A Day Ago
A day ago
We lived in a box
of brick, with a net behind to catch the light
and the dust
And when the city died we stayed
We planted whistles
and daisies
and bodies in the ground
I curved my spine for them as you stood tall
and you tasted the dead
Can you still see Us?
Are We still there?
in the rear-view where I am
standing in the arteries for hours
and no one sees me
but plastic suits
and wakeless hours
and bags on the concrete
A day ago
Eagle.
Beneath bloodwarm streets,
The furrowing brow of a moored people,
Writhing seas of foreign cloth
Shiver under colored sheets.
The plaza steeple
Looms above a frothing mass.
The eagle laughs,
Poaching coins,
Striving toward its best.
It peers upon the loam
Under calloused feet,
Encroaching on the signs
Of fruitless plunder.
The eagle's wonder
Steers its wings
Toward shiny things
At the eagle's own behest.
Not knowing silver's value,
It pads its nest
With specie vagrants nonetheless.
Lacuna Clone
Ding ding!
“Doors opening,” she said. “Step back to allow customers to exit. When boarding, please move to the center of the car.”
Jay filtered his way through the rushing pedestrian reeds and out of the train.
Deedoo deedoo.
“Step back, doors closing.”
The Football had almost gotten caught in the door. Jay held the briefcase tighter in his hand, rubbing his wrist. The handcuff had begun to chafe.
The walls were pocked like concrete waffles. They wrapped around into the ceiling to create an unmistakeable arch. Federal Triangle.
There he stood, unerring and solemn, like a pillar in the center of the raging sapient sea. He hated to carry the Football around public places, much less the Metro.
A muscle on the right side of his neck seized, pulling tight as it told the world what the rest of his body would never convey. He wasn’t nervous. Of course not. Not at all.
Waves of people washed over him as he began to walk. A distant saxophone played from up the nearby escalator. He clutched the Football tighter. He stuck out in the shifting masses.
Another train was coming from the opposite direction. The subtle screech echoed through the chamber.
Smack!
Someone ran into him, knocking him forward.
“Hey!” Jay shouted, distracted as he gazed at the man.
Crack!
Jay looked down. The Football was gone, snipped clean off.
Another young man dissolved into the crowd, struggling to conceal the bolt cutters in his hands.
“Shit!”
He put his hands up and began to pace. The hourglass had begun to empty. The human shells mounted the escalator and badged out of the station. The culprit was gone.
Jay sprinted up the left side of the escalator, pushing people out of the way and feeling for his cell phone. As he retrieved it, the screen lit up with a new message.
“U close?”
Contact options. Call.
The phone rang, sputtering each pulse through the broken signal.
“What’s up? You get my text?”
Jay arrived at ground level.
“Yes, it’s gone.”
“It? What do you mean ‘it’s gone’?”
“They pushed me and snipped the chain with bolt cutters. Two guys. What was in the case, Joe?”
“Nothing that important.”
“What the hell do you mean, it’s not that important? Why would it be in the Football if it wasn’t that important? Why am I flying from D.C. to Oak Ridge and back if it’s not that important, Joe?”
“First off, don’t talk about it over the phone,” Joe said with something in his mouth. “Second off, we’ll get it taken care of. There’s a tracking unit in the case. Don’t worry about it.”
“I am worried about it, Joe. I’ll be there in a minute,” Jay said, still walking toward the Hoover Building.
“Don’t bother. I’ll take this up the chain. I’ll talk to the Transit Authority to get the footage so the higher-ups don’t nail your ass for espionage or something.”
“Great. What next?”
“You live up 6th, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I need you to go home. Wait for orders.”
“You just want me to go home?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do. I’ll keep you updated.”
Jay rolled his eyes as the phone beeped silent. He was sweating through his suit jacket. July in the District. Pleasure.
Jay walked the several blocks North toward his apartment, anxious and disheveled. His composure was gone. His head ached behind the eyes with every heartbeat.
The apartment building was clean and bright, with modern cantilevered edges and oddly placed windows with freshly polished glass. Like a mausoleum built only yesterday.
Jay opened the door.
The interior was deathly quiet. Every footstep pattered about the empty room like pebbles in a pond.
“Welcome back, Jay,” said the sharply dressed, middle-aged woman at the front desk.
“You too,” he replied. Her face twisted into a confused smile.
The elevator doors dinged as he pressed the button, already on the ground floor.
