You stand at the edge of the shadow-line, where the fading sun bleeds across the bruised horizon. The figures on the other side are indistinct, faceless against the growing dark, but you know their numbers are growing. Each night, another one joins the chain, their joined arms a mockery of human warmth. You can feel the pull, a deep, magnetic ache that hums in your teeth and makes the skin on your arms crawl.
Red rover, red rover, want you come over.
Your name is called, and it is a command. Not a request from a playmate, but a summoning from the deep places of the earth. It is a promise of pain, a dare whispered in a language of decay. You remember the game: running headlong toward the linked hands, the rush of impact, the hope of breaking through. But this is not a game. Breaking through means a different kind of pain, and failing means something far worse.
The last of the sun vanishes. The moon, a broken thumbnail of bone-white light, offers no warmth. The figures on the other side are just shadows, but you can feel their expectant stillness. They are waiting. The chant begins again, and this time, it is not a memory. It is the only sound in the world.
Red rover, red rover, want you come over.
WE used to play this in grade school…but it was never quite this serious….might have been a bit too scary.
I like the idea you use of “the mockery of human warmth”—
That is what our leader has….And I wish he would come over and have the others in government link hands in peace and stop him from what he is doing.
Come over, come over.
j.
Thank you. Wasn’t about politics.