The Butcher (standard:humor, 2693 words)
Author: Gibbon	Added: Feb 23 2005	Views/Reads: 3515/2355	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
May not be to everyone's taste. A tale of cruelty and revenge.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

box. “Well son,” said the meat man, “this should do the trick. If her 
knickers don't fall off after this fuss, you should trade her in for an 
arctic roll.” “Oh, Mr Gypsum Sir,” Said Donny, tears in his eyes, “I 
don't know how to thank you – this is so... perfect.” “Well I like to 
do right by my employees, and you sort of remind me of myself when I 
was a young lad. Anyway, enough of the mush, I'm going to make myself 
scarce, it's up to you now son, do me proud.” Then he made his way to 
the door, adding, “by the way, I'd noticed she'd been trying on that 
silly bloody hat in the window of her mum's shop, so I paid a little 
extra on my last visit and got her to wrap it up for a certain special 
lady.” And with a wink and a click of his heels he disappeared in to 
the night, leaving Donny waiting nervously for his guest. 

As the door closed behind Gypsum, he chuckled and said to himself with a
sneer, “Silly little twat.” 

As the door closed behind Donny, he looked at his watch and said to
himself, “shit, she'll be here in a minute”. Suddenly, some music 
started up from somewhere, kind of tired and dragging at first, but 
eventually kicking into a slightly wobbly version of ABBA's “The Winner 
Takes it All”. And Donny turned around to find Diane standing awkwardly 
in the doorway, the brilliant moonlight reflecting on her finely 
pampered locks and lighting up her perfect skin. She looked like an 
angel, a Botticelli maiden, and was dressed like a delicious fancy 
cake. “Um, hello, pleased to, err meet you,” Said Donny, holding out a 
sweaty, quivering hand. “Oh, it's you, from the butchers over the 
road!” she squawked, with a heavy northern twang. To Donny's relief she 
seemed quite happy to see him. “I can't believe you've gone to all this 
trouble for me,” she said, blushing and leaning forward to plant a 
dribbley kiss on his glowing cheek. “And how did you know I like ABBA? 
Oooh, whatever your name is, you're amazing!” 

As they turned towards the table, they just caught sight of Ernie
hurriedly scuttling away into a dark corner. “Dinner is served”, he 
declared, in a wheezy smoker's voice, and as a door slammed, the 
shivering disco ball above their heads sent a few shards of light 
waltzing around the room. “Right, well, shall we dine my dear?” asked 
Donny as he graciously pulled out her chair and placed a slightly dusty 
napkin on her lap. “Now, let's see what we have to eat”, he said. And 
he removed the lid of the tarnished silver dish to reveal a wonderful 
steaming beef Wellington covered with rich gravy. He served her a 
generous portion and began to open the bottle of Cava, by which time 
Diane had bypassed grace and manners and got stuck straight in to the 
delicious dish. “Ooh, this is delightful,” she said, glutinous gravy 
dripping down her chin. Then, suddenly her expression changed from one 
of delight, to one of puzzlement, to one of grimacing pain. Donny gave 
up on his bottle-opening duties, wondering what the hell was wrong with 
his date. Before he had time to move, she had showered his face in 
semi-chewed beef Wellington. “Is this your idea of a bloody joke?” she 
screamed, tears running down her distraught face. “What, my love....” 
Asked a desperately confused Donny. “Don't you love me”, she said, 
taking huge glugs of water from the ice bucket. “It's full of bloody 
chillies, it's more like a bloody beef bloody vindaloo.” “Oh God, I am 
so sorry,” said Donny, “it must have been some kind of mix-up. Look, 
why don't you open your present, it's something I know you've wanted 
for ages.” Diane eyed him up and down distrustfully, her mouth still 
burning painfully from the handful of red chillies she had just 
consumed. She did like getting presents, and from the shape of the box 
she thought it might even be that hat she had been lusting after. 

“Oh, all right, give it ‘ere”, she said, smiling coyly. If the gift was
good enough, she might just consider forgiveness. As Donny reached over 
the table with the gift-wrapped box, she grabbed it impatiently, 
dumping half of it in her dinner, and ripping away the carefully curled 
ribbons and expensive wrapping paper. Excitedly she tore off the lid 
and hurled it across the room, her eyes gleaming with anticipation – 
then she froze. Donny assumed that she was overwhelmed with pleasure. 
“Well, what do you think – is it the one you wanted?” he asked. Diane 
reached both hands into the box and slowly raised its contents. Donny's 
face dropped and he wretched as he saw that, as opposed to a 
Sunday-best bonnet, she was clutching a cow's head. Its eyeballs had 
been removed and replaced with two love-heart shaped chocolates wrapped 
in red foil. In the mouth was a packet of condoms and a note saying, 
“fancy a fuck love?” Diane raised herself from her chair in a very 
deliberate fashion and placed the head delicately on Donny's plate, 
positioned so the dead animal's foil eyes seemed to be staring 
accusingly up at him. “I don't know what kind of sick bloody psycho you 
are, but I'm leaving and I never want to see you again. EVER!” 

