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| - I’ve finally found my happy place. It lies through the old chimney in the forest, the one surrounded by the little blue flowers that look like bells and weep when you say their name. The chimney is empty. Don’t light a fire; fire scares the man with the wooden face. He likes flashlights better. Stick a flashlight or one of those cheap, dollar-store LCD lanterns and you’ll be good to go. On the other side is my happy place. The ground is made of fingers that squirm. They make a crunching noise when you walk on them. It made me wince a little the first few times, but the round thing assures me that they feel no pain. Now I traverse the carpet of fingers freely and without remorse. There’s a hole behind the chimney. All of the fingers just drop down into nothing. It’s not pure black, or pure white, or any color at all. It is simply nothing. Not color, or light, or noise, or existence. Sometimes I see things squirming down there. They look like horses with no legs and scream like grown men. The trees are made of rubber, or something that feels like it. The man with the wooden face says if you cut deep enough into them, you can find water. I’m not sure he knows what water is, though; I cut about halfway through a rubbery tree one time, and no liquid came out; just a bunch of little, metallic beads that smelled like sulfur and dissolved when they touched the ground-fingers. The round thing lives in a tall house on a cliff. It is upside down, but then again, so is he. His eyes don’t seem to shut. It creeped me out a bit at first, but the round thing has grown on me since then. He gave me a pet once; a little, four-legged reptile the walked with its mouth and spoke with its tail. He’s told me to name it whatever I want. I named it Andy. The man with the wooden face does not like the round thing much. He says he is boisterous and rowdy, and is very distracting. I don’t think he likes me much either, but he’s taken a liking to Andy. He tried to steal my little pet one time, but I severed the man with the wooden face’s seventy-fourth leg, and he would not leave without it. It is very nice here. I have fashioned myself a house of the living and screaming yet immobile slabs of hair I found piled at the base of the hungry mountain. The mountain lent them to me, but he says I must return them if my elbows should ever revolt. The man with the wooden mask has promised to teach me his trade in exchange for a favor; I must break the chimney. He says if I leave through the chimney again, the gallowbirds won’t come back and the round thing would start his old business again. I’m going to get rid of the chimney. I didn’t want to leave, anyway. This is my happy place, after all.
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