by Matthew F. Amati
Audrey Winters rummaged through the fridge. "Honey? We're out of lunchmeat! Can you go kill us a neighbor?"
Ron Winters set down his newspaper and groaned. "The rate we go through food around here!"
Audrey smiled. "Three growing boys!"
Ron chuckled. "Be right back!"
Ron donned his Kevlar cammies, pulled a pair of gas goggles across his face, and shouldered his massive assault rifle.
The thermometer on the porch read 72 degrees. The radar indicated that the driveway was free of hostiles. Can't be too careful, thought Ron. He'd heard the Jones were using stealth tech.
Outside, Ron encountered another camouflage-clad figure toting a weapon. "Morning Tom," Ron bellowed.
"Ron! Got a bone to pick with you, my friend!" Tom said.
"Yeah? What bone is that?"
Tom pointed at a jumble of bleached skeletons next to the mailbox. "Those bones. I had the wife's family up for the holidays. Now look at 'em!"
"You got a problem with a man feeding his family, Tom?"
Tom spluttered. "You ate all of them! Couldn't even leave me a sister-in-law?"
Ron replied evenly, "Let me remind you, neighbor, what you did to my wife's card club. They're down to three. Can't play Bridge, and it's a lopsided Whist table too."
While they were talking, neither neighbor noticed Mrs. Edith Smith creeping up behind them with a harpoon gun. There were two swishes and two thwacks. With a cackle of triumph, Edith stood over the carcasses. "Enough meat for six months!" she crowed. "I'll make my award-winning man-jerky!"
At the window of the Winters home, Audrey Winters lowered her binoculars in disgust. "Ask a man to do something and it goes wrong every time," she huffed.
"Mom, I'm hungry!" her son Kevin hollered from the game room.
"Hold your horses!" snapped Audrey. She thought for a moment, then picked up the telephone. She ran her finger down her phone list until she located June Robinson's number.
"Hello, June? Yes, Kevin was wondering if little Percy would like to come over for lunch? No of course we'll send him home safe and sound. No, we wouldn't dream of letting him come to harm." Audrey listened for a moment, then said, "Don't fret, June dear. Percy will return home to join his... eleven brothers and sisters, is that right? My my, it must be a lot of work to keep such a... large... family fed."
Audrey hung up the phone. Kevin came in the kitchen. Audrey said, "Your little friend Percy will be joining us for lunch."
"Aw Mom! I hate that kid. Super annoying."
Audrey smiled. "I never said you'd have to talk to him."
Over lunch, Kevin lifted the bread on his sandwich and regarded the pink discs inside it. "When's Percy going to get here? I don't really wanna hang out with him."
"Don't worry, dear. He'll be gone before you know it."
Audrey gazed sentimentally at her eldest son for a moment. She turned her attention to the calendar and wrote "Kevin--Dinner at the Robinsons," under the following Tuesday.