Domerun Claggan raised his knife high and brought it down with all his strength, enjoying the satisfying feeling of the blade slicing neatly through the flesh, sliding just shy of the bone, and coming to rest against the battered cutting board below.
He flipped the meat over with an efficiency born from years of practice and raised his arm for another cut. Steadying the bone with one hand, he chopped again, but this time his aim was less true; he missed, chipping the knife off of the bone, and watched as it sliced a layer off of the top of what would have been a perfect cut of meat.
The cut wasn't ruined, but it would only sell for a fraction of the price now. He threw down his cleaver in disgust. It was this part of it, when he silently prepared the next day's cuts in the late afternoon, after the shoppers were finished, that he hated the most about being a butcher. He was a talker, through and through, and he delighted in sharing stories with his customers and making the big sale. That had been his job in the shop growing up, and he'd always been great at it. It was his brother who'd inherited the talents with the knife, but of course Jove just happened to love the knife a little too much, and now he was rotting in jail for it.
With their father in the grave for over six years now, that left everything in the shop up to Domerun, and he was hard-pressed to think of a part of his life that wasn't a complete shambles. He calmed his furious breathing and stared down at the bad cut before him, muttering a quiet apology to the cow that had taken much better care of its muscles than he had. Sighing, he fetched a carving knife from the wall and tried to salvage what he could. Inventive, clever cuts of meat with colorful stories behind them -- that was what Claggan's Meats had become known for, since it certainly couldn't be known for the quality of the cuts anymore.
As he cut, he spun a tale in his mind about the cow, and how its eccentric owners had taken it to see dancing. Yes, ballet dancing! And the cow had gotten it into its head that it could be a bovine ballerina, if only it practiced enough. The rancher and his family would get up in the morning to find the cow spinning in slow circles in the field. A strange sight, but seemingly harmless, and the cow never did much more than spin around. And when it came time for the slaughter, what did your humble butcher discover but that the cow's senseless rotations had developed these odd grooves in the muscles -- yes, just so -- that would enhance the flavor of any sauce by distributing it in a spiral pattern through the meat!
Thirty minutes later, he finished his work and packed up the strange meat rosettes for the next day's display. The bone went into the stew bin and he stripped off his spotted apron. He mused about how he should relax for a few minutes before heading upstairs for dinner, then paused. His wife, Rita, should have been home already; he hadn't noticed because he'd been focused on fixing his mistake. Then again, they'd had a fight that morning, and she'd likely be out sulking at the bubble shops like she usually did. Either that, or visiting that mad fortune teller woman she'd grown attached to. Claggan didn't like to think about how much money she spent following the senseless whims of the stars, as communicated to her by her batty soothsayer.
From the beginning, money had been the cause of all the problems between him and Rita. She felt slighted by his modest butcher's income, and why shouldn't she? When he'd been courting her, he'd promised her the moon and more. He'd done his best to convince her that his bold new ideas in meat-cutting would pay off big, and she'd been naïve enough to believe him. Once the honeymoon was over and she got a closer look at the finances, she soured quickly, and when his brother went away, it seemed to be the last straw.
If she'd had any other prospects, he was sure she'd have left him by now. As it was, she just soldiered on, making his life a daily trial. He wasn't sure there was anything he could do about it.
*********************
Rita hustled down the rapidly darkening alley, pulling her overcoat tight as though it were armor. She had come this way many times, more than she'd care to admit in polite company, but each visit was just as unsettling as the last. The old witch-woman, who seemed to never leave her third-story apartment, had been especially generous today, keeping her entranced in reading the future far longer than she'd paid for.
And what glorious fortunes they'd been! Today was the first time the future seemed to hold nothing but good, and Rita was desperate for a turnaround in her fate. With the butcher's shop suffering daily from her husband's mismanagement and incompetence, she was sure they were about to enter into a spiral that would result in bankruptcy, debtor's prison for him, and a life on the streets for her. The idea made her shiver, although the air held no chill.
Happily, she knew that there would be no reason to fear anymore. The witch-woman had told her that her life would filled with joy, with all the good food she could eat, and that nobody would ever think she was ugly. She didn't like to bother her husband with it, but she found it so difficult to keep up her looks without the regimen of treatments she'd grown used to in her parents' house. She bought as little as she could afford to, knowing their finances were tight, but even so she saw that he had lost the gleam in his eyes he'd had when he first courted her. With the witch-woman's prophecy, she now felt confident that she could win back her husband's love, just as he must be about to find a way to turn the business around.
