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| - It was early in the school year, and I had just finished moving into my new house. My brothers were excited to be here since they finally got their own rooms, but I was less than thrilled at living so close to my new High school. I tried to avoid thinking about it as I unpacked my stuff in the basement room I had to live in now. It was freezing and cold, but that was alright with me, better than the sweltering heat outside and upstairs. Now, I hadn’t had time to unpack any electronics yet, so I wasn’t sure how I would get to sleep that night, since I always listened to music when I slept. As I was laying awake I heard some odd tunes… tunes I knew but did not know. They spoke of odd things in an odd accent that scared me. The words were drowned out by the music I had never known before. At a point, It said “You’re just another brick in the wall”. I was cultured enough at this point in my life to realize I was hearing The Wall, a Pink Floyd work of art… but no one in my house listened to Pink Floyd. Slowly I drifted off to sleep, but still it haunted me with how it had played in a way that felt… oddly malevolent. The album had always seemed dark to me with what it really spoke of… but something was different. I didn’t sleep well that night, I felt I was trapped, but as I hit the walls, they would fall and crumble, as if there was a way out. Even when I woke up, I knew the dreams were real, because as my knuckles bleed and bruised in the dream, so did the same harm appear on my hands when I looked at them in the shower. This never happened to me again, and I never thought twice about it. A few years later as I was getting ready to go to college, My mom was planning on moving to a bigger house. While I was cleaning up everything, I asked my grandfather (who was the landlord) what had happened to the last people who lived here before us. He said they had died of a drug overdose, but that just didn’t seem right, the way he said it was like he was avoiding something. I decided to dig through old records and found that the man had actually died due to stab wounds, believed to be part of a drug deal gone wrong, but an autopsy showed he has suffocated, and the wounds were made postmortem. The report described what had happened to the man as quite gruesome, even discussing cannibalism as a cause. I had to leave at this point, not because it was too much, but because it was getting dark out. I traveled home to my room, where all I had was a mat to sleep on. This would be my last day here, surrounded by my grandfather’s white painted walls. I couldn’t help but stare at them, then I heard music. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep without the music tonight, but here was The Wall, playing again just like on the first night I was here. I got up and looked at my room. All four walls were solid white, the ceiling and floor, white brick. I screamed for some help while I looked for the door or an air vent, but I saw nothing. I hit the walls, scrambling around looking for some way out as the music changed and took on darker, deeper undertones, the vocals becoming totally distorted and the once peaceful noises dying. I hit the same wall over and over, and finally, it crumbled, but it crumbled in on me, rather than out. I saw through the hole a face of an old man. He was old beyond years, his wrinkles falling off his face and into his face. His left cheek was not there, but rather was rotting away, terrible green mold and fungus eating away at the skin. His teeth as he smiled were rotted yellow, green, and black. Small bits of red, dripping flesh like material were stuck between his teeth that were mashed together, like a clenched fist. He reached in a hand, but I screamed at him to stay back. The hand receded and he put a large black and yellow eye to the hole. At this moment, terrible words rang out. “You’re just another brick in the wall.” I saw all the people I had limited, those whom I had used and then thrown aside, and all of the pain I had caused by oppressing individuals. “You’re just another brick in MY wall.” I fell to my knees, an despair took me as I fell sideways onto the ground. I could only quiver as the hand reached in, all of my thoughts, my life, appearing on the wall and floor, even this as I think it, as I remember my last moments. “You’re just another brick in my wall.” This is how I remember what the walls said the morning I found my brother’s body. I shouldn’t be allowing this to go anywhere, and I was told to never speak of what I saw again, but I have to testify to the world. That body was so mutilated it seemed inhuman. Never have I seen skin eating itself away before my eyes, nor hair melting into the head like some kind of goo. We are not allowed to move now, so the move is canceled, and I cannot help but wonder if this will happen to another unlucky soul down the road. I will likely never know if this makes a difference, but I refuse to be another brick in the wall.
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