Our town is cool in Autumn, the bitter wind pulling us, beckoning us all. Small children are lost to that wind, we do not question where they are led.
The leaves turn several different colours, and so do the bodies in our neighbor's basement, the smell there is worse every day, but especially on Sundays, when the pungent, rotting fruit of a smell is left putrid and vile by the heat. It's always warm on Sunday. The terrible smell is even more so than its typical rankness that cannot be hidden under the sweet scent of bakery treats that the nice neighbourly couple always cook and hand out in our small neighborhood. They know that we know, their crooked smiles tell us so.
We all huddle, shaking, shivering, - it is not from the cold - in front of the cafe where we drink our pumpkin flavoured beverages and eat our pumpkin flavoured food. We pretend not to notice the maggots from the pumpkins still writhing, as we chat with cheerful voices and blank, wide eyes.
I often walk in the forest alone, praying, praying, praying for someone to come, to shout about this oddness that I know is our town. I love the crispness of the leaves; crunch, crunch, crunching as I traipse alone along the winding trails. I stop. The crunching does not.
