A Butcher's Tale

Black umbrellas. Black suits and dresses. Black stilettos and black boots. Mourners always have a way of wearing black. They gather around like flock, from the church to the grave. All for a “good and honest man" that everyone knew to be the best butcher in town, Ole man Richie. Everything was in sync except for the one wearing a blue polka-a-dot dress. No one noticed her but Edgar, the deceased's long distant nephew. He inherited the cobwebbed butchery; little did he know that it would come with a price.

Cut the meat, slice it, carve it. Take orders, wrap the meat, slice it, carve it. Every day was the same for Edgar: mundane, disdained, and unseasoned. Just when he was prepared to hang up his uncle’s legendary apron and abandon the butchery altogether, he began to reminisce about his younger years when he would come visit. The eeriness of metal meat cleavers, grinders, blood- stained and bulky laminated floors, were enough to make a twelve-year-old boy uncomfortable. As a man, he felt that backing out wasn't an option, his family depended on him. One thing that frightened Edgar the most as a child, was looking at all of those thumbtacks holding missing women postings in place. They were weighing down the glue of the cracked flower print wallpaper. His uncle had been collecting them for years, the pictures, as if they were souvenirs at a tourist convenient stop. 

Her hair, tangled. Her skin, pale. Her dress was familiar, blue polka-a-dots. Her face was blurred like a smudged portrait abandoned by the artist. Weeks had gone by before he noticed her behind the row of crowded customers. Once Edgar recognized the woman from his uncle’s grave site, he tried to chase the mystery woman. Mindful not to frighten her, only to be greeted by dust twirling in the wind whenever he approached. On one peculiar day Detective Williams, Edgar’s uncle’s best friend, arrived right after the lady in blue. There was a connection between her, this butcher shop, his uncle, and the detective. Edgar's mission was to find out what it was; or is. The detective questioned Edgar about the missing women, oblivious of the one that stood next to him. 

The detective’s lips were moving but they had no sound. Edgar's eyes were fixated on the wall, examining the descriptions of the women.  Blondes, brunettes; all different, all similar. One stood out distinctively, a lady named Emily, who died a year ago. It was her eyes that drew him to her, they smiled. An innocence that was captured before being snatched away from the world. The detective kept staring at the plastic curtains behind Edgar, he seemed familiar with what was beyond the "employees only" sign. The towners say that Detective Williams and Ole man Richie were inseparable like two peas in a rotten pod. The woman in the blue dress continued to stare at the detective as he was speaking; close enough to touch, smell, and bite him. But she didn’t; instead, she vanished like she normally does.

Weeks later, a statement from a captive victim landed Edgar at the police precinct to be questioned about those that were missing. He wanted to tell them about the night that the woman in the blue polka-a-dot dress stood in the middle of the road pointing to a man in a red pickup truck with a lady in the passenger seat. Edgar saw the man, the man who kidnaps women, at least that's what the lady echoed like a wolf calling the moon. The man never saw Edgar or the lady that stood beside him. The lady in the "ripped" blue polka-a-dot dress whispered something in Edgar's ear. He was given an order that had to be completed. She seemed worn, but the image of her face was piecing together more now. Still a puzzle, a maze, but a canvas filled with pastels.

Edgar follows the pickup truck, which leads him to a secluded house in the woods. At this point he needed to know where the accused kidnapper hid the women, but she was alive. He saw her legs move, the woman that was in the passenger seat. Maybe the lady in the blue dress was wrong, maybe Edgar didn’t see her at all. The woman in the truck wailed in pain, then her legs stopped moving and she took her last breath. Edgar watched the murderer drag the woman's lifeless body into the house, down the steps that led to other bodies. 

Two of them were alive, eyes bonded, unable to see that someone was behind the suspect. They heard two men wrestle on the cemented floor. The kidnapper tried to manhandle Edgar, but he was overpowered by the blunt blow to the head from a nearby shovel. Subsequently, Edgar unleashed the captives; however, they couldn't decipher who was the hero or the villain. 

The murder woke up incoherent, but able to recognize Edgar, and Ole man Richie's butchery. The convicted man wept instantaneously once he saw large sheets of plastic neatly spread across the steel cutting table. He begged like a cowardly dog for Edgar to spare his life, but it did not matter, because Edgar was given an order that had to be completed. 

  The police released Edgar from custody, once they reviewed video surveillance from the boutique a few blocks down the road. They uncovered who was the kidnapper, it wasn't Edgar. The police couldn't locate the suspect, he was still missing. Edgar went to the butchery and opened his uncle's locked personal box that he discovered weeks ago. The box was filled with memorabilia kept under the floorboard, behind the plastic curtains. There were a multitude of trinkets that belonged to the missing women, amongst them was a necklace that spelled out Emily’s name, the missing woman that wore a blue polka-a-dot dress. Edgar added to his uncle's uncanny box; a police badge that said Detective Williams, one of the men who kidnapped and killed women.