# Literary Maneuvers July 2022: Conspiracy Theory



## Harper J. Cole (Jul 2, 2022)

*Literary Maneuvers July 2022
Conspiracy Theory*​
Introduction
They're out to get you this month, as we challenge you to write a short story based on the theme of "Conspiracy Theory".

650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Saturday, 16 July
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2023 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.






Judging

Our judges include* Vranger, piperofyork, BadHouses *and *L**awless*. If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* July 31st,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.


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## Louanne Learning (Jul 3, 2022)

*1692*

(649 words)

White-haired Old Hannah had always attracted suspicious gossip, but she never did wrong by me. She lived alone in a cabin in the woods with her chickens and dogs and all manner of herbs growing in the garden. I would call on her from time to time, and she tolerated me, a country neighbour barely out of my childhood, toting all my wide-eyed questions.

We’d sit in her garden, a place of tranquility, and watch butterflies fly. “How can you abide here all by your lonesome?” I asked one sunny day.

“Very happily,” she replied. “My independence is all I have, and it is enough. It is dear to me.”

Then the sisters Rebecca and Mary Walcott fell ill and insisted it was Old Hannah who had hurt them.

“She looked at me with evil in her eye,” Rebecca said.

“She cast a spell of confusion on me,” Mary said, “—and corrupted my body.”

The gossip hissed around town.

“She shuns folk.”

“She brews potions.”

“She stared at me as her familiar—a large black cat!”

“She dries up mother’s milk.”

“She killed Mr. Putnam’s cow.”

“She spies on our thoughts, and reports them to the Devil!”

I relayed the gossip to Old Hannah. She seemed unperturbed. “Fear blights the human mind,” she said.

“They say you work evil magic,” I smirked, with a throaty chuckle.

Her eyes twinkled. “And what think you?”

That’s why I enjoyed visits with Old Hannah. She always asked me, a mere maid, what I thought. I got no such courtesy at home. “I do wonder. If God is greater than the Devil, why does He allow the Devil to do his evil work?”

She shrugged. “Superstitious mortals are at play, here,” she summed up.

I thought of her accusers with hatred in my heart. “Rebecca and Mary are jealous for attention,” I said.

Old Hannah popped her brows. “Just promise me you will tend to my animals if they take me.”

I rubbed Sport the spaniel’s ears. “Don’t worry none,” I said to the dog. “Mama’s going nowhere.”

But come the autumn, when the burnt-orange oak leaves scurried across the ground, they charged Old Hannah with witchcraft and took her to the jail and put her on trial. Never did she lower her chin.

Evidence was heard, and the Walcott sisters were thrilled to give their testimony of fantastical events.

The magistrate demanded Old Hannah’s confession. She did not oblige. “The Prince of Darkness is your benefactor,” she declared, “—not mine.”

“You must answer to God.”

Old Hannah did not flinch. “I answer to no-one, save myself.”

And with that expression of truth, her fate was sealed. They found her guilty of conspiring with the Devil, and sentenced her to be hanged by the neck until she was dead.

They let me see her. Her gnarled hand took mine, and I felt something pass between us. “I cannot forgive them,” I vowed. “They fly to unjust judgments!”

Old Hannah smoothed my hair, and her warm hand cupped my cheek. “Then learn from their error. Promise me you will always think for yourself, use the gifts God gave you, and see what is really there. Continue to ask questions, and be not satisfied with anything less than sound reason.”

It was raining the day they placed the rope of ignorance around Old Hannah’s neck. The roiling, black clouds seemed as angry as me. My face was the last one she saw on Earth. They buried her in an unmarked grave, in unconsecrated ground, not far from where she was hanged.

The weeks passed, and I made myself at home in her cabin. The solitude was peaceful. Old Hannah’s presence comforted me. I remembered her words.

And I take the wax poppets I fashioned of all those that killed her, and into them I stick long needles. One can hope.


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## Riptide (Jul 7, 2022)

Reptilians


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## Matchu (Jul 8, 2022)

REASONABLE SOLUTIONS @650.  *Offensive and graphic warning*

The conspiracy guys all have kind of like, they have, they have like the basic levels of education.

