It was my personal curse reminding me always that even if I got rid of the knives and the nightmares I would still have that little piece of knowledge in my head reminding me of my past sins.

After setting the pies on the oven I turned back to the table, Ivan was already helping cleaning the blood with the hose and the bleacher. The smell of the pies baking would soon over power the smell of the flesh and the blood and the bleacher. And once I got the knives cleaned and safely locked away, I would be able to pretend to be a simple baker once again. But Ivan was still standing in my kitchen by the time I had finished up the cleaning.

"What are you still doing here?" He had never remained for this long before. He shrugged smiling once again.

"Didn't feel like leaving this time." I decided to ignore him as I still had a few hours before I had to open the bakery again and have Mathew, Chells and Mona coming in for work. Even if I didn't have the time to go back home to get myself properly cleaned and rested, I could clean myself enough in the sinks and get some rest taking a nap on my office, plus, I had an extra change of clothes in one of the drawers.

I took the knives' case back to the office and locked it in its vault. But before I managed to turned back from the vault I was pushed and pinned at the wall with my arms raised above my head. I felt a very urgent fear for my life as I struggled to get my hands freed from Ivan's grasps.

"What are you doing? Lâche moi Ivan!" I shouted and tried kicking him. Ivan didn't budge and inch. I felt his breath near the back of my neck and shivered.

"Nyet." He whispered. "I want to see more of you." One of his arms wrapped itself on my waist as he pressed himself against me. I was shaking in fear, holding back tears. Things were not supposed to go this way. He wasn't supposed to be there, I wasn't supposed to be there. I felt his lips on my neck and tried very hard not to make any sound as he bit into my neck. But when I felt his hand sliding under my shirt, I wasn't able to hold myself any longer. The tears started falling and I became a crying mess.

As if for a miracle he released me once I started crying. I fell on the ground curling myself up protectively. I was so tired, so weak, so scared. I wanted that devil out of my life for good, I wanted the mob to forget me and I desperately wanted my old life back. Before I had sold my soul, before I had met Ivan, before when all I did was party, flirt and enjoy the beauties of life.

Ivan's hand was suddenly under my chin and he made me look straight into his eyes as he cleaned my tears with his thumb.

"I'll make you a deal. Figure out why I am a mobster, and I will get you out of all this." He paused as he smiled, I knew there was a second part coming. I had already learned that you always had to pay a price when dealing with the devil. There was no way he would get me out of that life without paying the price.

"But if I figure out why you work for them first, I get to keep you for myself."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Why?" It was really all I wanted to know. The devil was offering me a way out, but at the same time, he was setting a trap to keep me there.

"Because I know your sins and you know mine." He released his hand from my chin and stud up. But as he was walking away, he stopped at the door and looked at me once again, smile in place. "That and I have never seen someone looking so good covered in someone else's blood."

He left then. I heard as the kitchen's back door opened and slammed shut. I just stood curled up besides the wall. Too scared to move and realize that the nightmare wasn't really over. I don't know how long I was stuck there. But I smelled the meat pies from the kitchen and something inside me made me move.

I cleaned myself and changed outfits making sure to cover the bite mark Ivan had presented me with. Then I went back to the kitchen and took the pies from the oven. I was taking them to the counter in front of the store when I heard the door unlock and the chiming of a bell as someone walked in.

"Bonjour Francis." Matthew's soft tone was heaven for my scared beating heart.

"Bonjour Matthew." He walked over to help me set the pie trays.

"Did you spend the night doing these meat pies again?" His voice had a bit of concern on them, it felt very comforting.

"Oui, perhaps next time I feel restless I should search your bed instead of coming back here and cook. Don't you think?" Matthew grew red in a second.

"D..do-don't say things like that." He fled away while I laughed at his distress. He was such a shy boy. But he had already lifted my spirits a bit.

Mona walked in with Chells following right after. The girls kept asking who was the lucky lady or men that had made me come to work so tired. I kept grinning and laughing at them letting them assume what they wanted, it was better that way.

We opened the store as usual. Mathew and I baked breads and cakes and pies as the girls took care of the costumers walking in. We ran out of special meat pies before noon, and I was glad to have gotten rid of them so fast. Even dead tired as I was, it was a good day. We laughed and played, and I felt human again besides my precious children. But when I was finally back at my house that night, I kept thinking of Ivan, and the deal he had offered. I had already sold my soul to the devil, and there was no way that I would be able to get it back. But if I did agree and win, I would at least be able to get my old life back. I wasn't sure about what to do, but I already knew I wouldn't be able to do a thing about it until Ivan showed up again with a new body for me. Until them, I could hope and dream about my old life all I wanted.