continued…

They started to question me and I immediately defended myself saying, “First of all, it’s not my responsibility to feed your kids. Second, look at this place! It’s a disaster area. There’s nothing to cook and even if there was there’s nothing clean to cook it in or serve it on.”

The mother said, “Well, why don’t you cut off one of your arms or legs and make a lovely stew? The children need to be fed and here you are with four healthy limbs.”

I thought to myself, she’s got to be joking. But before I said it the children parted and the mother wobbled forward on two artificial limbs, “I’d feed them one of my arms but I’m fattening them up and saving them to serve for a nice Christmas dinner.”

I looked at the father and noticed for the first time he only had one arm and one leg. The other two were prosthetic.

Again, questions formed in my mind. How in the world did this come to be? The children accept it so easily, how could that be? Why didn’t they work for money and then buy food not made out of human anatomy? What the hell was going on here?

I never got a chance to ask any of these questions because I could see the parents and their children were not in a mood for philosophical ponderings that might justify their actions. They advanced on me with one clear intention: to eat me for dinner.

I turned and ran out the back door that led to the apartment complex inner courtyard. I heard the children running after me. The parents were limping along behind, cheering them on to catch me. I went up the balcony stairs to the fourth floor. All the way down at the other end of building I saw a door open. I ran top speed down the balcony with my leg muscles burning. I got through the doorway, slammed the door closed behind me, grabbed a wooden chair sitting in the middle of the room and wedged it up against the doorknob.

I could hear the children yelling on the other side of the door and soon they were pounding on it trying to get in. I went through the apartment noting that it had a similar layout but in reverse. I had entered a living room, passed through a kitchen in the middle and finally got to a bedroom where I saw a door I assumed would be a front door to the apartment that would lead out.

I slammed the bedroom door closed and stated to pull a dresser over to block it. Once it was in place I noticed that there was an old man laying on the bed in the bedroom softly crying. In the corner of the room was a little girl dressed like Shirley Temple in a cute little girl dress and white patent leather shoes.

She approached the bed, climbed up on it and sat next to the old man. She was wearing a long strand of pearls. In fact it was so long that she left it hanging around her neck and placed part of it around the old man’s neck. She started to softly pat the old man’s forehead and said, “It’s okay Grandpa. Everything’s going to be okay.”

I tried the front door and it opened. I ran out and down the stairs. As I ran down the street away from the apartment complex I could hear the children and their parents yelling and screaming from inside.