Like the one guy, I recall, after his degree - went to work on daddy’s chicken farm - walking up and down 100 000 chickens provided him satisfaction in lifestyle. The same lifestyle shared by me, reading nourishing literature among lockers when he said ‘tea break’s over, gentlemen’ and I stood to walk down among 100 000 chickens. I was handsome then, wore a boiler suit. Nothing ever gave me the same pleasure as wearing the boiler suit. A visitor to the farm - I wore my boiler suit to the farm gates, the perk of a job, like a fisherman wearing yellow Wellingtons.

I know a lot of the people, a lot of the conspiracy people enjoy computer games. The farm job was the same as any computer game but it is a real game, a man indulged fantasy on this earth. That’s what they do, they do forget about my six sheds on the farm, each one an identical shed, maybe a level? Each one like the camp bunkhouse.

I walked the concourse, unlocked the side portal of a shed, stepped into machine room, donned my gas mask, feet dipped into detergent, opened the second door.

Voila!

A blast of regulated wind slapped me in the face, and pitch dark like stepping hell or a graveyard with no lamp posts. All around – feet, feet around your feet stood chickens, I think so, I sensed chickens in my eyes because – accustomed to light levels - if we turned the lights on, let’s say with a switch, you are walking asides me now, then the chickens moved around the two of us, so you, and me, and also we as an industry, we keep the lights off to keep chickens fat.

We stepped across electric wires, electric wires controlled private moments. That’s when the games began. The hunt for males. Males, sexing errors, and males are, they were still, literally useless. Our steps through the gloom until I observed one of the male heads poke from the crowd, stepping toward him without him clocking on. Yeah, that is right. I don’t know what it is about the males, we farmers get an eye for males. Then we reach down together, you reach down for yourself, and upend, dispatch the fellow, stick him into my dead bag. You ripped his head off. I am laughing at you. You have to retain humour in our line of work.

Put him in the bag, buddy.

The dead bag.

Plastic bag contains dead cockerels, heads, or any dead item for the dead man to collect at the end of the week. The dead man drives the dead lorry.

The conspiracy guy, if he was training manager on that day, walked into our shed, sliced a carcass and located gonads. ‘You haven’t killed any girls today,’ he confirmed, ‘well done, boys’ he congratulated, I liked that treatment. It was inside the locker room where he bored - on and on - from behind his beard - about ‘how do you know the moon is real, it was the Israeli missionaries on September eleven’ kind of the crap the idiots always wail on about it. I thought about my perfect world, people and their mushroom brains herded inside giant sheds, left in darkness.

Another ‘conspiracy man’ worked at this latest venture. Again atypical, and a man, learning to speak from my impression. One thing said: ‘there’s no Covid-19, only sniffle made by the enemy governments’ made my eyes roll in my head remembering to not like him any longer, punish him with duties, stick him into a plastic bag. The French had just this same issue - with their Cargots – living outside of towns in the separate communities, not so many around no longer.

You think about that.


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## SueC (Jul 10, 2022)

*The Interview: October 2024*​
(650 wds.)

The older woman sat in the cell, wrapped completely in a well-worn woolen blanket. A policewoman, seated on a chair in front of her, conducted the interview. Clean clothes had been brought in for the detainee.

“Do you know why you’re here, Donna?”

“No.”

“We found you on the I-35 overpass, naked and holding a sign saying, “Welcome back President John Kennedy.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“It’s called ‘indecent exposure,’ Donna.”

“I don’t think President Kennedy will mind. Nothing about _me_ is indecent, girl.” She chuckled slightly and winked at the policewoman.

“Where do you live, Donna?”

“Under that same overpass. Got me a cot there.”

“So you’re homeless.”

“No law against that either, but I ain’t homeless. Like I said, got a cot.”

“Tell me about the President, Donna. _President John F. Kennedy_, right?”

“He’s coming back. I may have missed him by now, thanks to you all! He’ll be down the road in that black presidential ve-hickle he gots. Such a fine man and good-lookin, too.”

