The butcher
stood, bent over his table, hard at work. His hand flicked sharply and
deftly as he controlled his sickle-shaped knife along the turns of the slab of
meat he was cutting, expertly carving meat from bone with each movement. He paused
now and again to prod at the meat, as though checking for firmness and consistency,
and nodding in satisfaction each time. It was the best he had gotten yet; quite
firm, which meant it would not spoil fast. It also had an attractive deep pink colour
and very little fat.
The slab of meat
looked better than one would expect cow’s meat, sheep’s meat or even goat’s
meat to look. And that was because it was none of those kinds of meat. It was
human meat.
Alani was not
your usual butcher. His trade was not only in cow’s meat like his peers, but
also in human meat.
On a typical
day, his sales table, in one of the popular Lagos meat markets, contained
stacks of beef, liver and shaki, then
in addition, one would find a small stack of brightly-coloured meat he simply
referred to as ‘special’ to his customers. None of them ever suspected that
this ‘special’ was actually meat from the bodies of humans like themselves.
Due to its
attractive colour, everyone that approached his table picked up ‘special’ first,
but some got dissuaded by the price. Alani had begun to price it ten times as
much as ‘regular’ meat, ever since he saw the heavy demand for it. Anyone who
bought it once always came looking for it again and again. He knew it must be
because it tasted just as great as it looked, but he had never tried tasting it
himself. Not when he knew exactly what it was.
Alani’s trade in
human meat started by accident. His life as a normal butcher, trying to eke out
a decent living via meat selling took a macabre turn to what he had become
today, in just one night. The first human life to fall by his hands, the first
human body to end up as meat on his table, had been purely as a result of self-defense.
It was one of
those nights he closed late. He had been about to leave his stall at 9.30pm,
having managed to finally sell off all his stock, his pocket laden with all the
money he had made that day, when he was attacked.
The meat market
was secured at night by a vigilante group, but they usually commenced work in
full force from 10pm and a few thieves, knowing this habit, took the
opportunity to strike on the unsuspecting butchers, disguised as customers.
A scuffle ensued
when Alani refused to give up his money, even in the face of the machete the
robber wielded.
During the
scuffle, Alani had managed to grab one of his knives at a corner of his table
and drove it straight into the robber’s chest. A few more jabs, and his
assailant was dead, his blood splashing everywhere and mixing with that of all
the cow’s meat that had been hacked up in that very stall earlier in the day.
When he realized
the man was dead, that he had killed him, Alani was filled with panic. He thought
of calling the vigilante and telling them what had happened, but was also
worried they would not believe him. What if they decided to involve the police?
To avoid any complications in his life, he decided to just dispose the body and
keep quiet about the incident.
To dispose it, he
had hacked up the body there on the floor of his stall, disposed of the bones
amidst the pile of cow and sheep bones in the abattoir’s dumpsite, packed the
meat (it had turned out not to be that much, didn’t even get to half of a bagco sack) and hauled it off to the
cold-room for storage.
It as he was
chopping that he realized human meat was not too different from that of a cow,
just a brighter colour and softer texture. And it was then that the idea had
occurred to him to sell it disguised as cow’s meat.
He did so the
next day, making a tidy 120k extra cash. The cool, easy money and the fact that
those who bought it kept coming back to ask for more of ‘that fresh type of
meat’, made him want to do it again.
Alani was a very
ambitious man. He had left his native town in Oyo for Lagos over a year before
with a strong determination to make it big in this land of milk and honey. But
doing so had proven very difficult with the minimal profit he was able to eke out
daily.
The thought of
being able to regularly make extra 120k profit, or even more, in one day was
just too tempting. And the more he flipped the idea over in his mind, the more convinced
he became that he could keep pulling it off.
That was how he
became a butcher of men.
At least three
times every week, he would kill a man (or woman), chop the body into bits;
strip the meat off the bones, and sell off to his unsuspecting customers the
next day as ‘special’.
After that first
accidental killing, the next set of butchery were extremely well premeditated
and executed. The meat market became his main hunting ground and his home and
neighborhood the supplementary. Within 3 months, his victims were so many even
he lost count. They included lone late-night customers he baited to his second
store at a secluded part of the market under the pretense of showing them fresh
meat stored in his freezer, alabarus he
tricked to help him drop stuff in his stall when no one was watching, prostitutes
he picked up on the streets, homeless or mentally deranged people that strayed
into the market… the list was endless.
The Story Continues>>>Click Here for the concluding part
All Rights Reserved!
Enjoyed this story? Your friends will too, share with them:
No comments:
Post a Comment