Bad Games by Jeff Menapace Page A

laughed and looked down at the worm Caleb had given him. It was exceptionally thick and coated black with soil. He picked it up with his other hand, dusted off the dirt, and spotted a fingernail.
    “ Jesus! ” Patrick flung the finger away.
    Both Amy and Carrie turned.
    “What?” Amy asked.
    Patrick pointed at what he had just discarded. It was less than two feet from where Amy stood.
    “Is that?” she asked, inching closer, slowly leaning her torso forward to get a better look. “Is that? It is! It is! ”
    “What? What is it?” Carrie asked.
    Amy whirled around and blocked her daughter’s view with her body. “Nothing,” she said, shifting from left to right, stopping her daughter from slipping past. “It’s nothing.”
    Oscar, unfortunately, did not see the discarded finger as nothing. He saw it as an appetizer. With one swift motion he trotted towards it, sniffed once, and then gulped it down.
    “ Oscar! ” Amy cried. “ Oscar, no! ”
    The dog turned and looked up at Amy with an innocent expression on his face that in dog language would have surely translated to: It was edible, lady. I’m a dog. What’s the problem?
    “Did he eat it?” Patrick asked.
    Amy nodded appallingly, one hand over her mouth.
    “Eat what?” Carrie asked, now breaking her mother’s defense and approaching the dog. “Tell me.”
    Both Patrick and Amy ignored their daughter. Patrick walked over to his wife and placed his lips to her ear. “Please tell me I’m not crazy,” he whispered. “Please tell me that our son didn’t just scoop a finger out of that bait container. And please tell me that mangy little thing didn’t just gobble it up.”
    “You’re not crazy,” Amy whispered back. “That was a fucking finger .”
    Patrick ran a hand through his hair and breathed in. “Okay then—let’s go to obvious question number two, shall we? Why was there a finger in our bait container?”
    “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Amy replied, her tone exceptionally condescending. “Did the man at the bait shop have all ten of his fingers?”
    “Yes, darling,” Patrick replied, matching her tone, “I believe he did.”
    “Well then Jesus, Patrick, you tell me. Was it that stupid lady who tried to sue Wendy’s by putting a severed finger in her chili? You didn’t happen to notice her at the bait shop did you?”
    Patrick burst out laughing.
    “Are you actually laughing ? How the hell can this be funny to you?” She splayed her hands, let them slap back down onto her thighs. “I mean for Christ’s sake, what more can possibly go wrong this weekend?”
    “Whoa, wait a minute,” he said, patting the air before putting a finger to his lips. Her outburst was creeping out of PG territory and about to introduce the kids to PG-13 or possibly R. “Let’s not make too big a deal out of this.”
    “ No? Our four-year-old son finding a human finger in your container of worms is an everyday thing?” She was losing the fight at keeping her voice a whisper.
    Patrick’s smile from his recent burst of laughter was gone. He now wore a look of concern; he knew that when his wife got started, their kids’ eager ears and a bus full of nuns armed with rulers would not stop one of her profane tirades.
    “Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and she instantly shrugged it off. He sighed. “Alright, I’ll go back to the bait shop right now and talk to the owner,” he said.
    “Don’t even bother,” she said. “The thing is in the belly of that stupid dog right now anyway. We would have no proof.”
    “Well someone lost a finger. Maybe it’s someone else who works at the bait shop.”
    “It wasn’t a stupid employee at the bait shop, Patrick. Someone put that finger in our bait container deliberately.”
    “ What? Why would someone do that?”
    “Why? I don’t know why. Why would a strange man buy us a tank of gas for no reason and then trade candy to a little girl for a stupid doll? Why would