Reggie wiggled out of his crib and plopped gently to the floor, ignoring the over-sized rat traps baited with poisoned candy that his Father had laid out carefully in concentric circles the night before. Gurgling happily to himself, he crawled to the door, past the toybox full of glass shards and the frayed lamp cord lying in a pool of water.
As Reggie emerged, his Father, alerted by an expensive array of motion detectors, aimed a vicious kick at his head with an iron boot.
"Daddy!" Reggie shrieked. He kissed his Father's iron boot and climbed into his highchair for breakfast.
"Morning, Reggie honey!" said his Mother. She leered at him from behind a huge pair of Larry Bud Melman-like glasses and placed a bowl of poisonous Amazon frogs on his tray, which was covered with pictures of Barney. Reggie munched happily and watched his parents get ready for work. He soon finished his bowl of poison frogs.
"Daddy love Reggie?" asked Reggie in his cute little voice.
"Of course, Reg," his Father said hurriedly as he finished placing the last of the whole, bloody chickens on the deck of their modest houseboat, floating placidly in an isolated corner of the Florida everglades.
As Reggie watched, his Mother and Father climbed into their airboat and cut the line that anchored their home to a grove of mangrove groves, pumping a few rounds from their Beretta automatics into the houseboat's hull for good measure.
"Bye Mommy, Daddy!" Reggie called, waving his chubby fist.
"Barney, Barney, I love Barney," Reggie whispered. The houseboat slowly drifted away, listing drunkenly as the hull filled with brackish water. Large, scaly alligator feet appeared on the deck, then whole alligators.
"Barneys!" Reggie laughed.
© 1978 by Craig Snyder