Chapter 6

“What do we do?” I asked.

Yertle had been crying for an hour straight, his face beet red.

“Let’s eat it, man,” Stoker was in a lapse.

“We can’t do that!”

“Sure we can, man. We boil him like a lobster. We fill that large chicken-pot full of water, throw Yertle in, and add spices. We’ll be set for days.”

“Stoker, stop it!” I shouted.

He got up from the table and started pulling out pots and pans from the cupboard, trying to find the large pot.

“Seriously, we’ve gotta figure out what’s wrong!”

He filled up the pot and set it on the front stove burner, starting a flame. My shouting made the baby cry even harder.

“Man, we are gonna eat good tonight!” Stoker laughed. He was starting to scare me. Sometimes his lapses last for seconds and sometimes they could last all night.

“We aren’t eating the baby!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“Look at it, Schmidt! Ripe as an apple, ready to boil, spice, and eat!”

The water in the pot began to boil and steam filled the kitchen. The heat, Yertle’s crying, and Stoker’s bad lapse were getting to me hard.

“Call your sister, Stoker!” I shouted over the infant’s wails.

“She doesn’t know how to cook,” Stoker scoffed. “It’s Thanksgiving dinner in May! Heeheeheehee!” He began to move towards the crying baby, his hands donned in oven mitts.

“Stoker,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. It sometimes helped bring him back to reality. “You can’t think rationally. If you don’t stop I’m going to have to stop you.”

“No way, Jose, we found the prize bird. We are gonna be the envy of the neighborhood!” He grabbed Yertle and I immediately reacted.

I grabbed the lamp on the table and swung it. The ceramic base smashed against my friend’s skull and shattered. Stoker let go of the baby and hit the ground.

I bent down over him and listened. He was breathing deeply, unconscious, but alright. I picked up the sobbing Yertle and went to my bedroom, locking the door behind us.

 

*

“April?”

“Yeah?”

“Hi,” I said. “This is Stoker’s roommate-”

“Oh yeah,” Stoker’s sister interrupted on the phone. “I remember you. How’s it going?”

“Not particularly well,” I admitted. “See, we’re watching our neighbor’s baby and, as you can hear, we can’t keep him from crying.”

“You’ve changed him?”

“Yeah,”

“Fed him, burped him, played with him?” April ran down the list of possible explanations and I told her we’d tried every one.

“How old is he?” She asked.

“Around seven months old,” I said, remembering my encounter with Yertle’s mother.

“How long have you been watching him?”

“About two days,”

“It’s simple,” she said. “He misses his parents.”

A sting went through my stomach.

“What can we do?” I asked.

“You could show him a picture of his parents or give them a call and have them talk to him.”

“Thanks, April,” I said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Not a thing.” She replied and hung up.

I set the phone down and went to my desk. Next to my computer was that day’s paper. I picked it up and unfolded it. On the front page was the headline: LOCAL WOMAN’S BABY STOLEN. The accompanying picture was Yertle’s mother.

I brought the paper over to the bawling baby and showed him the picture. Immediately, to my surprise, Yertle stopped crying and actually smiled. I smiled, too, but knew that this was only a temporary solution. We had to get Yertle to his mother soon or he could be mentally hurt for a long time.

Reviews

[spence]

This was an amusingly sinister twist to Stoker's personality. he truly is a borderline psycho that would cook and eat a baby! The image of him stalking Yertle with overn gloves on his hands is enduring, as is the intervention by lamp! You could have yourself a cult classic hit on your hands at this rate! I've read a helluva lot worse that was written by so called professionals! Thoroughly engrossing, spence