Deli Meat
Deli Meat
a silly little snuffie story by Alex Reynard
initial concept by Se-or Antonio
* * *
Little Kevin would not shut up.
"...so then it's Bobby's turn, right? And he's on level thirty-five and he's got the Red Lectroid, and, like, sixty thousand points! And he's totally beating me! But then he goes into a room and there's all these Burginoids there waiting for him! And they just utterly cream him! His guy's head flew off, and there was blood all over the place!! And then it woulda been my turn again but he said a swear word real loud and his mom heard it and she yelled at him a lot and told me to go home. And then..."
Really, he just would Not Shut Up.
Kevin's mother loved her little boy with all her heart, and he was such a good little fox in so many other ways. He was always cheerful and polite, always quick to help out anyone in need. Smart, got good grades. But he Just Would Not Shut Up.
"...are you gonna get the green ones this time, Mom? 'Cause I hate the green ones. Yuck! They smell like stewed vomit! Not that you're not a good cook, of course. Your cooking rocks! But those green things are terrible! Even that chef guy on TV with the big hat and the mustache who screams a lot couldn't do anything with 'em! You could cover them in chocolate and they'd still taste like bat barf! Anyway..."
The slender, pretty vixen in the light blue sweater and yellow pants strolled briskly along with her cart, occasionally looking down to check her list. She tried to balance putting her items in the cart with nodding and going 'yes' and 'uh-huh' every few seconds.
Kevin followed along behind her, tail wagging, grinning that sunshine grin of his. Today he was wearing his favorite white shorts with the blue stripe on them, and a T-shirt with Nuclear Dude on the front. His huge white sneakers squeaked on the tile floor. Dozens of other customers stopped to stare at the little carrot-orange fox as he passed, all wondering the same thing; 'Does he ever take a breath?'
"...Mister Kendall's a big jerk. He gave us, like, two tons of homework tonight! I'll never be able to do it all in time for my show to come on! And it's gonna be a cool one this week! I heard there's gonna be aliens and stuff crawling all over the place! This sucks! Oh, are we out of lunchmeat?"
His mother just rolled her eyes, her usual reigning-in-giggles smile on her lips. Kevin could be annoying at times, even massively so, but she loved him. And oftentimes, he was admittedly rather amusing.
She stopped in front of the deli counter, looking over the various sliced meats. She 'hmm'ed; her foxy finger touching her lips in thought.
Sam was an enormous hulk of a wolf who worked behind the deli. He was short, but built like a slab of concrete. He had on a huge white apron over his irreparably-stained grey jeans. His fur was the color of baking chocolate. However, his outwardly intimidating physique actually concealed a soft 'n squishy center. He was really a big softie at heart.
So it was with a raised eyebrow and a smile instead of a frown, that he turned around from slicing salami to check out who was describing, colorfully and disgustingly, what all the various potato salads reminded him of.
"...and this one looks like the paste we use in art class. And, oh, cool! This one looks just like my boogers that one time I got the flu! And this one! Hey, mom!"
Sam turned to the small, quiet vixen standing by the bologna. 'He can't possibly be yours, can he?' he asked playfully with his expression.
She nodded. 'He sure is, but I'm proud of him anyway!' "Do you have any specials today?" she asked.
He jerked his thumb behind him at the dry-erase board. "Fried chicken's on sale. Twelve-piece for seven bucks. Hmm?"
She considered it. "Not sure. We had chicken a few nights ago..."
"...chicken? Yeah, we went out to a fast food place and got a big bucket. It was really greasy! You could hold it up and it'd drip right on your plate! Yours doesn't look greasy at all, Mister Wolf. Yours looks delicious!"
Sam chuckled. "Well, thank you. Glad it meets with your approval, li'l guy."
Kevin grinned some more. "So, you got any tongue sandwiches? Are they gross? Do they get together and sing when everybody goes home for the night?"
The deli wolf had to prop himself up on the counter with one of his huge paws to keep from staggering in laughter.
Seeing the rapport her son had established with the kindly smiling wolf, Kevin's mom's eyes lit up. She gestured to get Sam's attention and then turned on the charm full volume. "I'm really sorry, but would you mind doing me just a teensy little favor?" she asked as sweetly as she could.
He made a 'And what exactly would that be?' face.
"I've still got a lot of shopping to do, and it'd go a lot faster if I could just ditch the little chatterbox for a few minutes."
"Hey!" Kevin piped up.
She came over and ruffled his headfur. "I'm only kidding, sprout. But if you don't mind, and the nice deli man doesn't either, could you just hang around here for a bit while I finish up?" she asked. She tossed in a trump card. "I'll get you some of those chocolate caramel Toaster Tarts you love..."
