Statement of David Laylow, regarding his time working at an industrial abattoir near Dalston.
Statement[]
David Laylow worked in the meat processing plant owned by Aver Meats. Although he started work as a driver, he eventually joined the killing floor and mused that he was starting to see people as just flesh.
David asked to be moved from the killing floor and his request was granted. On his last day on the killing floor, his coworker Tom Haan gripped his shoulder and said, "You can not stop slaughter by closing the door" before returning to his post with the bleeding crew. Later, as David was killing the animals with the bolt gun, he started to enter a kind of trance. When he came out of it, there was no one around and the doors lead to new and unfamiliar rooms.
David started to walk aimlessly down long clean corridors, past clean hooks and pristine equipment. Eventually he found a door marked 'Exit', but as he went through it he found himself on a conveyor belt heading towards a meat grinder. He leapt back through the door to escape.
As he wandered, David started to smell the coppery smell of blood. Following the smell, he came onto a catwalk above a huge meat grinder, which was fed by various conveyor belts. He was not sure if the meat was purely animal or if some was human as well.
As he left that room he heard the slow thunk of a bolt gun. Although he tried to avoid it, he eventually found the source of the noise: Tom Haan was sitting on the floor, repeatedly firing the gun into himself, covered in bloody wounds. He made David hold the bolt gun and placed it to Tom's forehead, though David pulled the trigger. He left his motionless colleague, not knowing but hoping he was dead, and emerged outside of the plant.
Post-Statement[]
Sasha checked David's facts, he was employed from April 2010 - 12th July 2013. He and Tom left their post in the middle of a shift and left by the main entrance, although Tom never returned and was not seen again. Tim and Martin found no evidence of his whereabouts.
Aver Meats is trying to extend its Dalston branch, but builders working on the project keep leaving, saying that the plant is already too big and the smell of blood never leaves.
Continuity[]
ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This section contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk. |
- Related Entity:
- The Flesh
- The hallways of the building may be related to The Spiral and/or The Vast.
- Related Beings:
- Tom Haan is an avatar of The Flesh who also appears in MAG 72 and MAG 130.
- This episode is chronologically the last time Tom Haan appears. After stopping his attempt at the Last Feast circa 2007[1], Gertrude Robinson predicted that Tom would "fade away or burn out as they tend to when robbed of their purpose", so the use of the bolt gun may legitimately be suicidal.
- Tom Haan is an avatar of The Flesh who also appears in MAG 72 and MAG 130.