Patiently, he waited for them to close. Three seconds. Five seconds. Seven seconds. Finally.
Jay closed his eyes and sighed, still coping with the potential ramifications of his actions. He reached down and felt the cuff still around his wrist, just atop large red welts.
BZZ. BZZ.
He reached into his pocket.
NO CALLER ID.
BZZ. BZZ.
“Hello?”
“Fifteen seconds.”
“What?”
BEEP.
Fifteen seconds?
The elevator arrived at the eighth floor. His stomach clenched and he scanned the hallway beyond the stainless steel doors. Nothing.
Ten feet from the front door. Jay pulled out his keys, struggling to find the right one. He inserted it into the keyhole and--
SNIP!
“What the--”
He reached up to his twitching neck and yanked out a small, metal dart.
“Shi--”
And reality faded out of existence.
*****
Jay groaned loudly into the black room. Flecks of color splashed across his woozy eyes in the dark. His head ached even worse than before. His body was numb.
“Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello? Anyone?”
Jay was blinded with a sudden flash of light in front of him. He squinted into the static haze. The screen was filled with the black and white fuzz of a feedless television screen. It was old. The small face was made of thick glass. The air around it illuminated with an eerie glow.
The screen came into focus. The audio darted in and out for a moment as though the video had been corrupted or scratched.
A cartoon turtle with a hat walked onto the screen, sniffing a flower.
“There was a turtle by the name of Bert,” a woman sang.
“And Bert the turtle was very alert. When danger threatened him he never got hurt. He knew just what to do.” The turtle hid inside its shell as a monkey hanging in a tree above him lit a stick of dynamite.
“He’d duck! And co-ver. Duck! And co-ver!”
The video zipped to a halt and vanished into empty static.
An overhead lamp flipped above the television.
“Good morning, Jay.”
Jay rolled his eyes back into his head, still adjusting to the bright light. His arms were tied behind the chair. The voice seemed to originate from behind the lamp.
“I understand you had quite the day yesterday.”
“Sure,” Jay squinted. “Wait, yesterday? Who are you? Why am I here?”
“I would say that everything will be told in due time, but that’s simply untrue.”
“Where am I?”
“A fallout shelter. Don’t worry yourself over petty things. Your time is almost,” he paused, “Up.”
Jay’s heart tremored. Metal clattered behind the lamp.
“What’s with the video?”
“Use your brain for a moment, Jay.”
The door, which Jay could hardly make out behind the lamp, opened. Another man entered.
“Everything’s ready,” he said.
“Are Kay and Ell in place?”
“Kay’s standing by above Moscow, ready to drop. Ell is still in stasis at headquarters, as ordered.”
“Good. My memories are backed up to Purgatory. The Big Man better know what he’s doing.”
“It helps that you’re the same person,” the assistant joked.
“Being the same doesn’t mean we’re not different. Can you move that lamp out of the way for a moment?”
“Yes sir.”
The lamp drifted out of view to reveal an almost empty room inhabited by two men. Two men with identical faces. Two men with the same face as Jay.
Jay began to scream as the man in charge lifted a large, circular blade. He pressed a button and it whirred loudly. The man smiled at him.
“What the hell are you doing? What is going on?” Jay cried.
“Look, Jay,” the assistant clone asked, “We all take our turn. You’ve done a perfect job. Your memories will serve the Big Man well, and you will be rewarded in another life. As it turns out, nuclear war is quite lucrative. Be at peace. Your life was not a lie, it was a luxury. A luxury to serve. Yourself, that is.”
“You see,” said the clone-in-charge, “We will never die. You are the Big Man. I am the Big Man. The Big Man is the Big Man. You’ve served your part in his master plan. I didn’t mean for that to rhyme. Good luck,” he winked.
“Why-Zee, please secure his head.”
The assistant walked around Jay’s chair and he started to kick. The chair seemed to be bolted to the ground. Only now did Jay see the bloodstains in the concrete.
The man grabbed him around the neck and pressed Jay’s jaw shut with his arm. With muffled screams, the clone-in-charge brought the spinning blade to full speed and walked toward him.
“See you soon, buddy.”
The blade grinded into Jay’s forehead with a squelch and a muffled scream. Jay’s jaw clenched in agony, feeling his insides become outsides. His consciousness began to drift away.
The light became brighter and the whirring sound faded away.
*****
“Welcome to Purgatory,” she said.
Ding ding!
“Your collective consciousness awaits.”