Lost for words, Donny stood gawping at the severed head, his bottom jaw
making a slow journey towards his feet. “Goodbye”, growled Diane as she 
reached behind her for her coat. But at that moment they were both 
startled by an explosive ‘pop' as the bottle of Cava ejected its cork, 
which torpedoed towards the ceiling. A second later it had made direct 
contact with the huge glitter ball above. They both looked up, then at 
each other, then, as Donny jumped back, Diane took the full force of 
the sparkling missile. The shattered shards of the broken glitter ball 
came to rest around Diane's cut and bloodied form. One large piece of 
glass had embedded itself in her face, neatly cutting it down the 
middle. Donny crouched beside her and noticed that if he looked into 
the glass from the side, she almost looked normal in the reflection, 
maybe a little too symmetrical, but better than the aerial view anyway. 
 More to the point, she was dead: the weight of the ball had been too 
much for her delicate skull. Dinner was well and truly over. Then it 
dawned on him: that bastard, that evil fat bastard had set him up, this 
whole scenario had been orchestrated simply to humiliate him. The 
hushed tones of two grown men brought him back to his senses. “I know 
you're there – you bastards,” He bawled, fury oozing from every 
orifice. “I'll make you regret the day you were born!” He knew exactly 
what he was going to do. He called for an ambulance and hid in the 
shadows until the stiff corpse of his dead sweetheart had been scraped 
off the ballroom floor. Then he headed out into the cold night to wreak 
his revenge. 

When they thought it was safe, Gypsum and Ernie sheepishly sloped out of
the back door. They had to admit that this practical joke had gone a 
little too far. Gypsum wasn't looking forward to telling Diane's mum; 
there'd be no nooky for him for a while. Still, it was as much her 
idea, that cow had always been jealous of her daughter. “Bugger”, said 
Gypsum to himself as he waddled down the pier. Ernie was more worried 
about the bad publicity this would mean for the ballroom, not to 
mention the cost of replacing the disco ball. Maybe a charity Tango 
would help, or a sponsored jive-off? He needed to think about it, so he 
hurried home to polish his tap shoes and come up with a plan. 

The following morning, John Belcher, the warehouse assistant at the
butchers arrived to work later than usual to find a huge crowd of 
excited shoppers gathered around the window. He pushed himself through 
the throng to find out what the hell was going on, and why the shop 
wasn't open, but he soon regretted his curiosity. What John Belcher and 
the other locals were looking at that morning was never spoken of again 
in Tripton-on-Sea. It was too horrible for words. For a shop window 
display, it was quite creative really. Gypsum's severed head had been 
laid on a bed of fresh parsley. An apple had been stuffed in his mouth, 
and a small parsnip rammed up each nostril. His eyeballs had been left 
behind, showing a look of pure, intense terror and pain. A pile of 
extracted teeth lay beside the head, arranged into the shape of a 
love-heart and labelled – “Valentine special, 20p for 3”. 

Later, when John had been able to locate the spare key, he and the local
constabulary found that the rest of Gypsum's carcass had not been put 
to waste. Under the counter were carefully prepared choice cuts, a bowl 
of offal for stewing, a big blackened heart, and even his pelvis was 
labelled “go-on, give your dog a bone”. 

As for Ernie ‘Foxtrot' Henshaw, well, he certainly hadn't escaped that
night's murderous rampage. He was discovered sometime in the afternoon 
by his cleaner, Molly Oulthwaight, a lonely, not unattractive woman who 
had been secretly in love with the old goat for years, even though he 
had treated her like a medieval peasant. He was dressed in his best 
dancing gear, a deep-purple fitted suit with ivory buttons and a gold 
trim, complemented by a pair of freshly polished, steel-tipped tap 
shoes of the finest quality. Unfortunately, the expression on his 
bloodied face was not quite so elegant – mainly down to the fact that 
he had been forced to eat his collection of Bing Crosby vinyl classics, 
each broken segment tearing at his insides as it made the painful 
journey to his stomach. The one remaining record, a vintage copy of 
‘Dancing Under the Stars' was slowly spinning on an old turntable, it 
must have been playing for hours, the stylus stuck on the crackly word 
‘dancing'. Sadly, Ernie would never dance again. 

Obviously, Donny was nowhere to be found. He'd left town with nothing
but the contents of the safe and Gypsum's meat-wagon. Oh, and there was 
one piece of Gypsum that was still unaccounted for. Diane's mother was 
discovered two days later. They'd left her for a while, assuming she 
was in mourning for her daughter and her lover. When they did 
eventually find her body, it too had been decapitated. Her ugly bloated 
head was found in her own shop window, sporting the pretty hat that 
Dianne had so wanted, and the missing piece, Gypsum's penis, protruded 
like a fleshy cigar from her contorted mouth. 


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