Day 823: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: cannibals

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Captain Lee's invitation to his grandmother to eat oatmeal (and humble pie) with him spared her having her evening utterly destroyed by yet another tragedy for the elite class of which she was a part, one that touched her family directly.

That evening's incident was thought of as the public beginning of a quiet but devastating problem for that elite – the incident that, while not actually the cause, was the thing that people would point to in 2020 and say, “Was that the turning point?”

Old Rufus Foster had enough. He had been a butler for the “Aaronic” branch of the Slocum-Lofton family for 40 years (named for Aaron Slocum-Lofton, the eldest brother and the most prominent man of the branch in the 20th century, with the most prominent widow – Selene), but it was his misfortune to be working for Mrs. Slocum-Lofton's nephew Willis, who inherited none of the shrewd management skills of his uncle and aunt.

Willis and his wife Donna treated their servants like slaves, and had used their influence to make the Foster family feel like they had no better options.

Yet one fine day, Grandpa Rufus had enough, ordered his entire family to quit, and, to cover them as they departed, stood outside Willis Slocum-Lofton's door in their new neighborhood over the hill from where they had been burned out, and told the world:

“You're all a bunch of cannibals – soul cannibals – you expect us to serve up our bodies, our souls, our children, our grandchildren to you to consume on your lusts! All of you, 'round here! I'm too old to start over, but my family ain't – you're not going to eat us any more to keep yourselves fat and flourishing! You done burned up 12,000 of us, and you don't care the least bit but how to get more to work to death, but you're going to starve before anybody named Foster works for you again! I can't run and I don't care – send me to the Heaven you ain't never goin' to!”

Willis Slocum-Lofton, in his humiliation and rage, had lined up his Colt 45, only to be tackled by his visiting son, Willis Jr.

“No, Dad – you can't – the Free Voice –.”

The gun went off as the two men were struggling.

“See – cannibals! You're even killing and eating your own young now – but you ain't gettin' no more of mine!”

And as the Slocum-Loftons' new neighbors stared in shock, and Willis Jr. wallowed in his blood while his father panicked, Rufus Foster walked away, unharmed and unbothered, to go find James Varick IV and tell him the whole story so the Lofton County Free Voice could cover it …

James Varick IV wrote down his editorial for Sunday's paper that night, after all the details were in.

To be continued … here!

Photo by Pierre Acobas on Unsplash