Temper Hill
On the morning of the twenty-seventh of September, Jennifer awoke to the smell of bacon.
“Jennifer!” her mother moaned from the bottom of the staircase. “The bus is here in fifteen minutes and So Help Me God, if you don’t eat the food I’ve cooked for you, your father will have words with you.”
So Help Me God. Jennifer rubbed the bruise her father had left on her arm. She rolled over into the heavy quilt her grandmother had made for her, clutching it to her face and inhaling deeply. The blanket filtered the salty scent of bacon, which she had always associated with her mother’s early morning wake-up calls.
“Jennifer!”
“I’m awake, mother! Jesus!”
“Language!”
“I said ‘Hay-soos’!” she joked.
“No you didn’t!”
“Did too!”
“Jennifer, get down here and eat. Please.”
Jennifer swung her feet off the edge of the bed, which barely touched the ground: a recent development.
The wooden floor was ice-cold, the ancient layers of paint preventing the heat of the downstairs from reaching her uncovered toes. She walked quickly down the squeaky steps, desperate to reach the far warmer kitchen floor.
The tiles heated her feet through, and they burned red like a mosquito bite.
“How many times have I told you to wear socks to bed?”
“I can’t sleep with socks on.”
“Then you should at least put them on before you come downstairs,” Mother said, scooping scrambled eggs onto the plate in front of her. The toaster dinged as the still-floppy bread popped up early.
“Can you put that back in?” Jennifer asked.
“We don’t have time,” Mother said, beginning to butter the ‘toast’. “Sit and eat.”
“I don’t want lukewarm toast. It’s still soft. Look, you’re poking holes in it.”
“Please just eat. You’re not even dressed yet.” Mother had bags under her eyes and makeup from the previous night still coated her face like plaster.
Jennifer sat down and began to pour the eggs down her gullet as quickly as possible, nearly gagging. Mother dropped two burnt pieces of bacon onto the plate.
“I’ll tell you what. I don’t have work today. Why don’t I take you to school? We’ll go out for breakfast first. How ’bout that?”
“Nope,” Jennifer said, glancing at the bacon and pushing away from the table.
“So Help Me God.”
“So Help You God.”
*****
Jennifer dressed in record time, a record she broke nearly every day. Her plaid skirt was off-brand, but mostly indistinguishable from those required in her school’s uniform code. Her red stockings and black shoes were hand-me-downs from her older (and larger) sister, who had gone off to college the previous year. The overshirt was perhaps the only item of clothing that was part of the standard school uniform, with the letters “PS” embroidered in big, swirly letters.
As if on queue, the squealing brakes of the school bus beckoned.
“Jennifer!”
“Coming!”
She grabbed her backpack from the pile of clean clothes beside her dresser and descended down the stairs, this time protected from the icicle stingers of the warped flooring. She ran out the door, noting the untouched bacon and ‘toast’ still sitting at the table.
“I love you!” Mother shouted, leaning back against the counter with fingers squeezing the bridge of her nose. But Jennifer had already left.
The bus was smaller than one you would typically find delivering public-school kids. Written on the side in the same script as on Jennifer’s uniform were the words “Partridge School”.
With a short hop, she climbed aboard.
“Good morning, Jennifer,” said Mr. Giuffre, his lazy eye blinking erratically.
“Good morning, Mr. Giuffre.”
“Mr. Dolby asked me to let everyone know that you might be coming home early today.”
“Why?”
“Pipes’re broken or something. They’re cleaning up the flooding right now.”
“Well, why are we going to school if the building is flooded?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, agreeing with her. “Alls I know is that you might be coming home early.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes subtly and walked toward the back of the bus, where she always sat. The rest of the bus was packed to the brim.
The other girls stared at her fearfully and in complete silence.
The single backseat was empty, as expected. The bench next to it lay empty as well, leaving clumps of three girls in front of her where there should be two.
Jennifer sat down and placed her backpack in the seat across from her.
The bus started forward, slamming tiny heads into the seats in front of them.
Suddenly, the bus stopped again. An annoyed expression flashed across Jennifer’s face.
The doors opened again, letting a little black girl aboard.
The girl’s curly, black hair was done up into a bun, her skirt slightly too large for her. She walked with a slight limp, like one leg was shorter than the other. Upon closer examination, Jennifer noticed that one of her legs was indeed several inches shorter.
