Every day, a 70-year-old retiree visits the same butcher shop and orders forty kilos of beef.
The butcher, confused by the enormous order, decides one day to investigate what he really does with all that meat and what he finds is beyond anything he could have imagined.
The old woman is small and stooped, wrapped in an old coat, her wrinkled hands gripping the handle of a dented metal cart. “Forty kilos, the same as before,” she replies, and slides a neat stack of bills onto the counter.
The young butcher silently weighs the pieces of meat, unable to hide his amazement. Forty kilos – every day. At first, he thinks he is feeding a large family, but as the weeks go by, his routine has not changed.
The woman barely spoke, never made eye contact, and carried a strange metallic smell that reminded her of rust and decay. Soon, whispers began to circulate in the market:
– “He must be feeding a pack of dogs.”
-“No, I heard he runs a secret diner somewhere.”
“Maybe he has a freezer full of meat for the winter.”
The butcher dismissed the rumors, but his curiosity was getting the better of him. Finally, one cold night, he decided to follow her.
He waited until she left, and pulled her heavy cart through the snow-covered streets. Slowly but purposefully, the woman headed out of town. She passed rows of abandoned garages and finally stopped at an old, crumbling factory and one that had been closed for more than a decade.
He entered with the meat, and disappeared into the shadows. Twenty minutes later, he was transformed—empty. The next day, the same thing happened.
On the third night, unable to contain himself, the butcher crept inside after him. The air inside was thick with an unsettling smell—blood, steel, and something wild. Then he heard a low growl that made his skin crawl.
Peeking through a crack in the wall, he froze.
Inside the cavernous hall stood four large lions, their golden eyes shining in the dim light. Bones and scraps of meat were scattered on the floor. In the corner, on a worn-out chair, the old woman sat, stroking one of the animals and whispering softly:
“Easy, my darlings… Soon you will have another fight… The people are here to watch…”
The butcher fell, gasping for breath. One of the lions roared, shaking the entire building. The old woman frowned.
“What are you doing here?!” she whispered, her voice more animal than human.
Terrified, the butcher went outside and called the police.
When the officers arrived, the truth came out. The woman was once a zoologist who had taken in some lions after the local zoo closed “to keep them hungry.” But over time, desperation and greed had warped her motives.