Happy Friday folks! Thanks to the immense response to last week's #FreeFictionFriday, here's another of my previously-published short stories.

If you like this, check out last week's entry! You can also read the rest of the fiction I've published on Steemit here.

The Butcher

Originally published as "A Reason for Living" in Twit Publishing Presents: PULP! Winter/Spring 2011

Image from GettyImages

“So how d’ya like this story, folks? That lunatic is still skulking around Scottsbluff, slicing people up. Seems this freak ties up his victims with duct tape before going to work with some heavy, long-bladed knife, if what the police say is true. They’re calling him the Scottsbluff Butcher. Late last night was the third fatal attack in the last-”

Dan finished tying off his apron and flicked off the radio. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “Only so much media nonsense I can deal with in one day.”

The short, middle-aged man on the other side of the counter smiled politely back at him. “Yeah, I’m just glad I’m going out of town for a couple weeks.”

Dan sliced carefully into a Kaiser roll. He then began covering it with deli mustard. “Oh yeah? Where you headed?”

“I’ve got family down in Arizona. I had some vacation time coming to me so I decided to go someplace warm for a change.”

“Lucky you.” Dan began building the rest of the man’s sandwich. “I can’t remember my last vacation. I haven’t been able to get a hold of my boss for a couple of days, actually. That Butcher better not have gotten him. I’ve got to pay my heating bill next week.”

“Yeah, it’s been cold this autumn, hasn’t it?”

“Sure has. So much for global warming.” Dan set a neatly-wrapped package down on the counter. “Anything else?” he asked.

“No, just the sandwich.” The man checked his watch. “I hope I get home before the weather gets bad. It’s been threatening to rain all day.”

Dan rang the customer up. As he did so the little string of bells that were hung on the door to the deli jingled. Church bells, Dan thought. Little wedding bells. He looked up as he handed the man’s lunch to him.

A slightly built blonde-haired girl was wandering down the deli’s single aisle. She was looking through the long, tall drinks cooler that every deli and convenience store used to market their beer and soda.

The wedding bells tinkled again, and he raised a mute hand in farewell to his previous customer without looking. Neither fish nor fowl, he thought, watching the new girl with curiosity. Well I guess I can’t put her in with the Kosher products.

His new customer was not one of his regulars. She was scarecrow-thin; her boot-cut jeans looked like they had been airbrushed on to her petite frame. Her dirty blonde hair had been gathered up in tufts across her scalp with hair ties; the tips of each had been dyed cobalt blue. The shade of her hair clashed horribly with her shaggy woolen coat, which featured an eye-watering rainbow pattern. It was almost comically large on her.

He stepped up to the counter. “Hey, how you doing?”

She nodded at him, still looking through the cooler. “Mmph.”

Oh boy, here we go. “Well, let me know if you need anything.” Like a ride back to the circus.

She grunted again, then reached into the cooler and pulled out a six-pack of Natural Ice. She placed it on the counter, then unzipped her hideously bright jacket to reveal a black v-neck tee shirt underneath that was emblazoned with the logo for some band Dan didn’t recognize. “This and a pack of Reds,” she said, dipping her hand into the plastic fishbowl next to the register and pulling out a fistful of matchbooks. Her black-lacquered fingernails gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

The girl’s skin looked pallid and pale against her black shirt, like the flesh of a freshly butchered pig. Dan looked up and met her eyes. There was a single silver ring through her left eyebrow. “Sorry kid, I need to see some ID if you’re gonna buy that today. Nebraska state law.”

The girl looked away for a moment before turning back. Her movements were quick and jerky as if impatient. She sighed sharply. “I don’t have it on me,” she finally said.

“Then I can’t sell you Reds, or that beer either. I could get fined pretty bad if anyone found out.” He slid the six pack over to the right to reveal a large yellow and black sticker on the counter. It read YOU MUST BE 18 TO PURCHASE TOBACCO PRODUCTS in big block letters. Right next to it was another highly visible sticker that stated in no uncertain terms that IT IS ILLEGAL TO SELL ALCOHOL TO MINORS.

The girl’s eyebrows shot up. “You really think I’m underage?” She laughed and leaned over the counter, looking down at the two garish notices. Doing so gave Dan what would have been a fine view of her cleavage - if she’d had any. She looked back up at him through her eyelashes.

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” he said, raising his hands up in the universal sign for don’t blame me, I just work here. “If I get caught not carding any customer under the age of forty I could lose my job. No ID, no beer and smokes.”

“But I already told you, I have ID. I just don’t have it on me.” She frowned petulantly. “Hey, if you let me off the hook just this once I’ll come back and show you my license, I promise.”

He arched an eyebrow at the girl. “You drove down here without your license on you?”