That hooked him. "Deal!"
"Wait, um..." said Sam, scratching his headfur. "I didn't exactly agree..."
The happily-relieved vixen was already wheeling her cart away at breakneck speeds. "I can't thank you enough! I'll only be gone a few minutes!" she called back brightly as she fled the scene.
Sam looked down at the little fox kid who was now starting up at him with big brown eyes and an irresistibly cute grin.
"Do you ever play any video games? There's this one I just downloaded off the 'net where you play a chicken, and you gotta go running around through this minefield, picking up these radioactive pickle-things that give you life, and if you step on a landmine, you blow up and feathers go all over the place and you go 'BUCK-KAWKK'!! It's really cool!!"
Sam could not believe he'd agreed to this.
Kevin kept chattering incessantly as he wandered about in front of the deli case, gleefully making jokes about the various meats.
"...and do you have any headcheese? I've heard that stuff's really nasty! I've heard they make it out of brain and ears and eyeballs and buttholes!"
Realizing that if anyone actually heard this kid, they might permanently consider shopping at another supermarket, Sam came out from behind the counter and quickly hustled Kevin out of sight.
He plopped the hyper little kit down on a short stool hidden behind the chicken warmer. "Do you like cheese?" he asked crisply.
Kevin's tail wagged. "Yeah! I love it!! Got any colby-jack? Or do you call it tiger cheese? Anyway, it's my total favorite!"
"I will give you three free slices right now if you'll keep the volume down," Sam pled. "I can tell you're a good kid, but you're not exactly good for business at the moment. Got me?"
The little fox grinned foxily. Free cheese just to hush up for a bit? What a bargain! He nodded vigorously.
The two furs shook on it, and Sam hastily whipped up three thinly sliced samples of premium colby-jack.
Kevin took them with a grateful nod. "Thanks!" He bit off the corner of one of them. "Mmmmmmm! That's good!"
Sam gently shushed him. "Keep it down now, remember. I don't mind if you talk, just make sure the other customers can't hear you," he said. He was trying to convey to the kid, 'look, you're cute and I like you, but I don't want some old lady fainting because you're making gross jokes about liverwurst'.
The big wolf was rather skilled at meaning a whole lot with a minimum of words, and Kevin got the hint. "Check." He started in concentrating on his cheese. As always, he nibbled along the edges of the slice in a spiral pattern, gradually reducing it to nothing.
Glad for the momentary lull, Sam sighed and went back to his job. He hefted up half a honey ham onto the big deli slicer. He turned it on, setting the huge spinning blade awhirl. He took the handle of the feeder tray and started in the rhythmic back-and-forth. With each pass, a perfect, thin slice of ham fell out the other side onto the wax paper. He sliced a half a pound and wrapped it up for the lady in the green hat who'd said she would be 'right back'. Ten minutes ago. Well, if she didn't show, and nobody else wanted it, he'd just sneak it into the breakroom later. That was one of the perks of being a deli guy; you got to make yourself some fantastic sandwiches with the leftovers.
"...dang, that was good! *berp*! Oop! Excuse me! Hey, what's that? That big machine you're giving the ham a ride on?"
Arrgh. Kevin had finished his cheese and his volume was back up again. Sam slapped his forehead. "It's a..."
Then he stopped, and considered something.
"It's really cool! Here, do you want to see it closer?" he said with a wolfish grin.
"Sure! Yeah!"
Sam bent over and lifted the little fox up under the armpits, as if he weighed no more than a dandelion. He sat the boy down on the counter, giving him a closeup look at the slicer. "Neat, huh?"
Kevin was mesmerized by it. "...Yeah!"
"Want me to show you how it works?"
Kevin nodded enthusiastically.
"Fine," Sam picked up the ham and sat it aside. "Just climb up here and stand still." He took Kevin's paw and had him step up onto the surface of the feeder tray.
"What's it gonna do?" Kevin asked.
"You'll see in a bit," Sam said with a crafty smile. He flicked the 'on' switch again, and the big blade sprang to life. "Now, weren't you just telling me about some video game?"
"Oh yeah! I downloaded a bunch of 'em off this one site me and my friend Bobby go to all the time. It's called ScrewedUpShit dot com. Sorry for swearing, but that's what it's called! Really!"
"That's okay, I don't mind," Sam said pleasantly. He set the machine for 'automatic'. Right away, the tray began to move on its own; back and forth, back and forth. Sam watched as a thin slice of Kevin's sneaker sole appeared on the wax paper.
