Word Count: 311
The firstborn and second were spared as they were wanted and loved and the times were easy and good. The third child was sliced up for sandwiches. A few of the children were stuffed for Thanksgiving while they were still tender toddlers and one, the little blonde curly-haired boy was saved for a big Christmas dinner which the whole family, mother and father and two growing boys, grandparents and two aunts and uncles enjoyed.
They’d started out with all the hopes and dreams of every young family, did the best they could do. Hard times had hit with the loss of his job and the raising of rent on the flat and the high cost of diapers and food. She was healthy and fertile and the easy production of babies only added to their troubles. A male lion will sometimes kill off cubs in hopes of a mating. A mother may eat her own young to ensure the survival of some. So it’s not all that unnatural in nature, though not acceptable by most societies of man.
Thus they survived as they could, a family who struggled and barely got by. But they managed to raise their two older children and one little girl who broke her mother’s heart with a smile before her first cry. But they never had plenty, just clearly enough, and the children left home rather young. He was old, she no longer fertile, and they both worried about what they could do.
He slept with a knife gripped under his pillow. She always first sniffed her food and her tea. And with each passing day they grew hungry, more desperate, wishing the children might come for a visit. Wishing and hoping and growing older and weaker until one died from starvation and before the other could carve the body up proper, died of starvation too.
