The Butcher's Heart, A Boy's Hope

r seventy-year-old eyes struggling to focus, the fluorescent lights of the enormous kitchen glaring down at her. She wasn't in her shop, she wasn't in her

d directly inside her head, de

come, Host 734, to the world of

oor with a soft thud. She looked at her hands again, they were wrinkled

er of the Anderson family. Your primary objective is to follow the

usekeeper? She had been a butcher for fifty years, a widow for ten, and lonely for what felt li

ed son, Kevin. Tonight, you must lock Liam in the dark, damp basement without din

no one but herself. She looked around the cavernous kitchen, a place so large and sterile it felt more like a laboratory than a room for co

and his face was smudged with dirt, but it was his eyes that caught her. They were huge and dark in his small face, filled with a wariness

tentative s

mself further into the corner. His smal

, his voice a low whisper that

look Betty had never seen on a child before, and it made something in her c

script is detected. Proceed with the

to the heavy, ominous-looking door that she assumed led to the basement. She thought of the cold, the dark, the hun

professional-grade stove. Her hands, acting on an instinct far older and more powerful than any system's comm

go to hell. This boy was