He took my head between his massive paws and directed it down. I could feel heat already fusing through his trouser’s thin material. I don’t know what exactly I expected to find, though I imagined the small eyeless creature would possess fully developed eyes by adulthood and fancied it certainly bore a lethal sting, three horns, or a terrifying beak.

With great caution, I lowered the metal tongue to discover still a protective layer of fabric with a built-in opening so the creature would be free to come and go as it pleased. Through this small outlet, I perceived a great nest of black hairs. To one side, the creature sought refuge, for the bulge in the fabric was unmistakably solid. Of course I was terrified, but I knew there was no turning back as I walked down the plank to the adult soup.

I was dumbfounded. Instead of a living, snarling, thrashing creature, all I found was an inoffensive sausage. Behind the sausage, dangled two meatballs, larger than Swedish meatballs yet smaller than stuffed tomatoes, inside a mitten of raw chicken skin. It did not look as appetizing as I in my most nagging moments of hunger had dreamt.

Was it an outgrowth of former life, an intestinal casing filled with chicken, beef and pork? So I had been accurate in my hunches all along, man grows sausage links. It seemed he had pierced the domed end with a knife point, for greasy juice was seeping out as though it were done, though a profane rawness dominated the underside where a blue vein sneaked up to remind me of the fragile boundary between food and life. I wondered if it would be too terribly impolite to fork it a few times and boil it more thoroughly.

Professor Ranji looked down impatiently. He held the sausage firmly at the base, so firmly it seemed that the casing might burst from the additional pressure, and directed it towards my mouth. I closed my eyes and followed the ways of a snake, whose jaws disconnect in order to swallow its victim whole. The thought of a vein running with insect blue blood made my stomach churn.

“Wait!” I requested.

Hurriedly, I cut a piece of French bread in half, spread mustard upon both crumbly sides, and returned with a jar of relish. Professor Ranji found my enhancements amusing as I teaspooned the small chunks of dill pickle upon his edible. He was curious as to where I had become such a precocious gourmet. I reminded him that even a child can make a hot dog. Apparently, I was not the sole consumer to spice up his morsel.

I dropped the sausage inside the French bread and squeezed it with both hands into a lumpy cylinder, somewhat like a pig in a blanket. Barely had I gotten to my knees, introduced it into my mouth, than Professor Ranji cried out in pain, a pain so acute that tears were forced out of his eyes. The mustard, a moutarde de Dijon, burnt him mercilessly. So it was endowed with feelings, selfish feelings of petty preservation that my appetite would have to overcome if ever the meal were to be taken. I fought to deaden my unnatural sympathies.