There was just one catch -- the fortunes, she had been told, would only come to pass if she would make a sacrifice directly after leaving the reading. The witch-woman had given her directions on a filthy scrap of paper torn from some yellowed grimoire, and Rita tried not to look at the arcane runes scrawled around the edges, focusing only on the path she must take. The directions listed no roads, but merely distances and turns, which she followed as precisely as the night would allow. The gas lamps hissed and sputtered as she passed, but provided enough illumination for her to make out the characters on the paper, although they seemed to dance perversely before her eyes. She hoped fervently that optics might not be in her future, breaking the lines of the face as they did, but she supposed she could always have a servant read important documents to her, were her fortunes to be as good as she expected.
She took the last turn and found herself staring into a dirty canal. A pair of cats seemed caught in a permanent growling match on the far side, adding an eerie timbre to the night. She looked down into the murky waters, then came to her senses and drew the little vial of ochre-colored liquid the witch-woman had sold to her. She gave the vial a little shake, seeing its contents came to life with a light all their own, then swiftly popped the cork and poured the vial into the water below.
The liquid continued to glow as it hit the water, then snaked beneath, leaving a phosphorescent trail tracing its way to the bottom in broad, concentric curves. She breathed out.
Immediately, a pair of strong arms closed around her from behind. She jerked, more in surprise than in fear, and felt hot breath on her neck.
"My dear, you are welcome to our fellowship," intoned the man holding her, in a voice like molasses-covered pebbles bumping together. "We are so pleased you decided to join us."
Something soft covered her eyes, and her fortune came true.
*********************
Muttering grumpily, Claggan scooped up the preparation knives, washed and dried them, and set them on their hooks for the next day's work. He grabbed his mop and moved from the preparation kitchen to the storefront. He was growing a little concerned that Rita was out so late; he was sure she'd still be upset, but maybe if he showed her he'd been waiting, she'd be touched by his concern and forgive him a little. Gloomily, he began mopping the tile floor, which was already mostly clean from the water he'd splashed at the close of business that day, but could always use a little extra. He didn't like mopping much, but at least he wasn't bad at it.
The repetitive nature of the work numbed his mind, and he became lost in thoughts of how to save his business and his marriage. He was so engrossed that he didn't register the ring of the bell when the door swung open, and didn't look up until he heard a soft sigh that was unmistakably his wife's.
When he saw her, his eyes lit up. He couldn't understand how, but she looked ten years younger. She looked just as she had when he'd first laid eyes on her -- that same defiantly jutting lower lip, those fiery eyes, the hair pulled back tight. There was a smile in her eyes that he was far from used to, but somehow she had managed to make her face look just as thin, her skin just as tight. He found himself unable to speak, just drinking in the sight of her in the prime of her beauty once more.
She looked back at him expectantly, and when he said nothing, slowly raised the corners of her mouth into a tight-lipped smile. On a woman he didn't know, he supposed it would be alluring, but his Rita had never smiled like that; her smiles were full of teeth and wonder, and that had never changed; they had just gotten rarer. This smile was entirely new, and it unsettled him enough to make him step back.
She looked hurt, but in a petulant way, and cocked her head at him. He abruptly realized that she was looking at him like some of his hungrier customers looked at the meat in its case. Then, he noticed blood on the floor behind her, where he was certain he'd already mopped. His eyes widened in terror.
Agile for a man of his size, he leaped over the counter and snatched one of the serving knives from its resting cloth. He raised the knife and pointed it at her. Some distant part of him proudly noted that the knife didn't waver an inch.
She looked at the knife with a bemused expression, then opened her mouth, revealing several rows of splintery fangs. From behind the horrible, crooked maw, a freakishly long purple tongue, covered with irregular tiny warts, uncoiled itself and spilled down her chin. Then, from somewhere deeper than her throat, she began to sing, an impossible three-note harmony that seemed to shake the room.
From out of nowhere, his hand began to burn like it had been dipped in scalding acid. He dropped the knife and watched as angry, red blisters formed all over the clenched hand and fingers. He groaned and almost collapsed, but caught himself with his left hand. The blisters swirled with color, yellow and then red again, and he felt himself beginning to black out.
Summoning the last of his strength, he steadied himself and, with his left hand, grabbed another serving knife from the counter and flung right at the monster's heart. He had never thrown a knife before, least of all with his weak hand, and he watched in despair as it fell to the floor several feet to the side of its target.
The tones in her singing changed, and this time he felt something snap inside of his body. He fell to the floor, hitting his head against the counter on the way down, and lay there in agony. Whatever she'd done, he found he could barely breathe any longer, and didn't have the strength to lift a muscle.
His wife -- was it his wife? -- climbed over the counter, slowly but with arachnid grace and purpose, and lowered herself to his broad stomach. He felt her sharp fangs pierce his skin, but the true pain didn't begin until she began to remove his entrails, piece by piece. His screams were almost loud enough to block out the clicking, smacking noises of her mastication. His last conscious thought was that, with the care she took in removing his organs, he could be satisfied that she had at least learned something from being a butcher's wife.
He continued screaming well into the night.
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