“I’m the strongest one here. I bet I got a big-ass soul,” I reasoned. “Eat me.”

Junior picked up the scalpel off the table. I hadn’t even noticed he placed it down.

“You know a lot about stuff, don’t you?” he asked.

“I get around.”

The cannibal worked his attention back to my leg. He pulled it straight, and ripped the slit a bit extra to show more thigh. He pushed away the material and cleared a large section of my flesh for his handiwork.

He placed the scalpel against the meat of my thigh just below the hipbone and slashed about a quarter inch across and into my leg. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. When he cut me, I screamed, more like a yelp. It was a stinging pain. Even with all the dope in my system, I felt it.

But that cut was just prep. He placed the scalpel down and wiped the inch-wide, inch-deep, gash with a wet rag already stained with somebody else’s blood. Then he reached for what looked like a homemade cheese-cutter. It was a length of wire attached between two wooden handles.

God, I thought, this better work.

The cannibal took the cheese-cutter by the handles and pulled the thin wire taut. I tensed up, pulling hard on the cuffs until I felt my wrist bleed. I had a pretty good idea what was coming and I couldn’t help myself.

It took every ounce of my strength not to lash out and kick the fucker in the face. But I couldn’t risk it. I was still cuffed. I might get a good kick in, but he’d have the last laugh. I had to sit and take whatever he dished out.

He took the wire tool to the wound he’d made on my leg and pressed the taut steel under the lip of the cut. I braced. The killer pushed down, causing the wire to tuck neatly into the gash. It stung so bad I started to shake.

“Now keep still,” the killer said.

And then he yanked!

The wire sliced under the flesh of my thigh fast, like a heated knife through butter, cutting an inch-thick fillet of flesh from my leg. It was the most excruciating thing I’d ever felt, but I did my best to stay still.

My eyes and teeth were shut tight trying to block the searing pain. When I opened my eyes I saw what I’d been feeling. I saw the killer, Junior, pulling as hard as he could on the handles. He almost had a slab cut off. He was bracing for the final yank.

He pulled one last time and the flap of flesh came loose.

“There!” the killer yelled like he’d achieved something.

I rocked my head. Tears ran in the corners of my eyes. The pain was unbelievable.