Fiction: The Butcher

By Anabela Machado 

 

I.

The butcher lives in a straw roofed house, wood tired and worn. His shop is the cleanest thing he owns, he washes the floors reverently, the counters gleaming before a kill, knives sharp and ready. His hands are rough, calloused and coarse, but for food they are kind. In his backyard he raises cows, their sounds comforting in the night. He feeds them by hand, brushes them lovingly, and chooses which one must die. His prices aren’t cheap, but once you see his animals you know it’s worth it, their meat succulent and bloody, fat bodies ready for slaughter. He is not a handsome man, but many women in the village covet him. They picture themselves as sweet helpers, cleaning his home, cooking his food, flesh perfect for the kill. He doesn’t seem to know it, walking from his home to his store in the mornings hunched over, sometimes with a cow following him. His work is all there is, a thing that requires every attention and careful consideration. It is an art, secretive and protected by hunger. The children have tried many times to sneak into the store once the process begins, bloodthirsty for someone else’s death, but the butcher always knows they are there, he guards his creatures with a possessive love. Once they are cut and ready they become a communal thing, but the death is his, and only his. He is selfish like that. 

He passes by my house every day on the way to work, I watch his heavy tread with longing like all the others. I don’t think about the finest cuts, the cleanest steaks, the more flavorful limbs. I crave to be a part of the kill, to look into the crack in the door and discover what happens between the knife and the flesh, what kind of dance they partake in. I want to know why he hoards all this death, greedily breathing it in, drinking it everyday, always wishing for more.

When he first came to us, the butcher had a wife. She was a thin woman, quiet and dutiful. If you walked by their small house during the day, you could always see her working, caring for the animals, cleaning the floors, dusting rugs on the window, the warmth from their stove seeping outside as she cooked for him. She never went to the store, or at least no one ever saw her there. He only took those he killed there. One day she just disappeared, no explanation why. When people asked him, he grunted and turned his attention elsewhere. There were no signs of her in the cemetery, no witness to tell how she left town, if she did. She was in their home at night, and when the sun came up the next morning she was gone. 

All the other kids made up stories about what could have happened, a secret lover, an illegal burial. Someone said he finally took her to the store. 

I wonder about that sometimes. I think about the meat everyone bought that week, how lean it was, a starved animal harvested. I dream of the butcher leading his wife to the store by a rope, like he did to all the animals. Her placid look, numbness and acceptance mixed together. Her clothes on the clean floor, legs tied to the ceiling, arms stretched down, touching the edges of the blood bucket. I wonder how you cut a person, what parts are richest, where the thick of it really is. If that is the price you pay for loving someone, a sharp knife to the throat, becoming a thing that feeds others. To be the butcher’s wife seems both dangerous and rewarding. At the end she would have known the secret he guards so carefully. The nature of the kill.

 

II.

I woke up with a start, shivering under my blankets. Outside, the silence was broken by heavy steps, the dark night making way. I walked slowly to my window, holding my breath every time the floor creaked with my weight. Through the blinds I saw the shadow of a man, his tall form impossible to identify. But behind him walked a cow, its large body touched by moonlight. It was the butcher, taking another one of his animals to the store. He usually did it early morning, but this time it was different. The air around me felt colder than usual, with a sour aftertaste. I put on my robe quickly, and moved outside with care. My bare feet made no sound on the ground, in the distance I could see him, his hand holding tightly to the rope that held the cow. I moved between houses, zigzagging, making sure to not be directly behind him.

I knew the way to his store, I went there many times with my mother, eyes glued to the cuts of beef, watching his quick knife moving over flesh. My hands touched the side of his building, the concrete cold against my palm. I could hear sounds from inside, the soft mooing, the sharp cables. I found the back window, and carefully moved my eyes to look inside. Dim lighting shone against the white tiles, the butcher moved close to the animal, tying its legs. Suddenly he rose up, his arm came down on the creature’s head with a hollow sound. It crumbled to the ground. My body shook with something that felt like fear. He hauled the animal up to the ceiling, its body dangling, under it a big bucket. It was like I had imagined, and still incredibly different. When the knife slit the throat I didn’t flinch. His face held no expression. Was this love? A twisted form of it? A hand that once caressed pulling the life out of a body? 

The butcher just watched the blood fall, like a river.

 

 

 

 

 

AnabelaMachado is a 23 year old Brazilian writer. Her book, The Sacred Deer and other stories, was independently published on Amazon in the beginning of 2025.