The Butcher (standard:humor, 2693 words)
Author: Gibbon	Added: Feb 23 2005	Views/Reads: 3253/2208	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
May not be to everyone's taste. A tale of cruelty and revenge.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a depressing town up north called
Tripton-on-Sea, there lived an unremarkable young man called Donny. He 
was twenty years old, as skinny and knobbly as a Twiglet, and had the 
dress sense of a fifty-year-old maths teacher. He was also desperate 
for money to buy himself a social life, so he obtained a part-time job 
in the local butchers. He hated it; considering he was a vegetarian, it 
wasn't really his scene. It was the neighbours that interested him. 
Directly opposite the meat shop was a ladies fashion store called 
L'elegance de Chantelle. It was one of those women's clothes shops that 
are about 20 years out of date but somehow managed to keep afloat. This 
was mainly down to a good range of enormous underwear and support 
tights and a healthy turn-over of those pinafore dresses that the 
majority of old ladies seem to wear, in various shades of brown. Of 
course it wasn't the big knickers that attracted Donny, it was a 
certain member of staff. The proprietor, Chantelle (real name – 
Tricia), spent very little time in the shop these days; she had a 
sideline in prostitution, which she enjoyed as both a hobby and a nice 
little earner, so she'd put her nineteen-year-old daughter, Diane, in 
charge. Diane was a sumptuous, virginal looking girl with lovely 
marshmallow breasts and a big round bottom that was crying out for a 
good squeeze – and Donny was more than willing to do the honours. She 
had a head of fiery red hair that fell in a cascade of curls around her 
beautiful lily-white neck and a cavernous cleavage to welcome him home 
on a cold winter's night. Oh yes, she was the woman of Donny's dreams 
and he would do anything to make her his ‘special lady'. 

Day after day, he would stand behind the counter, absent-mindedly
playing with a bit of offal or throwing a liver up in the air and 
catching it like a hackey-sack. Every dreary afternoon, he would gaze 
longingly out of the window, across the road to L'elegance de 
Chantelle, dreaming of kissing those succulent lips. As the weeks went 
by, he sent her flowers, teddy bears, love-heart shaped helium 
balloons, and heart-felt poetry, but he never seemed to be able to find 
the courage to walk over and introduce himself. Instead, he would watch 
her delighted reaction whenever she received a gift from her mystery 
admirer, self-consciously looking up and down the street, playing with 
her hair, and giggling to herself. 

Mr Gypsum, Donny's boss, was a man's man and he had always considered
Donny to be a bit of a floppy sausage. Decades of record-breaking pie 
consumption had provided him with a bilious, undulating physique, and 
all the fat on his brain had simply made him greedier and more 
unsavoury with every passing year. Yep, he was steak and chips and 15 
cans man, and Donny was a lentil bake and ginger beer pansy. 
Consequently, Gypsum had treated Donny with utter contempt right from 
the start. So Donny was quite surprised when the lardy old bigot 
offered him a helping hand with his love life. Gypsum, apparently had 
been watching Donny, and had taken note of his helpless infatuation 
with the young baggage over the road. Of course, he couldn't blame him, 
had he been a few years younger, he'd definitely have tried to give her 
one, instead he had settled for her loose and juicy mother - a bit of a 
baggy sock, but good for some cheap relief. Anyway, he said he felt it 
was his duty to help his loyal staff member to win over the girl of his 
dreams. He would pull a few strings, he said, help him set up the date 
of a lifetime, one she would remember forever. All Donny had to do was 
get her to agree to meet him on Saturday night. 

So Donny sent a note to L'elegance de Chantelle, along with a pair of
tacky clown earrings from the market. The note read: “If you would like 
to meet your mystery admirer, come to the Spotlight ballroom at the end 
of the pier for 7.30pm”. Hardly poetic, but these were the instructions 
Gypsum had given him, having pulled up a favour from Ernie ‘fox trot' 
Henshaw, the owner of the deteriorating dance hall. In his day, Ernie 
had been the king of swingers, the Fred Estair of Tripton-on-Sea. Now 
he was a chubby, flat-footed shuffler with a comb-over and corns. But 
he obliged the favour all the same, and even chucked in a bottle of 
Cava left over from last year's WI convention. 

Donny, dressed to the hilt in his best iridescent, tight-fitted suit and
leather slip-ons, turned up at the Spotlight a few minutes early to be 
on the safe side, and was quite overwhelmed by what he found. Gypsum 
had really gone to town, the whole hog - the date of all dates. The 
ballroom was romantically lit with one large glitter ball in the centre 
of the ceiling, underneath which sat an intimate table for two, 
champagne on ice, a dozen red roses, and a beautifully wrapped gift 


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