Every day Louise Norlie plows through miles of traffic to crunch numbers and shuffle papers in a windowless cubicle in northern New Jersey.  She doesn't know how she got to be that lucky.  Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various publications, most recently Unlikely Stories and Sein und Werden.  One of her short stories is featured in Bound for Evil: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad (Dead Letter Press).  She also has contributed a chapter to Unseen Childhoods: Disabled Characters in 20th-Century Books for Girls which is upcoming from Bettany Press.  Her website can be found at louise-norlie.blogspot.com.

I’m opening the cabinet now…The solitary tin can contains beets, what else? Only I can access the cabinet; the little ones are shrunk oh so small; they circle my legs, scratching at my heels. Wait, I tell them, mustering up bravado against welling tears. Dinner will be ready soon...I’ve believed each dinner would be the last, but I keep waking up to another last meal, and always a can of beets. Now I need the can opener (alas, not an electric one). When I reach to the back of the shelf to grab it, they crawl between my legs and climb up. Otherwise I keep my knees together and hop from place to place. I quickly make my move – they haven’t yet mounted to the sensitive areas – and I place the can on the counter, twisting the lever as the serrated blade slices into the edge of the lid, a thin red line peeking from the spreading metal. Meanwhile, they become impatient, the little ones; they nibble on my calves. I shake them off. Wait, please wait, I murmur, throwing down one small wedge of beet. I realize that tonight I will eat none. This time the proffered advance doesn’t satisfy; after a quick squabble they jump higher and nip harder. I scream in short bursts, red light flashes before my eyes then dissolves. I kick them against the locked door, muttering apologies. They are implacable. I can’t reach down to unhook them or brush them aside; if they clamp onto my hand they will pull me down, I will be consumed like a beached whale devoured by maggots...If only I could chase them into the cupboards, save all the beets for myself. But my mother told me not to be selfish, always to share…I dump the contents of the can onto porcelain plates covered with yellow flowers. A family heirloom, but not mine, my mother left me nothing but the memory of her toes. For me, it’s always been these little ones created from the bones of my bones, flesh of my flesh...Yes, and I am their loving mother...Little forks with twisted tines, alongside safety knives. Napkins, too, which I fasten around their little necks, free from fear of their incisors while their mouths are stuffed with beets, their bellies gorged with beets. The tiny teeth are chomping, spittle flying…I watch the food disappear into the grey depths of their mouths. Then there comes the point where the compass spins, magnetic north turns to polar south. Yes, it’s one against three, but each of the three a third. I am weak with hunger; the beets vanish behind ungrateful lips. I grab one by the throat and bite off its head. It’s crunchy on the outside, hard on the inside. The other two hardly miss him, so distracted are they. The decapitated head scratches my throat on its way down and thrashes about in my stomach. I am forced to vomit it up. There it lies in a pool of beet juice, grinning indefinitely, a fruit made of flesh, its pit a model skull. As the head rejoins its squirming body, the other two stare at it, perplexed. I even think they feel a trace of sympathy for me.