“No, I walked.” She hitched up the blue denim sausage skin she was using for pants. Her tee shirt rode up to expose a pale patch of midriff at her waist. The belt she was wearing had a buckle in the shape of a rhinestone-studded skull and crossbones. The skull had a pink bow on its head. “Listen, I’ve got a party to go to tonight,” she said. “You can’t just do me a favor just this once?” She gave him what must have passed for a coy grin.

Yeah, whatever, Dan thought. Where were you when I was in high school? She wasn’t bad looking under all that make-up and bizarre hair, even if it looked like she needed a training bra. From the look of her, she had probably in about the fifth grade.

Dan stifled a yawn, casting a glance over at the wall clock. Gathering up a clump of his now slightly soiled apron at his midsection, he began cleaning his hands on it methodically. “I’m sorry miss, but I don’t make the policies. Listen, it’s starting to get late, and I was about to close out – do you want a sandwich or something?”

“Hmph.” The coquettish look on the girl’s face vanished in a flash. She wrinkled her nose and leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. “No, I don’t want a sandwich.” She spat the word out violently, like a piece of rotten meat. “I’m Vegan,” she barked, her teeth bared in a belligerent rictus.

Meet Mr. Hyde, Dan thought. He stopped kneading his hands as he forced a smile. “Well, I’m a Gemini.”

The girl snorted and rolled her eyes before spinning on her heel. She stormed down the aisle, and Dan looked down to see she was wearing silver-painted platform shoes. Her angry footsteps left hollow reverberations in his ears.

Dan suppressed a smirk and then reached over to flick the radio back on. He immediately grimaced as that damn song came on again, performed by some latter-day mook with the keys to Marilyn Manson’s wardrobe. He couldn’t remember the name of the song, since the pretentious little shit liked to give them all names in Latin like Futue Te Ipsum or something. It seemed that every station he could get on the radio had been playing it nonstop for the past month.

You know some people kind of deserve to be carved up with a butcher knife, Dan thought. He changed the station before walking over to clean up the meat slicer. It was a mess after he’d made that sandwich for his last customer, and the reek of cut flesh was cloying in the air. Even after all the time he’d been working with raw meat, the smell could still make him gag sometimes.

He methodically picked all the little bits of meat and skin from the slicer before wiping it down. The radio droned on in the background as he took the time to wash his gore-steeped hands in the sink, careful to get everything out from underneath his fingernails. The feeling of dead meat in his nail beds always made him shiver.

Dan turned around when he heard something thump down on the checkout counter behind him. His little Vegan party girl was glaring back at him. Her long, black fingernails were tapping an irritated tattoo against the plastic of a 20-ounce bottle of Coke. Her hands looked pale and gaunt under the fluorescent lights, and he noticed how delicate and fragile they looked.

Dan stifled a sigh. He rang up the soft drink methodically. “Do you need a bag?” he asked.

“No,” she growled. “I want the Natural Ice and a pack of Reds, but I obviously can’t get that here from a sheep like you.”

Dan blinked. “What?”

“I said you’re a mindless corporate sheep,” she said, “being led by the nose to the slaughterhouse of individuality and free will.” She held a crumpled greenback out to him, disdain dripping from every word. “You’re just another low class nine-to-five conformist breathing my air. Hurry up and gimme my change back. Just being in the same room as you is making my skin crawl like you wouldn’t believe.”

Dan stared at her for a moment, dumbstruck. What the Hell is she going on about? He opened his mouth, then just shook his head and took the money from her claw-like hands. Fuck it, he thought. Crazy bitch. He looked down to the crumpled up bill she’d practically thrown at him. He smoothed it out; Ben Franklin peered owlishly back up at him.

“Well?’’ the girl demanded. Dan looked up. The bottle of Coke was still on the counter, and she had put her hands on her hips and thrust her chin out at him defiantly.

“You going to give me the smokes and beer or what, man? You can keep the change if it makes you happy.”

Is she trying to fucking bribe me? He waved the hundred at her. “Don’t you have anything smaller? Like a five or a ten?”

She sneered at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her tone mocking. “Can’t you count that high without someone holding your hand? Or do you have to go look up the store’s policy on making change for its customers? Do you need to call your boss?”

Dan squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a moment. He shook his head as if clearing cobwebs from his brain and took a deep breath. He had to let go of the sudden urge to grab the girl by the scruff of her neck and stick her in the meat slicer. Maybe if I shaved off a couple of inches it would wipe that look off her face, he thought.

Instead he took another deep breath and silently punched in 1 0 0 into his register. It popped open with an audible DING. After fishing out ninety-eight dollars in change, he handed it to her. “Here, honey,” he said, his voice dripping venom. “Don’t spend it all in one place. Better yet, buy a personality transplant.” The girl took the money and shot him a smug look before stuffing the wad of cash in to one tight blue-denim hip pocket. “Do you want a straw,” he went on, “or are you just going to bite it on the neck and suck the life right out of it?”

