6.
   That was a mistake. The creatures rushed forward in a mob, their legs clattering like a tarantula. They leapt on the back of the chair and looked down at me with ravenous grins on their faces. I tried to put on a strong front but my shoulders hunched and my knees weakened. My resolve bled out of me and shrank away. I began to shake.

   “Look at the pretty little boy, so pink and plump!”, wheezed the tramp. “Hello, little one. Would you like some candy?” The corners of her mouth were plugged with expanding and contracting webs of yellow saliva. Her hair seemed frozen, never moving as her head wagged like a signal at a railroad crossing. “I like you, little one. You’re so cute. Will you be my friend?”
   The stink of formaldehyde billowed from the thug’s mouth. His eyes squinted with delight behind the thick, greasy lenses of his glasses. His fat fingers clutched the chair. “Soft and round.”, he gurgled, his lips curling and flapping around his broken teeth. “Juicy and tender. I could pan fry him with a little lemon and butter. I could roast him slowly over hickory wood. I could pull off his arms and legs. I could twist off his head. I could -”
   “Pretty boy!”, the monkey chattered as he jittered and jerked. A string of drool slipped between his teeth, hung in the air swaying back and forth then dropped on my head. “Pretty boy! Pretty boy! Pretty boy!” His eyes crossed and focused over and over as his concentration ebbed and flowed. He slowly lowered his clammy face down to me. His skin boiled. Suddenly a filthy paw crowned with cracked, gray claws shot toward my face.