Christmas came and the women surrounded the table as they took my other leg at the knee and my right arm at the elbow. I wasn’t brought down to the dinner table for that meal, thankfully. As the next few days passed the girls visited me less frequently. I could hear them talking as they walked down the hall, but they seemed perfectly content to ignore me. It wasn’t long before I heard the shouting coming from the basement and the cackling laughter that followed. I had already been replaced. It would only be a matter of time before I was prepared for one last meal.

I fought and I struggled and I shook and I convulsed until I got my hand free. I spent the next hour and a half working my way out of the restraints only to roll off the table and hit the floor hard. Using my last functioning limb I crawled across the floor and to the edge of the stairs before pulling myself toward them. I didn’t fall down the stairs so much as I slid on my chest. No one seemed to care. I made it all the way to the front door and even managed to turn the knob. No sooner than I had pulled myself toward the breach of the door, Candice walked up and said, “D’aww, you still had hope. That’s so cute.”

She grabbed me by the hair and pulled me into the back of the house as I fought against her fruitlessly with my last functioning limb.

Jenny and Candice proceeded to wrap me up in a blanket and carry me out the back door before throwing me in the back of a pickup truck. I rode in the back of that truck for what seemed like an hour with my arm bound to my chest as I lay wrapped in the blanket waiting to die. The last thing I remember before waking up in the river was a sharp pain in the back of my head.