"...we were looking at it on the school computer once, but Mister Drunning, the stinky ol' librarian, caught us. He was really pissed! He blabbed at us for a while. His big, furry mustache looks like a giant caterpillar or something. He sucks. He won't even let me check out more than six books at a time, and I can read way more than that!"
"Oh? Do you like to read?" Sam asked back over his shoulder as he rang up the green hat lady's honey ham. No sandwiches for Sam today, it seemed.
"Yeah! I read a bazillion books a week! Mostly horror stuff. There's this one series I really like, called Night Shivers, that are all really gruesome! There's always people gettin' their heads chopped off 'n stuff. Or zombies, or dracula, or ghosts, or whatever. There's a new one coming out next week. Actually, a new one comes out every month or so. There's no way one guy could write 'em all that fast! I think he has a team of evil henchmen do it for him..."
"Uh huh, uh huh. Could be." Sam watched as a little pile of sliced paw meat began to collect on the wax paper. Kevin hadn't even noticed! Of course, the blade was extremely sharp. Sam remembered several times cutting himself by accident and not even realizing it until he looked down. *Plop*, went another slice of fresh fox meat.
"I hope my mom gets the right cereal. She's always trying to get me to eat that healthy stuff that looks like a bowl full of twigs. Bleah. It's not so bad, actually, if you dump a ton of sugar on it first. But whenever she catches me doing that, she makes me eat raw vegetables as punishment. Can you believe that? It's cruel and unusual!"
"I totally agree." Sam nodded as he set the first little pile of boy meat aside and wrapped it up. Two round little slices of ankle dropped onto a new sheet of wax paper. Kevin _still_ hadn't noticed! Sam suspected that if he just kept the little fox talking, he probably wouldn't realize what was happening at all.
"So, do you like working in a deli? Is it fun? Do you get free food? I bet the garbage is real stinky at the end of the day, huh? All that moldy headcheese and stuff. Pee-yew!"
"Yeah, it gets pretty bad. But I do like my job. It has plenty of perks. Want some more cheese?"
"Oh yes! Thank you very much!" Kevin said politely, as his calves went smoothly through the slicer.
The bulky wolf happily served him three more pieces, and smiled as the boy tore into them with gusto.
Sam rang up a few more customers and gave the floor a quick sweep while Kevin enjoyed his second snack. Sam made sure to keep an eye on the little fox's progress. The slicer hummed away, and Kevin got shorter and shorter. Sam packaged up another pound or so of him and slipped in a new sheet of paper just as the machine was coming to the boy's tender, athletic thighs.
"That was really good! Thanks! You're a nice guy. I'll try to get my mom to buy something from you when she comes back. I'll really bug her until she gets something, I promise! I'll even hold my breath until I turn blue!"
Sam chortled. "You don't have to go that far, really. I don't mind watching you." He actually was enjoying watching Kevin. Watching Kevin being turned slowly into little piles of deli meat, that is.
The slicer had cut away almost all of Kevin's legs, and was just starting on the young foxboy's sweetmeats. Kevin let out a little surprised 'erf'! As the tip of his boyplace was painlessly sheared off.
"Hey! What was that? It felt weird, but kinda cool, too!"
The machine took another slice, and another. Kevin cooed in pleasure. It didn't feel like anything he'd ever felt before, but it did feel good!
Sam decided to purposely distract the boy so he wouldn't notice what was happening to him until there was nothing he could do about it anymore. "Uh... You mentioned your friend, uh, Billy, was it? What's he like?"
"It's Bobby! And he's a cool guy. He's a raccoon, and he lives down the street from me. He's got glasses, and this great big video game system we play on all the time. His mom's a really sucky cook though, so he's always coming over to my place to eat. We're in the same class, too. We've got this secret language we cooked up so the teacher won't know when we're swapping answers during one of his dumb tests!"
"That's pretty nifty," Sam noted. He pushed another package of sliced fox away. There were quite a few little packages piling up by now. Kevin was more than half gone.
"Yeah! Bobby came up with it. 'Ibble dosh bloon perfoolum!' Ha! Do you know what I said? Nope, ya don't! That's 'cause you can't speak Kevbobbi. But I'll give you a hint; it was really, really dirty!"
Sam smiled conspiratorially. "Maybe I shouldn't guess in front of the customers then?" he said with a wink.
"Oh, yeah, right!" Kevin wiggled a bit as his bellybutton disappeared into the steady whirr of the slicer blade. "When's my mom coming back? I'm kinda bored. I wanna get up to the checkout so she can give me some quarters for the gumball machine. I used to try playing that crane game you guys have out by the doors, but it's a total rip-off! I saw a Space Pig plushie in there, and I put, like, fifty bucks in quarters in that thing! That wimpy crane'd go down and come right back up with nothing! It's a scam. You oughtta just get rid of it!"