“Donna, President Kennedy died in 1963.”

“That’s what they want you to believe, but I know the truth. And he’s comin’ back. He’s gonna make Donald Trump his VP.”

“Where’s he been since 1963, Donna?”

“Hiding out.”

“Who from?”

“I ain’t supposed to say.”

“You said ‘they’ want you to believe that President Kennedy died. Who are ‘they,’ Donna?”

“Lots of people, mostly news people, but regular folks too. They’re all liars.”

“How do you know they’re lying?”

“Any fool can figure that out. All’s you got to do is think about it, and the answer is right there in front of you!”

“Okay, Donna. Since I’m not too bright, can you just tell me why you think President John Kennedy is still alive?”

“Because he just is. Got a friend who told me he was coming back the last week of October 2024, just before the election, right here to Dallas where his death was faked. I been waiting all week for his ve-hickle to show up. But what showed up was you people! Pulling me off my perch, my look-out spot. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ wrong and you know it.”

“So this friend of yours. How did he happen to know President Kennedy’s plans for the week?”

“My friend, Bobby, said that his older brother John was coming to Dallas this week, right before the election. Bobby said John had been hiding out since 1963. Since President John Kennedy, back then, had a younger brother _Bobby_, it didn’t take much to figure out who they really were.”

“So where can we find this Bobby? Is his last name really ‘Kennedy’?”

“He’s in the mental ward at the county hospital where I spent some time, too. He’s been hiding out there since he was supposedly killed in 1968 and living with John since then; both of ‘em hiding out from the same bad guys. Of course their name’s not Kennedy. That would be stupid. Like I said, they’re in hiding!”

“But John is the only one who is making it to Dallas this week, right?”

“He’s the President of the United States, girl. Show some respect. Don’t be calling him ‘John’ like he’s delivering pizza.”

“Sorry, Donna. _President Kennedy_. And why isn’t Bobby coming with him?”

“Bobby’s not ready.”

“And President Kennedy is?”

“Sure is! It’s the 2024 election, remember? Him and Trump’ll be ‘write-in’s’ on the ballot.”

“Okay, Donna. We’re charging you with indecent exposure. You can’t be running around outside with nothing on, not ever. Do you understand that?”

“Yep. Just gimme my sign so I can get back to my post. Don’t wanna miss a president rising from the dead!”

Naked under the blanket, Donna stood and let it drop to the floor. She reluctantly reached for the clothes, but knew she’d never get out the door without them on. After that, well . . . .


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## CyberWar (Jul 11, 2022)

*The Paradox of Truth (649 words)*

“No, it can’t be… I must be seeing things…” Trevor muttered, shaking his head even as the guards held him down.

“I find your self-contradiction most amusing, Mr. Tyler,” the tuxedo-clad creature in front of him spoke in its grating voice, “For years you have been looking to affirm your beliefs, only to deny them when you finally have your evidence in plain sight.”

“You… You’re not real! You can’t be!” Trevor continued to mutter, staring at the speaker and his reptilian companions who had dropped their disguises.

“Oh, but that’s where you are wrong, Mr. Tyler,” the reptilian reassured him, “We’ve always known the primitive minds of your species are ill-equipped to handle the truth about the insignificance of your kind in the grand scheme of things, as your current state of disbelief in your own long-held doctrines well attests. So we have taken steps to protect you. But every now and then, nosy “truth-seekers” like you start to ask too many questions. Some, like you, even get lucky and discover that something they’ve been ridiculed for so long is actually true. And most of them can’t handle that truth - again, like you.”

“What are you? What do you want with us?” Trevor demanded to know, struggling against the guards.

“To us you are mostly a scientific curiosity,” the reptilian explained, “The social dynamics of evolving primitives and the directed evolution of sapient species are of some interest to our colonization programs.”

“So you are what, anthropologists?” Trevor asked in disbelief.

“Agricultural researchers would be the word I would use,” the reptilian explained, “We are here to study the viability of various novel uses for your species.”

