Its late, a foggy evening in downtown Pittsburgh. A large apartment complex towers over the rest of the buildings. In room 6B there is a man staring blankly up at the ceiling. He seems to be thinking of something, something disturbing. Children’s laughter fills the room. The man, startled, jolts out of his bed looking around anxiously. Two boys about the age of nine step toward him seemingly out of nowhere. The boys, almost simultaneously mutter “A family dining together a family dying together.”Then they take a step back and vanish. The man is shaking. A vision from his past clogs his mind.

Its December, a fresh blanket of snow has just settled over the small town of Morgan. Fire trucks are whizzing down the icy streets stopping at a small house engulfed in flames, the house, crackling and breaking under its own weight. A family can be seen frantically waving their arms from an upstairs window. Fire men break in through the door to the downstairs below, but at that moment there is a snap, and then a crash, and then the house engulfs itself in a flaming inferno. The News screeches on the T.V. the next day 3 people die in a family of 4.

The man’s sense rushes back to him. He’s in a soft room; his arms are tied behind his back.  He can hear the guards talking outside his cell. “Hey, who’s that guy in there?”  ”Oh him? He’s that sicko who murdered his family. Yep, set the whole place on fire. The cops found him in the back yard huddled in a ball muttering to himself.” The man goes back to the solid trance once more.

The fire has died and so has his family. So why can he still see them?  His wife appears before his eyes. She looks down upon him,anger fills her eyes. She grabs him by the collar and drags him to his feet. She pulls him close to her, so close that their lips almost touch once more. She says in a hoarse whisper “A family dining together a family dying together.” She throws him to the ground and vaporizes into the air. “A family dining together a family dying together”, He says over and over to himself, “A family dining together a family dying together”

The man is now shaking violently in his room. His eyes are rolled to the back of his head.  ”A family dining together a family dying together.” He shakes and shakes more violently than before. “A family dining together a family dying together” Now he is still. The words leave his mouth once more. “A family dying together is a family forever.”