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bone-gilded music box, or whatever you plan to do with me
after I’m dead.
“Where was I? Oh yes, I remember. I was walking down
the sidewalk. As I snuck around the neighborhood, I could
see a line of people twisting out from behind the brambles
of what I remembered to be an abandoned house. The house
was peeling paint and the lawn was wildly overgrown, and it
had been the source of endless complaints by the neighbors.
All the people were silent and apparently happy, as everyone
was smiling. I hoped that it was a crowd of neighbors
waiting to receive rations or the like from some form of
emergency services group. I walked up to the back of the
line, somewhat in shock from all that had already happened.
I suppose I played up my fright a bit, as I was in desperate
need for some good old-fashioned pity.
“I wandered, sobbing and shivering, over to the people at
the end of the line. They didn’t even look at me. They were
all too busy staring at what looked like movie tickets. They
cradled the little things in their cupped hands as if they were
too precious to hold one-handed. In a somewhat breathless,
exaggerated tone, I questioned the woman at the end of the
line about all the darkness and insanity and what have you.
She placed an index finger to her lips and shushed me. That’s
when I noticed her footwear. I’ll never forget that pair of red
sneakers as long as I live—which, in view of my current
situation, won’t be that long. She was one of the mutes that
had wandered around my bedroom, flinging bloody body
parts all around!
“My little epiphany seemed to be the woman’s cue to
activate her next level of weirdness, because just as I figured
things out, she curved her face into a dreadfully vapid
smile—the sort you’d see stretched across a sugar-drunk
child’s face. I quickly exchanged my indulged expression
of horror for the real thing and ran as fast as I could in the
opposite direction. Those stupid, blood-squishing slippers
made a fine joke of my exit, by the way.
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