The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 7: All or Nothing

 I retrace Oti's steps back to the beginning of the trail. He had cameras in the trees. 

They told me I was a Bard. One for the ages. Was that the jingle I Scream for Ice Cream? 

However long it takes. Whatever it takes. 

The ice crackles into tiny slits expanding into larger caverns the closer I get to the other side.  I forced my parents to watch The Fox and the Hound, Bambi, and Charlotte's Web.

We went to the panels for Animal Crossing: The Best Haunted Islands instead of taking a lap with his friends. I will myself through the mirror and back onto the streets of Richmond. 

The bird's wings were broken. It blinked up at me. I sometimes granted them the mercy to choose a silent movie or a historical depiction of a continental genocide.  If it happened once, it could happen again.  I call the baker to broker a deal. I eased up on the gas as I approached the bend in the road.                         when will your writing make us money?

when you read it                                                                                                                                      

 "Currency?" I whisper, with a ghost of a smile. "What are you worth now?"

I find a 1988 mint condition penny on its head. It burns a hole in my pockets. coins—cold, hard, and utterly useless.

What if you feed the wolves to each other?

I have never let anything go in my life. They have clawed their way out of my grip, wrenching a sliver of space to squeeze through, but I only squeeze harder. 

Do you remember when I cried, and you didn't feed me?

You were starving dear, but that wasn't me...

"You've never seen Fantasia?"

I would have remembered Donald Duck meets Noah's ark.

"You're a loner?"

"I scared my shadow away." 

It's out of your control! Check back in for more clarity!

The Hundred-Handed one clapped. 

I was not so much born as I fell out with the bath water.  Nothing was more sinister than someone who masquerades their dominance as a mercy. 

The head of the house treated himself as a dinner guest.

The other rooms were not rooms, there were outlines in a rectangle, as thin as paper. These false doors led to nowhere.   

"Are you some kind of arbiter?"

"Something like that..."

I have my heart in my hands.

Tonight, I light a white candle. 

Every day something is seen for the last time.  It was the power, the othering, the promise for a better life the next time. "You make me want to break all of my rules," she said with a look that indicated she was not with him anymore. She started to pick shapes in the grass.

"C'mon the sun is about to go down," He grabbed her hand.  

We watched the Terrifyer and lost episodes of Morel Orel. We both called our mothers when we got into our first fight that couldn't be glossed over with a joke. 

She had the Sense. © 

She was a human lie detector.

Horus's right eye was the sun, his left was the moon. Set scattered his brother's 14 limbs across the land. I had long searched for my own tomb.  Only to find that I had fallen to the vine of generations and a graverobber shovel. 

What dynasty were we on?

I am the wraith now.

The oven is a hearth