The song is based off a short story by Edgar Alan Poe, as well as real life events in the 19th century. In the story, a group of men get stuck at sea without food or water. With starvation imminent, the crew decide to draw straws to see who they're going to eat. They end up eating Richard Parker, who drew the losing straw. Coincidentally, decades after the story was published, there was a real life shipwreck in which the crew had to result to cannibalism in order to stay alive. They decided to eat a 17 year old crew member named Richard Parker. A crazy case of life imitating art. In the song, I mixed the two stories together and wrote it from the perspective of Richard Parker.