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January 5, 2006

January 5, 2005

You wipe the mud from your eyes to discover that you are knee-deep in a mass grave...

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D: The Great War

My rifle is lost, my trenching tool is all I have left and I begin to claw my way out of the grave. Bodies are strewn like broken dolls, coated in thick layers of viscous mud that tries to suck me down. I refuse to die here, like this, surrounded by death.

Splintered trees and barbed wire jab at me incessantly, tearing into my flesh as I desperately try and dig myself free. My uniform is in tatters, my commanding officer one of the bodies at my feet, my regiment decimated by the heavy German counter-barrage. I refuse to die.

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Jim: Just Another Working Stiff

The gibbous moon hangs swollen and leprous in the midnight sky while thick tendrils of ground fog flow around gnarled, leafless trees and scattered gravestones. I trudge ahead, drawing the tatters of my ill-fitting coat tighter against the ancient cemetery’s unearthly chill.

Just then, my foot slams into a pile of loose dirt and I tumble into a dark pit filled with the smells of rich loam and rotting flesh.

Somebody else had dug up the grave!

I shrug. “Now Igor won’t need the shovel,” I mumble as I collect the body parts my Master needs for his latest experiment.

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Ted: Charon, Inc.

This part I hate: everytime I get to the scene, I always wind up knee deep. The displacement matrix should allow for terrain better.

I begin to collate data; temporal and spatial coords, number of customers, etc. I pull the first one out of his body to check his balance. He seems less disoriented than usual, able to form a sentence.

"Why are you here?"

"To collect your debts and recycle you, or to send you up the chain if you actually learned anything this time."

"How does it look?"

"Better luck next time," I reply. "Next lifetime, love better."

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Michele: All of Us Food That Hasn't Died

Daylight comes and he sees what he stepped on all night.

Bones.

Light trickles into the hole, reflects off the whiteness. He squeezes his eyes shut.

How long?
How many?
Who are they?

The hole is deep, wide. He remembers being pushed down, tumbling over what he thought was smooth rocks.

Human. Bones.

Something flaps overhead. A helicopter. He climbs over bones, scrambling to safety, stops when he sees a glint of light. A dog tag. He reads it. A neighbor he saw alive. Last night.

The flapping gets closer.

That’s not a helicopter.

These bones - they’ve been picked clean.

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