Every single day, a 70-year-old retiree visited the same butcher shop and ordered forty kilograms of beef.
The butcher, puzzled by the enormous order, couldn’t help but wonder — what could she possibly do with so much meat
She was small and stooped, wrapped in a faded coat, her frail hands gripping a dented metal cart.
“Forty kilos, same as always,” she murmured, passing over a neat stack of bills.
At first, the butcher assumed she was feeding a large family. But days turned into weeks, and her routine never changed. She never smiled, never made small talk. A faint metallic scent seemed to cling to her — the smell of rust and old blood.
Before long, rumors spread through the market:
— “She’s feeding stray dogs.”
— “No, she runs a secret kitchen somewhere.”
— “Maybe she’s stockpiling meat for the winter.”
The butcher didn’t believe any of it. Curiosity finally got the better of him.
One cold evening, he followed her from a distance. The old woman trudged through the snow toward the edge of town, pushing her cart until she reached the rusted gates of an abandoned factory. She slipped inside.
Twenty minutes later, she reemerged — empty-handed. No meat. No cart.
The next day, the same thing happened.
On the third evening, unable to resist, the butcher followed her inside.
The air was thick with the stench of blood and iron. Somewhere in the darkness, a low growl rippled through the hall. The butcher froze. Slowly, he peered through a crack in the wall — and what he saw made his stomach drop.
Four enormous lions crouched in the gloom, their golden eyes gleaming in the half-light. Bones and scraps of meat littered the concrete floor.
In a tattered armchair sat the old woman, stroking one of the beasts as it purred beneath her trembling hands. Her voice was soft, almost tender:
“Easy now, my darlings… soon you’ll fight again… the people will come to watch…”
The butcher stumbled backward, his heart pounding. One of the lions roared, shaking the walls. The woman’s head snapped toward him.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed — her voice raw, animalistic.
Terrified, he fled into the snow and called the police.
When officers arrived, the truth came out. The woman had once been a zoologist. Years ago, after the local zoo shut down, she had taken in several lions “to keep them from starving.”
But over time, something inside her had changed. Compassion had turned to obsession — and then, to something far darker.
