7. (The Tortoise)

Wendell was a tortoise who had, for fifty-four years, lived with the Greenbergs in their Upper East Side apartment. Eugene Greenberg had bought the tortoise, then only five inches from tail to end, in 1949 at a pet store in Brooklyn, and it had outlived both Eugene and his son, and now resided with Eugene's grandson, David Greenberg.

On this particular day, David woke up late in the morning, with hangover from the previous evening's activity. Wendell, secure in a small pen off in the corner of the apartment, gazed lazily from the lettuce he was pecking-at to observe the motions of David as he climbed out of bed and gazed around the room. David looked in Wendell's direction for a few moments, then looked on into the next room, where the cabinet was. Wendell's gaze was similarly fixed on David for a moment, then returned to the lettuce it was slowly chewing.

David went about his day, running off to his job teaching as an adjunct professor at Hunter College, eating a bagel with roast beef for lunch, sipping coffee from a thermos. It was later in the evening, when he came home to find Wendell's pen empty, with a small white note in black scribbles lying in its center, that his day began to pick up speed.

The note read:

We have Wendell.
WE HAVE WENDELL.
And we will do anything.
ANYTHING.
To make you pay.