The girl walked past rows of sardine girls before identifying the back seat adjacent to Jennifer’s, occupied solely by a bag. The sardine girls’ glare intensified as the tiny black girl sat down. They all turned back around. Jennifer grinned as the little girl took off her bag and the bus started forward once again.
“Hey,” Jennifer said.
The girl looked up at her.
“Hello.”
“What’s your name?” Jennifer asked.
“Jennifer.”
“Me too,” Jennifer said curiously.
“Groovy.”
Jennifer stared at the little black girl confusedly. Even after the school policy changed requiring them to allow coloreds to attend, not a single one had enrolled.
“What’s with your leg?”
The little girl breathed as though she had been asked the same question a million times before, which she almost certainly had.
“I was born with it. My right one’s shorter than my left,” she read from the script.
“So, you can’t run or anything?”
“I mean, I can’t run track or nothin’, if that’s what you mean.”
Jennifer continued to stare as the girl pulled a banana from her bag and began to eat it.
Jennifer had heard jokes about blacks and bananas before.
“You want a bite?” asked Little Jennifer, noticing Jennifer’s stare.
“Nah, thanks.”
The bus hit a speed bump and the banana flew out of the little girl’s hand and onto the floor.
“Still don’t want a bite?” Little Jennifer joked, picking it up and wrapping it in its peel to throw away.
Jennifer smiled. A girl in one of the seats in front of her caught it, forcing Jennifer to put the uncommon smile in her pocket for safekeeping.
“Today’s your first day?”
“Yup. Anything I should know?”
“Did Mr. Giuffre tell you about the flooding?”
“The bus driver? No. What flooding?”
“I only know what he told me. We might go home early.”
“Well, shoot,” Little Jennifer said sarcastically.
Jennifer stared out the window as they turned onto School Street.
“Here it is, right up here.”
The sullied brick of the New Partridge Schoolhouse came into view. The school was built upon Temper Hill, where Old Lady Partridge had built her wooden schoolhouse exactly one-hundred years before, just after the Civil War. Local legend had it that Mark Twain helped build the old schoolhouse, but that was likely false. After all, local legend also had it that an ancient giant, foretold by the native Osage indians, lived beneath Temper Hill and would eat everyone in the Ozarks if released.
The school was wide and foreboding. A massive chimney poked from the center of the building like a resting giant’s cigarette, though the typically billowing white, tobacoo-like smoke was unusually absent. Jennifer hated this place.
The bus stopped in front of the school, releasing the final batch of schoolgirls to their largely hungover teachers.
“Hey, what grade are you in?” Jennifer asked.
“Sixth.”
“You’re in the sixth grade?” Jennifer said incredulously.
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing. I mean, you’re tiny.”
“You’re not that much bigger than me.”
Jennifer and Little Jennifer stood up as the girls in front of them began to walk down the aisle. Little Jennifer held her banana gingerly. Jennifer walked behind her protectively.
“What grade are you in, anyway?” Little Jennifer asked.
“I’m sixth too.”
“Who’s your teacher?”
“Ms. Collins.”
“I think that’s mine, too!” Little Jennifer said. “I think it said on my welcome sheet, but I left that at home by accident.”
The girls exited the bus and walked up the many steps to the building’s front door.
The front hallway was decorated with the artwork of girls in the lower grades, amateurish and overly busy. It smelled like wet paint, despite having been painted in the summer, long before school started.
“We’re down this way,” Jennifer said, turning toward an adjacent hallway to their right.
Girls of various heights and widths swarmed the hallway, dodging puddles of water in the middle of the tile floor and finding their way to their respective classrooms.
Ms. Collins stood outside her classroom, guiding her students inward and away from the treacherous waters of the hallway. She was dressed sharply, with a solid grey skirt and a pleasant, frilly white shirt. Her hair was done up in a bun, her reading glasses perched on top like a bird.
“Good morning, ladies!” she said.
“Good morning, Ms. Collins,” said Jennifer with a smirk. “This is Jennifer.”
“Another Jennifer! That makes, what, five in our class alone?”
“Yup.”
“Well, welcome, Jennifer!” She said, looking quite uncomfortable. “Um, what’s your last name?”
Little Jennifer spoke up. “Collins.”
“Your name is Jennifer Collins?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ms. Collins looked skeptically at the little black girl as more girls arrived behind them.
“I suppose you’re Jennifer C., unless you’d like to be called something else.”
“Called something else?”
“We can call you a different name to avoid confusion, if you’d like.”
