A Slaughterhouse Romance

another date with the butcher

Red, the color of merlot, soon diluted by the water splashing over the puddles and turning it to a light brown, ran over the bleached tile, where the clattering of a stained, faded yellow bucket a quarter still full of grey water--clumps of hair and other spongey, most likely organic debris sloshing along the sides--was followed by the squeal of the hose being turned off. The clang of the ribbed metal tube as the nozzle was placed back against the wall stopped abruptly, and the room became silent again. This silence was only to be cut through by the heady thud of his shoes moving away from the remnant blushed tint to the floor, a light squelch of water under the soles, and the blowing of hot air from flared, glistening nostrils while they bowed downward. A fly landed in the bristles of brown above the long lashes of wet, dark eyes, and a face of white twisted quickly to shake it off before puffing mist from his curling lips. The fly would only move to land again on the bulge of musculature running down the back of his neck to sloping traps, following the curve of broad lats until cowhide turned to milky, bare skin streaked in beads of sweat, and it was shrugged off again, this time with a snort.

Outstretched palms pressed down against chilled metal, the silver reflective of the Bull's expression overhead as his callouses kissed the surface and long, sinewy fingers--nailed caked by the same bruised, blue-ish black, clotted blood as crusted around the drain--reached toward the glazed, hazy, crinkled surface of zipped plastic. Blurring the object beneath, he made sure the space was clean around them, scrubbing, scraping, and picking at the table the plastic was now on until it glimmered. The only filth to be found in the surrounding green and blue-tinted room was to be unveiled by his blunt, hard nails plucking at the zipper and undoing this plastic.

Plastic and package-wrapped, the filth was a girl. A human girl. A girl with iced-over eyes as pale and lifeless as the cream of her skin, as cold as the table beneath her, as the frost that seemed to cling to her hair, although the white strands were as buttery and dry to the touch. Revealing the face of this girl, the Bull took in another deep breath, feeling his own body radiate such a contrasting heat to hers that he supposed he was as ignited as a furnace; another trickle of sweat ran down from his temple, and his pointed ear twitched, his head swaying gently from the weight of the yellow-tinted horns extending and curling from the crown of his skull, this heat simmering first in his gut before the pressure of it rose to his face. The rising and falling of a chest that matched the built distinction of his broad shoulders, lats, traps, and sturdy midsection seized just as the sound of plastic being jerked away slashed through the air. He then continued to pull the misty veil back between him and her, gathering his breath back in heavy pants until it served merely as a smooth, satin blanket for her body to rest on.

She could have been a lamb. His lamb, if he were to be her wolf. How delicate she looked, pale and soft, and timid and small. But he was no wolf, despite her believing it. All he had to him was brute force, an appetite that only knew viciousness after her, for her. He had no canines to prove such wolfishness but blunt teeth and eyes too soft to be predatory, only intimidating when need be, observant most often. His hair was too fluffy and curly, and his frame too sturdy to be a wolf. He knew not how to stalk but lumbered after and around her with obedience not even the kindest of wolves would know.

It was through this force, nevertheless, he knew passion and he knew harm; he knew the blade, and he knew how to yield it. Both of them had yet to experience the butcher. Still, they knew of his violence the way one knows a legend, a myth, a story told repeatedly until it becomes so muddled with its meanings that all there is left to it is imitation. So often did the lamb dream of being led by a cinched rope around her neck to the cutting block, to feel his fingers in her coat and to scruff her, craning her throat to the edge of the silver and kissing her with it so profoundly it knicks bone, to feel the heat expelling from her in heavy gushes matching the catch of her breath. But she never imagined any hand other than his own. It was always his wide, calloused palms, sinewy wrists, and the bulge of his densely roped forearms flexing as harsh knuckles wrapped tighter around the slippery handle, his long fingers readjusting their grip until her reddened skin began to unfurl around the tip, opening up around the deepening length in which the silver invaded her until viscous blood the consistency of cherry syrup dribbled around the edges. It was always the Bull who brought her back to the hilt, smearing her own blood over her coat, pinching and yanking at all her intricacies until they were worn and stained by his roughness, his teeth slopping the flayed cuts he extracted from the warm mucus of her connective tissues, chewing on her insides like squeaky, glistening gummy candy until it dissolved on his tongue and the blues, lavenders and pinks all disappeared down his throat, into the dark.

The Bull was always meant to be her butcher, the way lambs are always meant to have their wolves. And so sweet was it that when he swallowed her whole, she would rot in him.

