Putrid

Enjoy this short story by Mace Styx:

Standing in a room filled with sharp and heavy objects I had seen some form of I don’t know what, an apparition? A ghost? Yet, I had not been harmed. Standing stock still, I considered. In those stories, those urban legends and public warnings about the dangers of discarded appliances there was no malevolent element, no wicked long toothed demon emerging through the wires. Shaking my head and sure that I would probably regret the decision, I did possibly the bravest and possibly the stupidest thing I have ever done. I went back into the room.

The fridge door was still wide open, the gaping chasm and its grisly contents shielded from view. Holding the top of the door I stepped around it and again reluctantly peered inside. Lank, innocent celery, days old bean salad and the same squat, mocking tomatoes. Nothing sinister. I closed the fridge door and was oddly unsurprised to find that the letters had changed once again. This time, to a name. “David Franks”, and a set of numbers. Numbers, I almost recognized.

C2,31A was the name of the uber-cool cafe close to the university, where I would spend half of my time studying and the other half trying to pick up chicks. The cafe’s odd name, in a too clever decision achingly desperate to be hipster, was the grid reference in the A to Z road map under which the cafe’s location fell. Square C2 along the top, 31 A along the side. Find that grid reference on the map and ‘tada’! You would find the cafe. The numbers on my fridge were C2, 31B, which I knew, even without looking, would be the grid reference for the cemetery next door. What else could I do?

© 2021 Mace Styx (دفتر الصوت ): 9781667048703

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