Okay, last one for tonight. I'm always happier when I have a number of different projects to work on :-)

Pt 1

“What are you working on?” Mrs Marshall asked, looking at the computer screen over her husband’s shoulder. “Looks important from the way you’re frowning?”

“I was thinking about the idea the girls had for their birthday party,” her turned around and gave his wife an affectionate kiss. “Wanted to see if it was even possible.”

“What idea?” the young woman asked. “Oh wait, the cannibal thing?”

“That’s the one!” Mr Marshall replied with a grin.

“Oh right,” his wife frowned a little, “you don’t think they were serious about that, do you?”

“They sounded pretty serious.” her husband observed. “I guess we’d need to have another talk with them before we made any proper arrangements. But I wanted to see if it was even something that could be done, assuming they really wanted to, that is.”

“And can it? Mrs Marshall asked curiously, pulling a chair from the dining table and sitting down next to her husband to get a better look at the screen.

“Looks like it!” He brought one of the tabs to the front. It was a page from the official government website detailing the relevant laws. “It’s legal at least,” he observed, “there’s even a couple of restaurants that specialise it in. I was reading an article about it earlier. Seems they were started by some American businessman who has exclusive rights over there but British monopoly laws are a bit stricter so he couldn’t have that here. That means, technically, anyone who wants to can kill and cook little girls, as long as they’re the right age and they agree to it. All you need to do it fill in a form on the government site.” He clicked onto the relevant form to show her, it seemed fairly straight-forward and the only condition was that it was submitted at least forty eight hours before the planned slaughter.

“So, that’s good, I guess?” Mrs Marshall looked quizzically at her husband, hoping for some sort of guidance on how to feel about this discovery but, in truth, he was not sure either. “So how would we…?” She began, not quite able to finish the surreal sentence. It was okay as her husband knew her well enough to understand what he was asking.

“There’s a few places that rent out equipment for roasting whole pigs,” he explained, “should be suitable for doing to the girls on. If they want to go ahead, that is.”

“Yeah.” Mrs Marshall nodded, already picturing her twin daughters mounted on spits roasting to a delicious golden brown. “If they want to.”

“Their birthday’s not that far off.” Mr Marshall reminded his wife. “If we’re going to do this, we’d better start arranging stuff. I don’t know how many spits this company has to rent out and then there’s invitations to send out.”

“Yeah.” Mrs Marshall nodded slowly, still not sure how to feel about the idea of cooking and eating her young daughters. She knew the idea should have horrified her, that she should have wanted to do anything to protect them from such a fate yet there was something fascinating about the idea, something irresistibly captivating. “Why don’t we go talk to them?”

“Good idea.” Mr Marshall agreed, sliding his chair back away from the computer desk. “Do you suppose there’s even the tiniest chance they’re asleep already?” His wife glanced at her watch, noting that it was a little over an hour past the twins’ bedtime.

“Not a snowball in Hell’s!” she laughed and followed her husband up the stairs.

The Marshall twins, Hannah and Natasha, were less than a month away from their ninth birthday. Two days earlier, they had come home from school full of stories about explorers and cannibals that they had learned in school. After twenty minutes or so of excited chatter, they had told their mother that they wanted a cannibal-themed birthday party.

“What do you mean?” she has asked. “You want me to make the party food look like bits of people?” Before they even answered, she had started coming up with ideas based on Halloween party suggestions she had seen on Pinterest – hotdogs cut to look like human fingers, peeled lichee passed off as eyeballs, that sort of thing, but the girls’ answer had rather flummoxed her.

“No!” Natasha had giggled, “We want to be the party food!”

“That’s right!” Hannah had agreed enthusiastically. “We will be explorers and everyone else can cook and eat us!”

A little puzzled by this suggestion, Mrs Marshall had muttered something about having to ask their dad when he got home from work, then changed the subject. The girls had not brought up the topic since but their mum had kept her word and relayed the conversation to her husband. Like her, he could not deny finding the idea intriguing.

“Hey munchkins!” Mr Marshal gave a light knock on his daughters’ bedroom door as he pushed it open. The twins were both say up in bed, reading comics by the flash-lights on their phones as if that was somehow less conspicuous that simply leaving their reading lights on. Seeing their parents come in, the two pretty, chestnut-haired eight year-olds shoved their phones and the comics under their duvets and flung themselves onto their pillows, making comically unconvincing snoring sounds.

“Oh dear!” Mr Marshall spoke loudly and deliberately to his wife, trying his hardest not to laugh. “It looks like they’re asleep! And there was us really hoping they’d be awake so we could discuss their birthday party with them. Oh well, I guess they won’t mind if we just go to Pizza Hut again this year. I’ll send the invites out before I go to bed.”

“No!” Natasha sat bolt upright in bed.

“We’re awake!” Hannah exclaimed, sitting up and turning on her bedside light as if to confirm this. “We don’t want to go to Pizza Hut again this year!”

“Okay,” Mr Marshall chuckled, sitting down on the end of Hannah’s bed while Natasha switched her own reading light on and discretely tried to slide her phone onto her bedside cabinet as if she had not been using its flash-light to read by. “What do you want to do?”