Age
Literary Flash FictionChuck Wendig's Halloween 2015 challenge asked for a scary story in three sentences. Admittedly, existential dread is not a typical Halloween scare, but I felt something like this works best with so little space, because it works by implication in the readers' heads.
There is an autobiographical element to this. Back in 2001, military service was still required of most people in Germany when turning 18, with the option of doing civil service instead. So I did civil service in a mental hospital, spending the first three months in the geriatric department mostly filled with patients suffering varying sorts and degrees of dementia. This is where you can hear the demons of oblivion gnawing just behind the eyes of people.
Working there one quickly learns to grow deaf to most of it, later feeding those demons the memories of their own work to forget outside the working hours. If you want to appreciate life, but also understand dread, work in a place where people go to die for a few months.
October 2015
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How to Sing Butterflies