And so often during those same dreams, the Bull also fantasized about being led into a damp, dimly root room perfumed by sawdust and crusted old blood and feeling the heaviness of metal clamping around his limbs, the rush of adrenaline making him buck and kick and writhe against the restraints, though these abrupt movements quickly halted as soon as he felt the first fluttering of fingertips against the indentations of his musculature. His fists clenched and his head hanging forward before this unseen hand reached up to bury in the tufts of chocolate, nearly black curls between his horns, yanking his head back, the length of his thick neck strained with the jutting of the pointed edge to his bobbing Adam's apple, and through the misted blur of his eyes falling toward his bicep, he would see the butcher. Everyone had their own. He would never admit it, but his butcher wasn't of the stereotypical scratched and bloodied apron with a grease-stained top wielding a rectangular butcher's knife and a crooked, crusted, and yellowed grin, but the lamb. A creature as pretty as her, capable of such destruction and violence, captivated him, and he couldn't help but admit he'd gained a particular craving for masochism around her. The teasing desperation of her innocence made him want to corrupt it.

But this was a carnivorous lamb, and she was his--of his making--her hunger existing only for him. She yielded this knife, her urges, longing for him, with his name carved in it, and held it to his dangling figure, stretched and languid even in its broadness, admiring this beauty on the surface, then began to go deeper; she'd dissect him for the pleasures of her own tongue until he felt the weight of his organs fall and hear them splatter to the ground. Then, he'd see silver strands of steam flutter upward from their heat, and the last thing he'd witnessed would be the lamb's saint-like purity coming up beneath him to lick at the gaping wound split through his now emptied abdomen, coating her in his filth, staining her, just as he always wished. With his meat between her teeth, he felt she created him a God, made him worthy of worship. She turned blood into wine, lapping at his wounds, and got drunk off his devotion.

So, the lamb and the Bull, two who would otherwise be victims of the blade separate, instead turned its violence toward themselves. Inverting it and becoming it, experiencing it together for the first time.

The girl's pink nose twitched with his heavy scent, an indescribable yet palatable warmth filling her lungs with the sweetest zest of metallic citrus notes, almost too sharp to be fruitful but bloody, the heat of it and its potential for carnality rising to the surface of her skin and ripening it, bruising the blue heart of her physiognomy a rosy lavender. The icy blue of her eyes dilated until the pupils had filled with darkness reflecting his own; she blinked through their beadiness and adjusted to the harsh lights around them, breathing deeply and allowing his scent to then burn her throat and turn her mouth cottony, causing her tongue to flick over the black heart of her lips.

The Bull reached down and traced the skin of her face to the fluff of her round ears, pinching the tops of them and watching the flush of her cheeks deepen, her own hands pressed to her tensed belly and fidgeting with the nails until she shakily reached for the pillow of his stomach, pressing her palm above his belly button and feeling of the softness suddenly flinch back as though he hated the reminder of his own softness. He huffed, and a single motion returned his hand to her cheek. However, he didn't remove its size from her features this time. He thought even of covering her entire face with the flat of his palm to accentuate this point, a single finger covering the pout of her mouth. However, he only did the latter and allowed the pink of her tongue to flick over the pad. When her teeth followed, the Bull proceeded to reach down with his opposite hand, cupping hers against his stomach and bringing her touch up to the plushness of his pectorals until she began to sit up to meet him, his face broad shoulders and expanse of his upper back curving so he could start nuzzling her. Sniffing her, she smelled too sweet, seeping in its tenderness. He pictured her on the black, laying upon her death bed and wrapping it around her with an arched back and a smile. Already feeling the eagerness of the blade to cut through her, he couldn't imagine knowing hunger like this before and was almost jealous of her responsiveness, suspicious of her willingness. The obscenity in her gleaming eyes told him as well as if she were to speak this desire out loud that she was at least aware of this predatory desire before him, if not having felt and learned from it. She at least recognized it within herself and, with him, was no longer afraid of it. He removed his finger from her suckling and replaced it with his own mouth, subconsciously trying to find any previous hints of meat between her teeth with his stomach turning at the notion.

Regardless, he found none, only the trace of vegetation and mintiness of grass, and so he laid himself down in this scenery and, with a final quiver of her favorite knife, felt her lips part against his, her tongue coiling before his new name, title, spilled from it just as the rush of blood flooded to the surface and splattered to the tile, splashing over the edges as he split her open, cracked through bone, and peeled the fat and muscle from cartilage and stringy tendon, determined to get the perfect cut from her.

"BUTCHER!"