 “And what about human sacrifice, or whatever it is you were doing just now? How do you justify that?!”

“Do you feel compelled to justify yourself to the cattle you farm and eat?” the reptilian shrugged, looking back at the altar-like dais where a naked woman was in the process of being exsanguinated, “The relationship between our species is no different.”

“But why all these lies and deceptions then? Why pretend to be our leaders, some secretive cult, when you could just… farm us?” Trevor whimpered.

“Stress management. Farmers of your kind also strive to keep your cattle ignorant of their destiny to be harvested, do they not? A happy creature is a compliant creature, and that is especially important with species considerably more intelligent than average cattle. Ignorance is bliss, as your own conspecifics say.”

“So what now?” Trevor demanded to know, resigned to the thought of never leaving the grand mansion alive, “Are you going to kill me now?”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t want the general populace to learn that many of their political and religious leaders are in fact reptilian aliens from outer space,” the host laughed a cackling laugh, taking a swing of fresh human blood from his wine glass, “That could significantly complicate our continued operation here. However, I see no reason to extinguish your existence just yet, Mr. Tyler. I have elected to let you go, no strings attached.”

“After everything I have seen here? Aren’t you afraid in the least that I will tell the world the truth?” Trevor was shocked.

“Now that is the least of my worries. The primitive human mind is a wondrous thing, you see. Like your own reaction upon seeing our true forms just demonstrated, your kind has a way of denying the truth even if it sits in plain sight. You will no doubt try to reveal what you saw tonight. Only nobody will ever believe you,” the reptilian explained, reactivating his disguise and reassuming the form of a well-known politician, “Guards, please escort Mr. Tyler off the premises.”

—

Next morning, investigative journalist Trevor Tyler was forcibly admitted to a lunatic asylum, hysterically raving about reptilian aliens disguised as politicians farming humans as cattle and harvesting their blood.


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## S J Ward (Jul 12, 2022)

Intervention (650w)



Thomas looked down into his cradled whisky mug—empty! Just like his life. He reached out for the bottle once more—the cure—waiting upon the occasional table beside his decrepit, sunken armchair. As his hand approached, it seemingly jumped from his grasp and bounced down onto the litter strewn floor of the squat, rolling beyond reach.

His rheumy, blood-shot eyes, broke contact with the loss and considered the hand, still shaking near where the bottle had been. Divine intervention? A super-power? He hadn’t touched the bottle, of that he was sure. What happened then?

A month ago whilst driving home from work, late in the evening, he’d witnessed an accident. The motorway often featured scenes of automobile carnage, he’d seen plenty in his time. This one was different. The vehicle in front of him, travelling at an unremarkable fifty on a quiet road, stopped dead! It was as if someone had placed an impenetrable wall in front of the car, it just crashed into it—crumpled into an invisible barrier.

Thomas had hit the brakes and skidded to a halt, his Ford finishing inches from the rear bumper of the small hatchback. In a frozen stupor he maintained his vice-like grip on the wheel and stared through the windscreen at the wreck. Amazingly, the driver’s door opened and an elderly lady hauled herself from the vehicle, she turned and looked directly at Thomas as if seeking his very soul. Thomas felt the probing of her eyes and forced his vision from her just in time to catch, in his rear-view mirror, the sight of the seven-tonner bearing down on his car.

A second later he’d have been toast. Managing to release his seat-belt and get the door open; leaping from the car in the nick of time. The lorry minimised the Ford to a pile of flattened scrap before exploding. Thomas lay on the grass verge and searched for the woman, hoping she’d had the same idea—to run! There was no white hatchback and no elderly woman! Just his car in flames with a truck intertwined and burning.

Police, an ambulance and the fire service arrived. Thomas was checked over and taken to the cop-shop, questioned and later released, pending inquiries.

Two days later, he intended to return to his work as a Virtual Reality Technician. His wife called for a taxi to get him to the office and he sat in the back of the cab with his briefcase and a morning newspaper. Quite content that he didn’t have to drive. Certainly happy that his chauffeur was the quiet type and didn’t insist on inane conversation.

