#2 Anton the Butcher

Anton the Butcher left his homeland with his wife with a skip in his step and a song in his heart. He was headed to Toronto, where he had heard rumours of great opportunity and fortune. The weather, he had heard, was not as temperate as the coast, but the rumours spoke of a vibrant city where the jobs were plentiful and the money flowed.

Anton found himself employed by the William Davies Company — just another cog in the massive pork industry machine that gave Toronto its epithet of “Hogtown.” The work was brutal, messy and bloody. The labourers worked in grim silence, the sickening thud of cleaver through carcass the only sound filling the heavy putrid air.

The atmosphere of the plant had a profound impact on Anton. He no longer smiled. He no longer cared. He was trapped by his profession no matter where he went. And as h lost himself further and further into a world of dead flesh and blood, his wife found her escape in the drink. Taking advantage of Anton’s wages and long hours she fled into the seedy night-life of a city fuelled by the prohibition to the south.

Anton was not stupid. He realised what was happening while he was away. There was little doubt in his mind that his wife had not only taken up that drink, but had started seeing other men as a way of further satisfying her desires. One day he left work early, and sought her out, only to find her in the arms of another man.

He killed them both. To him they were just two more carcasses, ready to be processed.

Unfortunately for Anton, the man he killed had certain obligations to certain people. Powerful people. At once frustrated with the loss of profit and impressed by Anton’s callous killing manner, it was arranged that despite Anton having been arrested for the murders, he would be released on “insufficient evidence” — the caveat of the release being that he was to act as an enforcer and Sheriff for his would-be indemnitors until a time they deemed the debts of the man he murdered paid.

Category: 2011, Drama