Nipped In the Bud
The formidable squirrel eyed young Jeffrey like a mad surgeon about to perform a vivisection. It was absurd enough finding himself bound and gagged, waking to this titanic, surreal creature standing over him, but was it really brandishing that ten-inch hunting knife, too–the very one his father had promised to get him for his twelfth birthday if he managed to stay out of trouble? And did it really just lick its lips, like he himself had unconsciously done countless times over unsuspecting woodland creatures in the fields around his Wisconsin home? This had to be a nightmare. That beating he took from Pops last night must have concussed his brain.
Nope, that’s real pain–and blood!
The unbelievably dexterous rodent proceeded to open little Jeffrey like a miniature cereal box: one cut from trachea to genitals and two more crosswise, one above the pectorals, one below the belly button. But not deep enough to kill. The furry surgeon then slowly peeled back Jeffrey’s tight young skin and scooped out his entrails, tossing them like a salad. Jeffrey finally left this world when the vengeful squirrel donned his mad-butcher’s cap and completely removed and chopped up his large and small intestines–and various other viscera–like so much sausage.
The next day in the weak, pre-dawn light, Mr. Dahmer stood over his disemboweled son, grieving lost potential, wondering what his son might have grown up to accomplish, curious about the increasing number of small forest animals gathering around his son’s remains like gawkers at a crime scene. It was when, as one, they all turned their heads to look at him that he began running.