"Sorry, kid, but that's not my department. I could mention it to the manager though." The slicer spat out little coin-sized circles of foxmeat as it devoured Kevin's fingertips. Amazingly, the boy was still unaware of his imminent total transformation into lunchmeat!
"Really? Great. Thanks! You're a nice guy. Do you like working here? Oh wait, I already asked you that. Umm... Do you watch Space Pig? It comes on Saturday at eight o' clock in
the morning."
"Nope. By then I'm just getting out of bed and getting ready to go to work," Sam said as he scooped up a half-pound of cranberry relish.
"Dang. Too bad. It's a good show. It's funny as heck."
The slicer was up to the boy's shoulders now. Sam turned to watch, fascinated, as the chatterbox fox slowly descended into the blade.
"So there's this girl at school I kinda like? But I think she hates me. Like, today at recess I threw some mud at her, hoping she'd notice me, and she got really angry! I mean, it was just some dirt! And it didn't even splatter on anything important! I guess I just don't understand the ladies. I think..."
Kevin paused abruptly, looking puzzled. Something had finally dawned on him; he seemed to be shrinking, and he couldn't feel his paws anymore. Or anything else, for that matter. "Hey! Wait a minute! What's going o-"
And at that point, Kevin finally stopped talking, because the slicer had taken his bottom lip right off. The poor little fox looked around, his big brown eyes wide in confusion. "Uhhh? Wuuh mm aaah uh mmmnngg?"
Sam walked over and patted the boy on what was left of his head. "Sorry about that, little guy. But you're murder on a man's eardrums!"
Kevin could only look up at him in a 'well, okay, you do have a point,' kind of a way.
A few moments later, the last bits of Kevin had gone through the slicer. Two little eartips plipped out onto the last pile of boymeat. Sam wrapped it up, and put it with the others. He took the little paper packages over to the deli scale and started to weigh them one by one, putting price stickers on them as he went.
Kevin's mother came by a few moments later, pushing an overflowing cart. "Hi again! I hope Kevin didn't give you too much trouble. Where is he?"
Sam pointed over at the little pile of wrapped-up, sliced fox meat.
The vixen grinned happily. She walked over to the pile and picked up one of the portions of Kevin. "Perfect! You did a great job, Sam!"
"Thank you, ma'am," said Sam. "And Kevin was very well behaved the whole time."
"Oh good!" She opened up the top package, and saw two very confused brown eyes looking back at her. She gave the small pile of foxmeat a comforting pat. "Sorry we tricked you, sweetheart. But you know you're a little motormouth! Mommy needs some quiet time to herself every now and then."
Kevin looked a bit miffed.
"Oh, don't worry," she told him soothingly. "It won't be permanent. After I use you in some recipes, I'll take you to the doctor's and get you rejuvenated, good as new. You remember when you fell off your bike and scraped up your knee, right? You went in a Rejuvenator then and you said it didn't hurt a bit."
Kevin considered this. He rolled his eyes, meaning 'oh, allright, Mom."
"And I'll be sure you get back in shape before next weekend, so you can still go to Bobby's slumber party. *And* I'll even call Mr. Kendall and tell him you're sick and you won't be able to turn in your homework, okay?"
Kevin's eyes lit up. 'Really?'
She giggled and gave the thin slices of her son a kiss. And he was indeed delicious! She took a small bite.
Kevin shivered. That had felt strange, but very interesting!
The pretty vixen licked her lips as she looked up at Sam. "How much do I owe you?
The big wolf added up all the sticker prices and gave her the total. It was actually quite reasonable, she thought.
"Thanks so much for agreeing to this," she told him. "When I called earlier, you sounded a little apprehensive about the idea."
"I was kinda reluctant at first, yeah. He is a nice kid, even if he does sound like he'd make a good auctioneer. Actually, though, I think he kinda liked it."
She smiled, quite pleased that everything had worked out so well. "Tell you what, you can keep some of him for yourself. Consider it a tip. I'm sure he'll be delicious!"
Sam selected a random package of boymeat. "Why thank you! That's very generous of you!"
"Allright then! See you next week. I've got errands to run for now. Toodles!" With that, she walked away with her cart, tail swishing happily behind her.
"'Bye!" he called after her. He smiled, proud of a job well done. He also licked his lips. He set the little parcel of Kevin-meat aside. It looked like he'd be getting that sandwich after all!
The End