“No, I’m fine.”
The girls behind them chuckled at something unheard.
“What’s so funny?” Jennifer asked. The tone changed instantly.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, really?” Jennifer asked, getting closer to them. The girls backed away.
“Yes,” replied one of the girls.
“I doubt that. What’d you say? Were you making fun of the new girl? Hmm?”
“No,” said the girl nervously.
“Tell me what you said.”
The girl cowered while Ms. Collins watched to ensure everyone’s safety.
“I said ‘C’ stands for ‘Colored’.”
Ms. Collins stepped between them. “That’s enough girls, go inside and get ready for class.”
The girls entered the sparsely decorated room. The chalkboard was perfectly clean and placid green.
Jennifer walked to her desk and hung her backpack from the back of the seat. Outside the window, she could see the chimney atop the central part of the building. Everyone around her began to settle in, pulling notebooks and bright yellow pencils from their desks. Ms. Collins entered and closed the door behind her with a creaky slam, leaving soppy shoeprints behind her.
“Please pull out your spelling workbooks.”
Ms. Collins sat at her desk and began to collect her things before looking up and noticing the little black girl standing at the back of the room.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Ladies, this is your new classmate, Jennifer C.,” she said, gesturing for the girl to come to the front. The girls in the class looked over their shoulders at her, having willfully avoided looking at her until this moment.
Ms. Collins held Little Jennifer by the shoulders, showcasing her like a wonder at a carnival show.
“Now, we’re all going to be... respectful, correct?”
Jennifer tried to cover a small grin, unable to contain herself.
“You can sit in the desk at the back. There, on the right. See it?”
Little Jennifer nodded and began to head toward the desk.
The building shook. Several girls screeched in fear.
“Calm down, calm girls. Remember when we talked about earthquakes? Missouri has them sometimes. We’re fine,” she said, seemingly reassuring herself. “Everyone get under your desks.”
The building shook again, this time more dramatically. Outside the window, the building’s massive chimney began to teeter.
“Get under your desk!” Ms. Collins shouted at Little Jennifer, who was still standing, staring outside the window. The little girl scrambled underneath like unwanted eggs.
The building shook even more violently this time and dust began to fall from the ceiling. Books fell off of their shelves. Ms. Collins grabbed the picture of her husband and infant child from her desk before it fell. The chimney finally toppled over, scattering brick and mortar across the roof of the building and the front courtyard. Several of the girls screamed loudly.
Suddenly, the tile in the center of the room began to bulge and crack, as if a giant fist was pushing up from underneath. The girls scurried toward the edges of the room. Jennifer, who was close to the windows, ran to the other side with Little Jennifer.
Little Jennifer, with a wide-eyed stare, grasped onto Jennifer’s arm.
With a swift and deadly punch, the center of the room exploded. Dust and dirt drifted through the air. The glass windows shattered outward into the grass. Ms. Collins ran over to the girls in the opposite corner of the room, dodging the now gaping hole. She spread her arms around them, trying to cover their fledgling bodies as much as possible.
The air cleared. The outer wall of the room was now just a gaping hole. Sunlight filtered through the remaining dust, casting shadows across the debris. The contents of desks were strewn into the grass outside.
The hole in the middle of the room was about ten feet in diameter. It was moist and dark, like the burrow of a giant mole. The smell of sulfur permeated the room, emanating from the crevasse.
Ms. Collins walked toward the hole, sure of foot and confident. The earthquake seemed to have stopped. She peered over the edge of the hole, staring into the abyss.
The chasm was no longer empty. Something began to rise from the depths. Something grey and grimy and oddly shaped, oozing red like a fresh wound.
Ms. Collins fell over onto her back as the colossal hand rose from the hole. Long, sickly, grey fingers reached over the edge and began to feel around the room.
“Shh!” Ms. Collins turned to the horrified girls, wide-eyed with fear and holding onto her picture frame.
The tree-like fingers tapped around the edge of the hole, grasping at papers and tapping at the inside wall. The thing grabbed Ms. Collins’ desk between its fingers, waving it around the room like a prop in a dollhouse. The hand, still clutching the desk, wound its way back down into the hole. A loud crash echoed from below.
“Go, go, go!” Ms. Collins whispered to the crowd of girls, pushing them toward the outside. All of the girls ran quietly toward the grass, Jennifer pushing Little Jennifer from behind. A whoosh of sound came from the hole as it reached back up into the classroom.
