He was beside her again before midnight. He opened his hand to show her the eyeballs he'd cut from the cop's skull. He was smiling. "Ain't goin hungry tonight," he said.

They tasted like salty grapes and they popped easily when you bit down on them. They sprayed the back of your throat and swallowed neat. He said they were Good Tucker as opposed to Bad Tucker like a Big Mac or a chicken wing from Greasy Fried Chicken.

It was the first time she'd eaten anybody she knew. The others were always something he'd killed out on the road hours earlier or refrigerated out in the shed. It was a large freezer, but her father didn't use it much anymore because he was scared of discovery. Tongues wagged plenty in Topsy and it wasn't humanly possible to cut em all out.

She brushed her teeth after she'd eaten to get rid of the eyeball taste. She kept seeing him driving the blade into the soft skull of the cop as she rotated the brush. When she spit there was blood. Human had a knack for getting lodged in the gaps between your choppers.

He kissed her goodnight and staggered downstairs, the alcohol smell loitering where he'd been. He threw the fridge door open and left it that way because he was too plastered to give a shit. He collapsed into the armchair his father coughed to death of lung cancer in and placed the cold beer on the worn cloth arm. A minute later he swept it onto the floor and showered the wall with more stink.

Upstairs, she drew the covers over her head and thought about her next birthday, her eighth. Would it be different? Would they still be in Topsy? Would her daddy still hurt so much?

Nikita dialed her daddy's number a year later. He answered after fifteen rings and dropped the handset. Nikita waited.

"Purvis." Drunk as usual.

"Daddy, I'm not coming home no more."

"That you, swee'pea?"

"I called to say so long, daddy."....(cont)