Children Taste Better Than Chicken

“Lizzie!”

Ron grinned as his sister threw her arms around him and squeezed tight.

“It’s been so long!” she exclaimed. She held his face in her hands and eyed the top of his head as if inspecting for bugs. “You’ve gotten taller,” she observed.

Ron grinned at her. “Impossible. I finished growing years ago.”

“Well it has been three years. How was Nepal?”

Ron and his sister linked arms, and they walked through the airport toward the baggage claim as he filled her in on the school and the people he’d met during his study abroad. They talked as they waited for his bag to come inching along the conveyor belt.

“I was mostly in Kathmandu where me and a couple other anthropologists got to observe the city. It was like a mesh-pot of unfamiliar cultures; I was always worried about offending someone.”

“What was the strangest thing you saw?” Lizzie asked.

Ron chuckled, remembering some of the people he’d stumbled across in his first month. “Well, there was this one man I was terrified of at first, but he ended up being really nice. The first time we met, he was tearing apart an animal with his teeth on his front porch.”

Lizzie was quiet.

“It really wasn’t that scary, I promise,” Ron said, misunderstanding her silence.

“Oh, I’m not worried,” she said. “I was just thinking about my friends from the new club I joined. Your story reminds me of them.”

Ron raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask for specifics. The only communication Ron had with his family while abroad was via letter, and he remembered his mother writing once about the problems she was having with Lizzie. “I’m worried about your sister,” his mother wrote, “She stopped eating and she won’t leave the apartment. I don’t want to scare you, but I think you should know what’s going on.” That had been his second year away, but Lizzie had sent a letter a couple weeks ago about a new group she’d joined. Apparently, they were helping her keep to a new diet that helped boost her mental health. If this was the same group, he didn’t want to scare her by implying that he thought her friends might be strange.

“Oh, these are the friends you told me about in your letter?” he asked instead.

Lizzie nodded, face brightening. “They’re the ones picking us up, actually. We just have to find your bags first. How many did you check?”

“Just one.”

“Only one?”

“I’m a man, Lizzie. Overpacking is against my nature.” Lizzie chuckled, shaking her head lightheartedly. “Ooo, there it is,” Ron exclaimed as his black bag came twisting around the bend. He lugged it off. “Alrighty, I’m all set.”

They headed out the massive glass doors to the pickup lane outside, and Lizzie pointed to a boxy, sky-blue Volkswagen van like the ones from the 70s. “That’s us,” she said, grinning as a shaggy-haired fellow poked his head out the window and waved.

“That one’s Arnold,” Lizzie whispered as they approached the van. “I think he’s my favorite.”

As they got closer, more men peeked through the window, meeting Ron’s eyes with overly broad smiles. There weren’t any other women besides Lizzie, and all the men watched her like foxes. Unnerved, Ron pretended not to notice.

Most had scraggly hair similar to Arnold’s and had strange symbols on their T-shirts that Ron didn’t really understand. One even wore a shirt that said “Children taste better than chicken” with a stick figure drawing of a man eating a child’s leg on the front. Ron shivered but tried to smile. Lizzie was in a fragile state, and it was important to support her.

After his luggage was loaded and introductions were made, they began driving to what the group called “the base.”

“Soup night!” Lizzie said, throwing her hands in the air celebratory. She sat in the shotgun as Arnold drove. The rest of the boys were crowded around Ron in the back.

Arnold met Ron’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “You ever had Lizzie’s soup before?”

Ron shook his head. He didn’t even know Lizzie liked to cook.

“Well, you’re gonna love it. Soup is her favorite. She says it makes the meat more tender.”

Lizzie nodded her agreement. “It does. They’re usually too skinny to have much meat on their shoulders, but when you cook them on the bone in the soup broth, they get so tender the meat just falls off.”

“Sounds delicious,” Ron said. He gave his sister a warm smile, trying to show his support despite how strange his situation was. The man sitting to Ron’s right was poking his ribs, and the other one was licking his own arm. Ron grit his teeth together, trying to be patient with his little sister’s friends. He wondered how quickly he could leave without Lizzie thinking him rude.

When they arrived at the base, everyone piled out of the Volkswagen into a cramped alley. Ron followed them through a side door into an old meatpacking warehouse.

“I’ll get the soup ready!” Lizzie said.

The men pulled a large table out onto the main floor, the table’s legs screeching like Satan’s demons along the concrete. They set down bowls and spoons and helped Lizzie cart in a massive pot of steaming soup.

“Zuppa di bambini,” Lizzie announced in a terrible Italian accent. Her friends cheered and grabbed spoons.

Ron watched in wonder as the men swarmed around his sister like workers for a queen ant. They dished themselves some soup and talked quietly as Lizzie scarfed down her own bowl, unable to take her eyes off the book in her lap. Moments later, she snapped the book shut.

“I have a problem, and I eat books like children,” she said.

The men laughed, and one of them cheered, “Hell yeah, you do!”