She reached out to grab the bottle. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, I love you too, baby,” Dan growled. Dan rolled his eyes as that damn song came on the radio again. “Christ,” he muttered, and reflexively reached out to change the station again.

The girl shrieked. “Don’t you dare!” she yelled.

Dan jumped, his hand recoiling from the radio as if it was a spitting cobra. The song continued playing. “What? Don’t do what!?” She was glaring at him, sulky and unresponsive. “What the hell is your problem, lady?”

“That’s Solus Ipse, it’s an amazing song. That man is a god,” she said, pointing at the radio. “Don’t you dare turn that off! You could learn something from him, all his songs are about striking out against raging conformity and being the beautifully flawed individual that he is. His message is too important to deny!”

“What?” Dan’s brows knitted together. “That moron with the Alice Cooper wig? You’re kidding, right?” She glared at him furiously, but didn’t answer him. “Tell me you’re kidding.” Nothing but stony silence greeted him in response.

Dan began to grind his teeth. “Better yet, tell me this whole thing has just been some sort of practical joke or something. Is there a webcam in your belt buckle or something?” He looked down, confused. “You’re for real, aren’t you? Jesus Christ. You’d better go home to Mommy and Daddy and tell them to up your Ritalin prescription or something. How old are you, anyway? What are you, like an A-cup? Hell, isn’t it a school night?”

The girl opened her mouth and sputtered, but Dan cut her off and steamrolled right over her. “You know I see all kinds of people come in here every day. All kinds of people. And I gotta tell you that it’s lunatics like you who give fucking psychotics like that Butcher guy a reason for living. Hell, you make what they do a public service! He deserves the key to the city for grinding up people like you and turning them into hamburger meat.”

“Shut up!” she shouted back at him, indignant and snarling. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Dan pulled himself out of his slouch and glowered at the girl. Now that his blood was up he couldn’t stop himself. “Oh, give it a rest. You think you’re such fucking trendsetter? How many assholes at that party you’re going to are going to be drinking Natural Light or PBR or some other hipster bullshit? You walk in here with your glow-in-the-dark retard porcupine hairdo, and your fashion felony jacket, and your holier-than-thou ultra-trendy Vegan lifestyle, and I’m the one with the problem? Gimme a goddamn break, kid. You’ll probably grab at the next fad to come along like… I dunno, like a drowning sailor clutching a life-preserver. I don’t know. You know nobody would miss you if you died tonight? People like you are a dime a dozen. Some other toolbox would come along that looks just like you and your little friends wouldn’t even know you were gone.”

The girl snarled back at him, her hands balled up into fists. “How the fuck would you know, asshole? You don’t know the first thing about me, you just stand there with your rules, and your policies, with that apron all covered with the blood and filth from all those murdered animals. They should lock you up, you fucking shithead. Don’t you judge me!”

The anger drained out of Dan. All he felt now was tired. “Kid, get out of my shop already. I ain’t the one being judgmental here. And this conversation is all I ever wanna know about you. I’ve really got no desire to get to know you better, ever.”

“Shut up,” she cried. “I’m better than you. I'm better than you!”

Dan sighed heavily. His hands itched for the handle of a nice long sharp knife.

I’d only have to clean up afterwards, he thought. Finally he broke his silence. “Miss, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store,” he said. She grabbed her bottle of Coke with a sneer and began stomping her way towards the door. “And don’t come back without some Prozac,” he muttered under his breath. She yanked the door open violently and stalked out. As she did so the little church bells jingled one last time. Wedding bells my ass, Dan thought.

Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. A wicked headache had blossomed right between his eyes, and it seemed to be growing by the second. The radio was still vomiting forth its vapid payload, so he turned it off. Immediately he began to feel better.

With a visible effort Dan stopped clenching his jaws together. He looked out across the counter; it was strewn with the remnants of the countless meals he had prepared for the day’s customers. He shifted his gaze downward for a moment, and he realized that once again he had been wringing his hands with his apron. Only this time he was simply smearing more blood and slime all over himself.

“Dammit,” he said, forcibly dropping his hands. He turned back to wash up again. Then he stripped off his bloody apron and tossed it through the open doorway into the back room, where the laundry basket was. Finally he got to work cleaning up the countertop with a spray bottle and a clean rag.

After a minute or so he heard the deli’s wedding bells chime again. Dan continued wiping down the counter. “We’re just about closed,” he said, his back still to the door. He heard loud, echoing footsteps coming towards him, squelching on the linoleum. "Hey, did it finally start to rain out there?" he asked, still without turning around.

