Ten Years a Zombie

With fugu sashimi stinging my lips and clouding my head, I left the restaurant, taking to the cobblestone streets after the mandolin player. He stopped several times under the streetlamps to taunt me—smiling under his venetian mask and plucking a sting on his instrument.

What followed is a blur. Suffice it to say, I spent a decade or so, carting baskets of rocks from the sea to an ever-growing citadel in the hills along with a phalanx of likewise shuffling mute idiots.

I at last came to when my basket cracked, as I bent to behold my emaciated reflection in the water, sending a cascade of rock snapping my femur and sending me tumbling into the sea. I awoke with a mouthful of saltwater and the vision of the mandolin player on the shore fumbling through a book of incantations as I struggled to keep my head above water.