“You interrupted me,” he said. “Now he’s spoiled. I should start on the lady or the kid. Kid meat’s the best if they haven’t been fed processed sugar their whole lives. Even with it, they’re a better eat than adults.”

The killer looked back over his right shoulder, this time at the woman and child. The woman, Debra Hughes, was fully cognizant of her surroundings now. She stared at the bloody, still breathing body of her husband. Her breathing was hard and fast. She was crying and even though gagged she still made a lot of noise. Too much noise I was afraid. The killer kept looking back at them. I had to do something or he’d start hacking them to bits as well.

I looked around the room. My vision was blurred, my teeth were numb. I was in bad shape. What was I thinking mixing blues, painkillers, and whiskey? I mean, I did it all the time, but it wasn’t mixing too well with the massive head injury. I was screwed.

I watched the sloppy killer in the Hawaiian pineapple shirt weigh his choices. He looked from me, to the woman to the kid, then back to me. I wasn’t sure I was even in the running for the feast, and it was that thought that gave me an idea. A bad one, but an idea none the less.

“Hey, Margaritaville, you got a name?”

He looked at me dumbly. “It’s on the front. Can’t you read, mister?”

“I can read.”

“Says my name on the sign. My paw put it up there right before he passed the business on to me.”

I tried to picture the sign out front. I wasn’t doing too well, and then it came to me. “Junior?”

The killer smiled a big, wide smile and I saw the inside of his mouth. It was a cave of rotten teeth, a fetid tongue, and rancid meat. There were black spots on his tongue and odd sores around the inside of his lips.

“That’s my name,” he said, scratched his face, then added, “Me, my Paw, and my grandfather was all Juniors.”

“You don’t say? Was your grampy a people eater too?

Junior smiled. “Uh huh.”

All of a sudden, Baby Huey got up and walked out of the room. Just like that I was alone with the Hugheses.

I shot a look at Debra Hughes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

She immediately came apart at the seams. “Oh . . . GOD!”

She was screaming.

I shook my head.

She stopped.

I looked at the boy. I saw he had been tied with rope.

“You got any slack in those ropes, son?”

He swallowed. “No.”

“Well, work them slowly,” I said. “They’ll give.”

The woman began to shudder. She was gonna blow.