Full MoonCity by Holly Black, Gene Wolfe, Mike Resnick, Ian Watson, Peter S. Beagle, Ron Goulart, Tanith Lee, Lisa Tuttle, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Esther M. Friesner, Carrie Vaughn, P. D. Cacek, Gregory Frost, Darrell Schweitzer, Martin Harry Greenberg, Holly Phillips Read Free Book Online

there and the basement seemed like the best place. It was dark down there, and nobody would see my meat unless he went poking around down in that basement with a flashlight. So I left it down there and went home.
    The next day I came back and there were rats, so I got some rope and hung it up where they couldn’t get to it. It was dark and cool down there, so I felt like that would be a friendly place for me. It was, too. My meat lasted down there until I had eaten just about everything. I’d come back every day or maybe every two days. Or twice a day, sometimes.
    No, they thought he’d run away. The police do that a lot, say he has run away, because then they don’t have to look.
    What you really need is a good freezer, but if you don’t have one, there is still a lot you can do. You can rent a locker, too. That is what I did for a while. I knew how a butcher would wrap meat. The paper they use and the tape. I got a guy at work to tell me.
    So I got some. And when I had meat I would cut it up and wrap it neat and everything. Then I would take it to my locker and people would think that I had paid for a side or killed a deer or something.
    But like I said, I still had a lot to learn about meat. Old people are not good, did you know that? They are not. Younger is better until you get down to about ten, Father. After that, younger is just smaller.
    You take this old guy Paul, or Bradley or whatever his name was. He was my foster father for a while, and I never did like him because he was generally mad about something, and I swear, Father, I could taste his pipe tobacco. I got some ketchup from the supermarket-just taking it you know because I didn’t have much money then. I put that on the meat because it was a pretty color and I thought it would cover up the taste. It didn’t, and he was the only one I ever put anything like that on.
    Sure. All of it because I didn’t want to waste him.
    Well, they put me in a different foster home after that, because with him gone the lady had to go to work. Only I remembered the old place and came back for this one girl. She was really, really sweet. It started me wising up. Younger was better, and girls were better than boys. They are not so tough, they don’t have that boy taste, and the fat runs all through everything. That’s the good way.
    No, I have never felt sorry about it the way you mean, but I kind of missed a few of the people afterward. Then, too, when it was somebody that I knew the police would come around sometimes and say when did you see her? Was there any reason for her to run away? All that stuff. It always made me kind of nervous, because I knew they would never understand. So it was better if it was somebody I did not know at all.
    Of course, that was the trouble with Paul, the guy who used to sleep in that bunk. He was locked in with me, so they’d know right off. Besides, I’d only get one meal off him before they took the meat away.
    Yeah. Sometimes I would get up when the moon was coming in through the window. I would stand beside his bunk and just look at him. How would this part taste and how would that part taste? Would it be better to boil the hands and feet? I knew I couldn’t do it, but it was fun to think about just the same. Some nights I would think yes, and some nights no. Just eat the fingers, chewing up the bones.
    Only some nights he’d wake up and get mad about me being there, and then I’d have to shut his mouth for him.
    No, it’s not so bad being alone. I walk up and down the cell, three steps this way and three steps that way. It drives them crazy. Then at night I yell out the window and listen. Nobody has ever yelled back, but if somebody ever does, I’ll get out. I don’t know how, but I will. You watch.
    Oh, sure. I know all about those psychologists. They bring one in because they want to get rid of me, only I do not want to get sent where I will be with crazy people all the time. So I smile and answer all their questions