Bleddyn the Butcher

BLEDDYN THE BUTCHER

'Never put your trust in a man, whatever he might say or tell you, do you promise dear?'

'Oh Lor’, whatever next Mother,' I giggled.

Mother's words of warning were still echoing in my recently branded ears, as I watched her ample pink teats being gently squeezed and pulled by big Doris Butter's dextrous fingers.

Did I listen to my mother?

Did I heck as like.

Do any of us at that age?

I was young, quite pretty and attractive, despite the fly's and dung stains beneath my tail, I was spirited and headstrong, finding my way. I dread to think of the worry that my sister and I had caused our poor mother, during the three weeks or so we had known her.

It's never easy for a single parent. It probably accounted for her just 'upping sticks' one day. 'Just popping to market,' she called out. We never saw her again after that. Honestly, it's just been one thing after the other. Then one day last week as I was going through some of mother's old things, you know how you do, when there was a sudden loud knock at the door. Blocking what sunlit there was from the doorway stood a mountain of a man, standing his big strong arms on his hips at the entrance of our cosy byre.

'Let's be having' you then, isn't it,' he shouted, bringing down a thick cane hard across my buttocks. It was in that same moment that our eyes met, his were ‘devil may care’ brown, my eyes were still watering from another whack over my buttocks with his thick stiff cane. The heady rush of dopamine had me in a spin but there was no denying it, I had fallen in love with Bleddyn Morgan, the village butcher.

Love or not, I did not care for the way he kept me waiting, we cows spend most of our lives on the edge of incontinence. Relenting, Bleddyn using his cane to good effect, pushed me together with my sister Vera and my second Cousin Dylan out of the byre and down the long winding slippery cobbled lane until we reached his cosy little 'Ab Twa'.

Bleddyn had swept me off my feet, well truer to say he swept me off the floor actually. Due entirely to the effect of the electric stun gun he had so lovingly pressed against my temple. I fell for him, hook, line and conveyor belt, my mother had been right. After that first heady moment of ecstasy, given up so easily to Bleddyn, I never saw him again after that.

Bleddyn had done a runner!

I had ceased to exist. Life was rapidly coming apart at the seams.

One afternoon, just before tea, it happened. Oh joy, my sweet, sweet love... Bleddyn returned.

My heart leapt, or it might have done, had it not long since been stuffed in aubergines together with some very personal pieces of sweetmeats at Lorenzo's restaurant. Bleddyn lifted me gently in his arms, drawing me close. I felt him shaking, what I mean is, it was me he was shaking, into a sack marked 'Offal.' Slinging me across his strong broad shoulder he headed for the door, as I fainted away into darkness together with my intestines and vital organs.

My mind was still reeling following hideous nightmares and searing pain i finally came to. Imagine my horror as I discovered to my utter amazement, that I had, together with much of my recent essential nature had been prepared as a row of beefburgers. As my state of existence descended the heated conveyor one behind the other, something very strange happened.

From within a polystyrene box next to me, I heard a familiar voice.

'I warned you not to trust men, didn’t I, I told you countless times not to do as they said, ‘Oh, you silly cow!

They only want one thing; l told you not to believe a word that they said.'

I lay in my own polystyrene box in paralytic shock

I couldn't believe it.

I recoiled in fear and trembling, shrieking.

'MOTHER!'