His new customer cleared their throat, and he turned around. The girl he’d just thrown out of his store was standing there, dripping water all over the floor and looking like a cat that was just fished out of the river. “Is that your car in the lot out there?” she asked. Her skin was pallid and clammy, like a movie zombie, and her hair was plastered down to her forehead. “It started coming down hard,” she went on. “I have to get home, and it’s way too far to walk in the rain. Plus, it’s cold.” Both her shaggy jacket and her black tee shirt had been soaked through. She suddenly looked to be about twelve years old.

Dan stared at her. Seconds ticked by as an uncomfortable silence unfurled between them like a piece of greasy paper parchment. “Let me get this right,” he began haltingly. “First, you come in here and try to scam beer and cigarettes off of me. Then you go all schizoid on me, essentially calling me some sort of Nazi Hitler Youth member or something because I won’t break the law and sell them to you without ID. Not to mention you started howling like a meth-fueled banshee when I go to turn my radio off because I don’t want to listen to some androgynous no-talent halfwit pretend to ‘perform’ a song. My radio, mind you!” He pointed up at it. “Is there some sign that says, ‘Property of Psycho Bitch, Do Not Touch’ on there?” She was sullenly silent. “Well, is there?”

“No,” she finally said.

“That’s right. And now, you want me to drive you home like we’d just gone out on a date or something. Are you deranged? What the hell makes you think I’d ever give a ride to you after the way you completely flipped the fuck out on me?”

“Because it’s raining. And you’ve got a car. And…." She looked down. "And it’s getting dark and I'm far from home. So are you going to give me a ride or not?”

Dan looked down to notice once more he’d been wringing his hands. This time he’d been doing it with the cleaning rag he had just used to wipe up the last messy leftovers of the day. As a result he was covered in filth. Again. “Yeah, sure,” he said slowly. He looked up at the girl, who was standing there and shivering. He felt strangely detached, like he was hearing someone else agree to drive her home. It reminded him of how his voice sounded on his voice mail greeting, tinny and artificial. “I’ll give you a ride.” He blinked a couple of times, clearing his head. “Let me go wash up, and then I’ll lock the store up for the night.”

Dan walked into the back room in a daze. He dropped the dirty cleaning rag into the laundry basket. It was already filled to the brim with dirty aprons, at least a dozen. Dan stopped counting when he hit ten. He usually went through two or three every hour, more if the deli was busy. His boss always gave him shit for it, the cheap bastard.

He moved over to the sink and began to once more wash his hands. He washed and he washed; he scrubbed his fingertips until his cuticles began to sting from the soap. He barely noticed it when he went to shut off the faucet, though he did see that the water escaping down the drain was tinged with red. He looked down at his hands to see how inflamed and raw his fingertips had become.

Dan turned the water off and gingerly dried his sore hands with a clean paper towel. He looked down at it – it was wilted and damp, and cross-hatched with tiny rust-colored half-moons of blood. He crumpled the paper towel up in his hands and tossed it in the garbage can before walking over to retrieve his winter jacket from its peg on the wall. He slowly slid his arms into the sleeves, wincing as his fingers caught on the rough flannel lining.

“Hey, you still there?” the girl called out from the other side of the counter. Dan stuck his head out of the back room. She was hugging herself and shivering. There was a puddle of water accumulating at her feet. “Are you ready to go yet? The heat in your car isn’t broken, is it?”

“No, it works just fine,” he said. He reached began shutting off the lights inside the deli. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride. You’re right, it’s not fair to make you walk home in rain like this. Besides, it’s not exactly safe to go anywhere by yourself with that crazy Butcher around here. It gets dark fast this time of year.” He hazarded a polite smile at the girl. “I’m giving you fair, warning, though. If you even so much as think about breathing on my car stereo, I am going to murder you.”

“Okay, whatever. Just could we go please? I’m fucking freezing.” She turned and walked away. Dan heard the bells hanging on the door ring, just like miniature church bells at a wedding. Or a funeral, he thought. They rattled against the frame as the door slammed shut.

“Okay,” he said to the dark, empty room. He stuck his hands deep inside his coat pockets and recoiled sharply. He held his hand up in the dim light. There he saw a tiny dark spot welling up on the ball of his thumb.

Dan reflexively stuck his thumb into his mouth. He sucked on it a moment, much like he did as a child. The coppery tang of his own blood filled his mouth. The taste coated his tongue, leaving it feeling syrupy and thick. He spared a moment to look out through the front window of the deli where he could see the girl in the amber light given off by the single sodium lamp in the parking lot. She was standing forlornly in the rain as she waited for him.

“Never can seem to get the stuff off my hands,” he murmured, as he reached more carefully into his pocket. He brushed past the long wooden handle of the knife and picked out the keys to the shop before walking outside. The bells jingled one last time.