Posted by Sawney Beane on August 09, 2007 at 22:14:30:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #130
NIGHTMARES
by Sawney Beane
29 April 2006
1,345 words
DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and DISCLAIMER: Sawney Beane requests that any distribution of this work of fiction remain within the realm of social responsibility. This story is suitable neither for minors nor for the seeming majority of adults who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. It is pure fantasy, which means that, for whatever reason, someone has found it interesting to think about the events depicted herein. It does not in any way mean that the author would like to see this fantasy become reality, so if you are the type of person who might be swayed into doing something irrational by reading a work of fiction, the author respectfully requests that you decline to read further.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sawney Beane, originally a native of Edinburgh, lived for twenty-five years in a cave on the coast of County Galloway, subsisting on the flesh of unfortunate travellers, roughly a thousand of them all told. He and his wife raised a large family of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. Eventually, the family was captured, and the whole lot was brutally and unjustifiably tortured and executed without trial. Since his death in the early 17th century, Beane has reformed his ways and now confines his atrocities to his literary endeavours.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of non-consensual gynophagia and extreme carnage. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Not a nice image, but one that popped into my head and would not go away until it was written down.
------------------
It was, unquestionably, a very bad idea to go in through the back door, but my friend insisted it was ok. He knew the butcher well and enjoyed showing off his familiarity. It would haunt me later.
As I followed him tremulously down the narrow outdoor stone steps to the below ground level back entrance, we could already hear the howling through the shabby doors and windows of the hellhole. This mission was contrary to my whole philosophy of enjoying meat, which centred around concealing from myself as much as possible its source and means of production.
My friend opened the door, and the howling intensified into a cacophonic wail that rose and fell in order to optimally work its way through my brain. The scene inside was instantly burned into the most horrific corner of my memory.
Not far from the door, a stout sweaty man in a grimy white apron stained black and red stood next to a massive wooden table. The man's left hand gripped a long lean female thigh. His right hand held a hacksaw, which seemed intended to separate the thigh from the rest of the female. The smooth cross-section of red meat at the lower end of the thigh just above where a knee would be expected indicated that the saw had seen active duty recently.
The female herself did not seem entirely pleased with the proceedings, and the three large men holding down her naked shoulders and potentially lethal intact right leg attested to this fact. Her body seemed of a pleasing shape, even with some of its parts missing, and she may well have once been pretty, but the tear-strewn face and wild bloodshot eyes did not suit her any more than did her futile struggles and mewling moans.
The grim butcher was severing the thigh close to its source next to a neatly depilated nether region. He seemed to be halfway through, and the steel ground on bone with a sound that made fingernails on a blackboard sound like mourning doves. The girl's head had been shaved down to the uniform quarter-inch prison look. That sort of thing is a compromise between diners who find this hairstyle a bit more appetising than outright baldness and chefs and butchers who find flowing locks unwieldy. Somehow it made her plight seem all the more dire.
I don't know exactly where meat girls come from. It is not something civilised people like to dwell on, and seeing one in her native state, or at least in this transformational state, made my stomach twist. What made it even worse was the fact that the backdrop to this action was more of the same, probably another half dozen tables with women in various states of bodily destruction and workmanlike men seeing to their grisly fates.
The butcher paused in mid stroke when we walked in, leaving the blade embedded in the girl's half-severed leg and reaching out to shake my friend's hand with his own bloody paw. "Hiya, Jack, how ya doin'?"
"Fine, Reg, how's business?"
"Aw, caint complain," the stout butcher replied, patting the abused female thigh absently.
"At's good to hear, friend," Jack said emphasising his familiarity for my benefit. "This here is Tom." Thusly was I introduced.
"Good ta meet you, Tom, m'boy," said the man squeezing blood and sweat into my hand.
"Yes," I replied, "a pleasure."
"My boy here needs a ham for his family's get together tonight, Reg," Jack said, getting to business. "Think you can hook him up?"
"Shore," smiled the burly butcher, "I ain't got a buyer for this 'un," he said, resuming his sawing and indicating the object of his current labours.
I gulped heavily. There was no way I could eat that thigh. Not with the image of those terrified eyes in my head. Those eyes were staring straight at me now as if I were somehow either her potential saviour or the cause of her pains. I don't think either of us knew exactly which, but I found both to be unappealing options, so I fought for an excuse. "Ah, I was thinking perhaps something a bit, um, meatier?" The girl's thigh was indeed on the slender side, perfect for fucking, not ideal for roasting.
The butcher had just finished with the cut and set the rejected thigh aside. "Ah, shore, we gots lots a other 'uns." He hastily tied a small string tightly around the stump of leg to minimize bleeding. In one smooth motion, he stabbed a meat hook into the flesh between the bones of the girl's remaining ankle and lifted the frightened meat girl up to attach her to an overhead rail. He pushed the protesting upside down one-legged girl along the rail, allowing her to sail across the room and come to rest amid a dozen or more other partially dismembered inverted females. I wondered how long she would have to live like that, but she slowly dissolved into just another one of the many girls hanging around the back shop.
"Come on," the butcher said, picking up the thigh he had just harvested and leading the way to the front of the store. "I'll hook yup."
The main shop was more familiar to me. It seemed much more friendly, and no one howled in pain and fear. All of the live women in this room were shoppers, and the produce, although recognizable, no longer protested.
The main case housed an assortment of cuts, arranged by type. At one end were the hands and feet, various thigh steaks and whole hams, knees, leg parts, arms, shoulders, and elbows on the left. Heads were on the right, each with hair trimmed very short and eyes closed as if in a pleasant sleep. Near them were the main internal organs, and then ribs, flanks, and belly steaks. The centre of the case was occupied by the breasts, genitals, and rumps. All in all, it was a peaceful scene. These bits of meat had once been parts of women, clearly, but it was not that difficult to stop yourself thinking about it. There were even a few whole-roasters, some with heads still attached in the long cases on the opposite wall, but even these could seem somehow harmless in the right context.
Still, while this scene had inoffensively presented itself to me many times in the past, my recent experience in the back room and the burning image of the wild-eyed girl protesting the removal of her left ham coloured my present view somewhat. These silent inert bits of dead meat each found their former voices and screamed at me. They proclaimed my guilt as if I were responsible for all of the deaths represented in this shop. My mind reeled.
The butcher Reg opened the ham case and deposited his new addition in amongst the other ten options. This, of course, had the immediate effect of contaminating the other hams with an imagined personality. I gasped at the clamour of indignant voices.
"Lot 'a nice stock I got here," said Reg with a broad smile.
He was right of course. The assortment was marvellous. I pointed at a plump one that seemed quieter than the rest, my prime objective to get out of the horrific shop as quickly as possible. Reg wrapped it up neatly for its journey back to my home and my wife's expert culinary skills. I brushed off all of Jack's attempts to negotiate a better deal for me, thinking only of the fact that such attempts would force me to stay longer in the shop. We had to get out of there.
Outside, I panted and tried not to faint; Jack thought I had lost my mind. Under one arm I clutched the wrapped package that contained a ham, which had clearly been untimely ripped from some girl's leg. And I couldn't stop thinking about her attitude towards this corporeal theft. Why can you sometimes not get irrelevant things out of your head?
I'm going to have nightmares about this; I know it.