The girls went completely still as the hand returned. One wept, struggling to hold back the sound. The hand rose further into the room than before, grasping close to Ms. Collins, who still sat quietly in the corner.
The finger reached more gently this time, feeling the details of the room. It tapped Ms. Collins on the leg.
Pause.
The finger tapped her leg again, noticing the warmth. Ms. Collins held her breath as the finger began to trace her body before reaching her face.
Ms. Collins looked at Jennifer and smiled weakly. Jennifer smiled back.
With a swoosh, the hand grabbed Ms. Collins by the legs and dragged her into the hole. Ms. Collins released a piercing scream, dropped her picture frame, and disappeared into the chasm before going silent. The girls began to cry.
“Go!” cried Jennifer.
The girls followed her instruction, hopping over broken brick and sprinting away into the grass. Little Jennifer tripped and Jennifer grabbed her from the rubble.
Together, they ran into the wide grass courtyard. Sirens rang out from all over the city.
The ground shook once again, knocking several girls to their feet. In the distance, teachers guided their children out of the building. Jennifer glanced over her shoulder as the rest of the building tumbled down bit by bit.
A fist smashed through the center of the building and into the sunlight. A rumble came from the ground, unbelievably loud but oddly silent. The fist retracted back into the hill before swiping across the bottom of the building like a wrecking ball, angry and pitiful.
The ground began to rise up like a geyser from the land. A round, grey structure arose from beneath, scorched and writhing in the morning sunlight. Dirt and concrete tumbled down the giant’s back and showered the ground, churning it like a tiller.
Two pointy shoulders sprouted from the ground, followed by two arms, and the top of a bald head.
The creature stood upright for the first time in centuries, still buried halfway in the ground. It kept its eyes closed, unaccustomed to the bright light. Its translucent, grey skin seemed to smoke in the sun, its long, lanky arms lithe and smooth with thin, white hairs poking off every few feet. It breathed through gaping holes, its chest heaving, finally relieved of the weight left on its chest for so long.
Jennifer stared in awe at the remnants of her long-hated school, left in tatters by an ancient monster, grasping her new friend by the back. The legends were true.
The creature came to its senses. It opened its slit-like eyes and began to scan the area. Slowly, it opened its mouth and released an inaudible but ground-shaking rumble. It yanked its arms from the soil and began to pick up screaming children and teachers from the ground below, tossing them individually into its mouth and crunching down.
“Go! Go!” Jennifer shouted, dragging Little Jennifer with her as she began to sprint toward the neighborhood beyond. The little girls swung their legs as quickly as they could, dirty and sweaty. The creature turned his gaze in their direction and began to pick up the girls who had tripped, placing them in his cadavre-like hand before tossing them like popcorn into his mouth.
Little Jennifer fell down, screaming for help. Time paused.
Breakfast with Mother. She should have gone out for breakfast. She was as good as dead now. Who was this girl, anyway? Go.
Jennifer ran, leaving the little black girl behind. She sprinted as hard as she could toward the suburban development down the hill. The ground shook again. She glanced again over her shoulder. The giant’s legs were now free from their earthen prison. It stood at least two-hundred feet tall. There was no running. Only hiding.
Jennifer never ran. Her lungs felt like they were about to collapse and she began to heave. She was forced to stop.
The giant took a step toward her, picked up Little Jennifer, and put her in his other hand, continuing to toss screaming children into his mouth.
One more step. Here he was. She was done.
His giant fingers picked her up by one arm, snapping it in two. She screamed as he dropped her into his hand and continued to walk. One by one, classmates disappeared into the giant’s maw. The teeth were white and serrated and coated with red, as if he had just eaten an entire box of raspberries.
The pain was unbearable. Jennifer hoped to pass out before it was her turn to ride.
Little Jennifer was next. She looked down at Jennifer with heavy teardrops dripping down her face, screaming breathlessly. She dropped her banana peel into the giant’s palm.
“I don’t want to die!” she cried.
Jennifer cried with her. The giant tossed her through the air and into his mouth.
With a crunch, she was gone.
Jennifer was the last one left in the giant’s hand. He looked down at her with oddly human eyes and smiled. She breathed.
He reached down, tossed her into his mouth, and began to chew.
The mouth was warm and soft, like her grandmother’s quilt. It smelled like bacon. He crunched down on her bones and she drifted into the darkness, never to wake up again.
“Jennifer!” her mother shouted.
THE END.