Ron looked down muttering, “You must eat children very quickly, then.”

Lizzie turned to him, face serious. “Only because they are delicious.”

She gulped the last of the soup from her bowl and rose from her seat to put the book back. When she was out of earshot, Ron turned to her friends.

“Please tell me she was kidding,” he said, searching each expression. The men, knowing her well, just shrugged and moved on to slurping their dinner. Ron blinked slowly and turned back to his own meal, looking lost and feeling rather uncomfortable. He didn’t dare ask again, so he settled back in his seat and contemplated how disturbed his sister had become if she had, in fact, taken to eating children.

When Lizzie returned, new book in hand, Ron leaned over to whisper in her ear.

“Hey, can I talk to you?”

Lizzie looked up from her book, brows furrowing at Ron’s concern.

“Is everything okay, Ronny?”

“Yeah, but…Come here,” he said, leading her by the arm away from the group. When they were out of earshot, he turned back to her. “Lizzie, you’re acting kind of strange. Are you…” Ron trailed off, realizing just how silly his question was. But for Lizzie’s sake, he had to be sure. “Have you really eaten children?”

Her face was blank, and she stared at him for such a long while that he thought for a moment it had all been a joke. He’d been wrong, and she just had a sick sense of humor. But then she nodded, and it took him a moment to realize she was serious.

“Oh no,” Ron muttered. “That’s the new diet you were telling me about, isn’t it?”

Again, she nodded as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Ron paled, realizing what kind of soup he’d just eaten. Bambini.

Children.

He tried not to gag. “Lizzie, I—” He covered his face with his hands and shook his head. “Lizzie, you shouldn’t eat children,” he said.

She gave him a puzzled look. “Why not?”

“Well…” Ron stammered. He always thought that was obvious. How could he explain something that should be so inherently understood? “Well, because they aren't yours and—”

Lizzie grinned as if he’d just given her a brilliant idea. “So they’re fair game if they’re mine, then? Good.” She skipped away to tell her friends.

“No—I didn’t mean…” Ron trailed off, but she was already gone, chirping away to the group. Ron looked at his hands hopelessly. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispered, then sighed, turning back to join the table as well.

“...so I need to have a baby,” Lizzie was saying, “and we can have all the meat we want!”

Her friends cheered, clapping her on the back approvingly.

“Great idea, Liz.”

“Brilliant!”

Lizzie beamed. “Yeah, so now we don’t have to steal them anymore,” she exclaimed. “But who wants to be the father?”

A chorus of volunteers offered their assistance.

“I don’t think that’s—” Ron started.

“No, Ron, that’s weird. You’re my brother,” Lizzie said, turning back to inspect her male friends. “Hmm, I guess I’ll start with Arnold then, and then I’ll try you, then you, and you,” she continued, pointing in turn to each man in the group.

Ron was speechless as Lizzie and her cannibalistic friends served themselves more bambini soup, conspiring joyfully about their new plan.

“Hopefully we have twins,” Ron heard Lizzie say, and he nearly lost it.

“I have to go,” he muttered, trying not to throw up. How deranged had his sister become? Should he turn her in? He stood from the table and all the men jumped to their feet as well, looking like they were ready to fight him.

“It’s okay,” Lizzie said in a calm voice. “He’s cool. He won’t tell. Will you, Ronny?” She looked him in the eye as she said the last part, and he knew it was more of a threat than a question. “See you at Thanksgiving,” she added, and the glint in her eye told him she wasn’t planning on cooking a turkey.

Ron nodded mutely. He tried to form the words to say goodbye to his sister, but he was too distracted by the stringy meat pieces—the children—stuck in her teeth to have his voice come out as anything but a groan.

Ron left and called a cab. He got an apartment in the city and tried not to think about how his little sister had changed, but he decided not to turn her in to the police. He didn’t want to send her to prison, but he didn’t bother staying in touch, and he definitely didn’t visit for Thanksgiving.

He didn’t hear from Lizzie for years after that until one winter day, he found an unexpected package on his apartment welcome-mat. There was no address, so it must have been dropped off directly at his door. The package was wrapped in cheap brown paper like the brown lunch sacks he used to bring to elementary school, and when he opened it, a tiny tooth fell out. Ron froze.

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head as he took out a printed picture of his sister holding hands with two young boys. One was probably a year older than the other, but neither could be any older than five.

A note taped to the back of the picture said, “We named the older one after you. He’s almost ripe, and I wanted you to have a piece of him before it's too late because I know you won’t be able to make him a part of you like we will. That’s what the tooth is for. Hope that isn’t too weird. Merry Christmas, love you always! -Lizzie.”

Ron shivered. “She named him Ron?” he muttered, then his face turned white. “She’s really gonna eat her son.”

He stared in horror at the two little children in the picture and couldn’t help but imagine what kind of Christmas roast Lizzie was planning. He wondered whether he should feel grateful or guilty that the package didn’t include an invitation.