As a passenger on the road alongside the river, Thomas looked up for a moment, expecting to find his driver concentrating on the road ahead. Surprisingly, the driver was facing him—grinning manically— suddenly accelerating hard! The taxi mounted the curb and made short thrift of the barrier twixt carriageway and murky depths. The car hit the water like hitting a brick wall. Thomas lurched forward and found himself in the front passenger seat alongside a missing driver! The water flooded in and the car sank.

Luckily, Thomas managed to kick the door open and extricate himself from the submerged vehicle. More questioning by the police. Where was the driver? His body was never recovered but Thomas held back and never mentioned that there was never a driver to find.

Three more similar incidents meant that Thomas never got to return to work. A fire at the railway station, an explosion on a bus and a driverless hit and run—he escaped them all.

To protect his family he left home, seeking the life of a recluse and now he pondered the culmination of his work… the invention of Hyper-virtual reality. Something had gone wrong. Hyper-reality fought dirty and God had moved the bottle for Thomas to fight back!


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## TerraLiga (Jul 13, 2022)

*Chief Exec*
(648 words - I hope)


Michael sat nervously on the edge of his chair in the wood-panelled office of Lord Arun's PA.

The rich aroma of pipe tobacco jarred offensively with the sickly-sweet scent of Wendy's perfume. Lightly tanned, tall and striking with a professional posture, Michael imagined how a woman barely into her twenties could have achieved such a position.

His left heel drummed out a fast, silent rhythm on the deep-piled woollen carpet. Taking out his handkerchief, he dabbed a bead of sweat darting down his jawline. Wendy's desk 'phone flashed a red beacon, answered with an instinctive reflex; "Certainly, Sir." She rose from her desk and introduced Michael to Lord Arun's door, stretching her thin, bright red lips into a smile. Lightly tapping the door, she turned the polished brass knob and announced; "Mr Michael Wainwright, Sir".

"Just Michael, Wendy, please. We are all family here at the bank. Take a seat Michael, from?..."
"Risk Management, Sir."
"Of course. Please, sit. Wendy, could you kindly bring us tea, my dear?"

She nodded and reversed out of the office, closing the door. Noticing something in the corner of her mouth in the mirror-polished plaque, she picked at her reflection between the letters of 'Lord Jacob Arun, MBE. Chief Executive Officer'.

"Michael, please tell me about this sudden urgency, son.”
"Well, Sir, I have found several irregular transfers that don't appear to be accounted for in any department, including Risk Management. As you know, Sir, for us to fully apply contingency..."
"Yes, yes, Michael, we have to balance risk, of course. Do you have evidence of these transactions?"

Michael pulled out a slip of several lines and columns of figures, some highlighted, and pushed it across the desk.

"As you can see, Sir, these transactions briefly appear and then disappear from our Caymans management account. I was auditing our accounts and was able to access this one in error when you and your PA were on the islands recently for the conference. It seems they mistook my request for something else."
"I see, Michael, how lucky of you. I'm sure this can be adequately explained. Please ignore it and continue your excellent work, my boy."
"Well, Sir, that's not all. It took me several weeks, but I've traced which account the money is going into."
"How industrious of you, Michael! How sure are you?"
"Unfortunately, very sure, Sir."

A delicate tap on the door preceded Wendy gliding in with the tea tray and placed it on a side table by the window.

"Thank you, dear. Our friend here has been telling me of his investigative work tracing stolen money from the bank, haven't you, Michael?"

Wendy briefly checked Lord Arun, who furtively winked

"I want in," Michael said, almost as a question "and I can help you hide it better. Or you leave me no choice, Sir."

Lord Arun pulled his pipe from the desk drawer, filled it with tobacco and prodded at the mound with his plump finger. Walking to the window sucking his unlit pipe, he motioned to his PA.

"Wendy, my dear, please bring the special biscuit tin. We have much to discuss with our friend."

