Every morning, at the same hour, the old woman appeared at the small butcher shop on the corner.
She was short, stooped, wearing a worn-out coat, and pulling a squeaky old cart behind her.
“As usual, forty kilos of beef,” she’d whisper softly, handing over a neatly folded stack of bills.
The young butcher couldn’t help but stare every time. Forty kilos! That was nearly half a cow. At first, he thought maybe she had a big family, or ran a canteen. But day after day, week after week, it was the same order — and she never explained why.
She barely spoke, avoided eye contact, and always carried the heavy bags herself. There was something strange about her — a sharp, metallic smell that clung to her coat, something between blood and rot.
Soon, the whole marketplace was buzzing with rumors.
“They say she’s feeding her son’s family,” whispered one vendor.
“No, no — she feeds stray dogs.”
“Or maybe… she runs some underground restaurant.”
The butcher didn’t believe the gossip, but curiosity gnawed at him. Finally, one snowy evening, he decided to follow her.
He waited until she left the shop, then quietly locked the door and followed at a distance. The old woman moved slowly but with purpose, dragging her cart full of meat down the icy streets. She passed through the outskirts of town, past abandoned garages, until she reached the crumbling remains of an old factory that had been empty for ten years.
She disappeared inside.
Twenty minutes later, she reemerged — without the bags. The meat was gone.
The next day, it happened again.
On the third day, the butcher’s curiosity overcame his fear. He waited until she entered the factory and then slipped in behind her.
Inside, the air was heavy with a sickly, musky smell. Somewhere deeper in the building, he heard strange muffled sounds — like growls. He crept forward and peered through a crack in the wall… and froze.
What he saw nearly stopped his heart.
Behind massive cages stood four enormous lions — their golden eyes glowing in the dim light. Bones and chunks of meat were scattered across the floor.
And in the corner, sitting calmly in an old armchair, was the same grandmother, whispering tenderly:
“Easy, my loves… you’ll eat soon. People will come to watch…”
The butcher stumbled backward in terror — but one of the lions roared, the sound echoing through the empty factory. The woman turned sharply, her eyes wide.
“What are you doing here?!” she hissed.
Panicked, the butcher bolted out of the building and immediately called the police.
When the officers arrived, what they found left them speechless. The woman wasn’t an ordinary pensioner — she was a former zoologist. Years earlier, when the city zoo shut down, she had taken several animals “to save them from starvation.”
But things had changed. Hidden deep inside the factory, investigators discovered an underground fighting arena, with claw marks on the concrete walls and evidence of illegal animal fights held for wealthy spectators.
The “sweet old lady” who had seemed harmless turned out to be at the center of one of the strangest — and most horrifying — cases of illegal wildlife exploitation ever uncovered in the region.
What began as a butcher’s simple curiosity exposed a shocking secret — one that no one in the town would ever forget.