She feathered out of the room while Lord Arun commenced his pipe lighting ritual, puffing aromatic plumes. Re-entering, she placed the ornate octagonal tin beside the tea tray and removed the lid.

"You see, Michael, we can't let you in. Wendy, here, has your termination package. You leave us no choice, my boy."

Wendy picked out a palm-sized pistol from the biscuit tin, screwed on a small silencer and pointed it at Michael's chest.

----------------------

Across the courtyard, in the opposite wing, Janet shoved the Hoover back and forth, while her work partner polished door handles and plaques.

"'Ere, Lord Almighty is takin' naughty pictures of his secretary again."
"Is he?"
"Yeh, I just saw the flashes of his camera."
"Dirty old man!"


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## BadHouses (Jul 13, 2022)

Hollywood, California (620) (Some language)


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## tonsonenotany (Jul 15, 2022)

The Red Runners (648 words)


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## NajaNoir (Jul 16, 2022)

*Just Another Conspiracy Theory*​

A fire of green and blue danced high above his windshield that night. Though he witnessed the beauty of the northern lights before, Buddy knew he would never get enough. He’d been hauling supplies to remote towns for years and had come to believe the landscape belonged to him, and he, to it.   

Day after tomorrow he’d be on his way home, soon thereafter the ice would melt, and the season would be over. He was already anticipating next year's haul when he stopped to grab a quick bite.   

The place wasn't much more than a hole in the wall, though it had the essentials, and, as it was the last stop on that side of the mountain, he had no other option.   

The long fluorescent lighting shone throughout as if built to nauseate those underneath. Buddy pushed past a sudden wave of dizziness and made his way around the aisles. Only a few people were inside, but they all had that midnight look in their eyes, like they were adrift at sea.   

He grabbed what he needed and got in line.   

A noise outside soon drew his attention. There, face pressed against the window, stood a man looking intently at something. Following his gaze Buddy saw the lights above dim and then blink rhythmically throughout their fixture, reminding him of an eel he once saw at an aquarium. Upon looking back, he noticed the man was grinning at him.   

When he saw that he had Buddy’s attention, the man seized the opportunity to burst through the doors, nearly falling over in the process.  

“You,” he said, pointing to Buddy. “You feel that don't you? That’s your brain being devoured.”   

Without a word, the cashier flipped the switch alerting the manager to the disturbance. An elderly woman in line before Buddy shook her head and sighed, it appeared she knew the man.  

“You saw one.” Gesturing unsteadily at the others, he continued. “They don’t know. Can’t see them, but we can. Don’t deny it.”  

“Mister, you need to go sleep one off,” replied Buddy.  

The stranger persisted. “Parasites slowly feeding off us until there's nothing left, but I'm on to them.” He looked around maniacally, and muttered, “That light you catch in the corner of your eye. The glimpse of movement from the lighting above, that’s them.”   

By then the manager had come over, saying, “Pay him no mind everyone. Always one conspiracy to the next.” Scolding the man he said, “I warned you. I'll have no more of that talk in here.”   

Undeterred, the stranger carried on. “The government knows. They allow it, it makes us weak.”   

With kindness in her eyes, the elderly woman said, “Just listen to yourself.”  

“Don’t you get it?” The stranger snapped. “The dumber the cattle, the easier the corral.”  

Buddy didn’t want to believe him, but the man's sincerity was plain, for he spoke with real fear.  

The manager took the man by the elbow and began ushering him outside. “If it isn't chemtrails, it's aliens. I've had enough. You're no longer welcome here.”  

But he dug in his heels and yelled out to Buddy, “Don't let them get you too.”

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Buddy saw a sylphlike tendril writhing its way along the light fixture. He stood mesmerized, watching it hang down, reaching out for the stranger's neck, growing all the more luminous as it found, and then tightened around it.

Only Buddy seemed to notice.  

The cashier called 911. Probably a heart attack, she said.   

Back in his truck, Buddy believed what he saw was simply fear manifesting. He had allowed himself to get spooked, but in the end felt that he witnessed nothing more than a deranged man spouting a conspiracy theory. 

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Buddy caught sight of something.


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