The sounds of the dead. Recited in autotune.
Sally was a large girl, but the only thing she could ever eat was cauliflower and barley. We kept her in a stable for the duration of each winter, beyond the pastures and around the mill. I remember each morning bringing her out into the yard to graze while I churned butter for the morning breakfast. She liked to wear 3XL anime t shirts, and roll around on the ground giggling and barking playfully. I used to feed her potatoes as a treat for "being good" which was like a fetch or catching a wild turkey. She always wrestled with the turkeys, thrashing wildly on the lawn while running in circles.
The family loved her. She was the talk of industrial warehouse by day, and snug asleep in her fluffy bed by night. Then one day the sounds came, such horrifying sounds, at strange intervals in the night. Mice began dying, completely stiff after rigor mortis had set in, throughout the house and without pattern. Their eyes turned completely red, straining to understand something terrible before their doom.
The sounds become more frequent, like a door opening on a rusty hinge, but with the clicky texture of a bat. In the winter, however, the bats were always hibernating. This was something much worse. Sally got sick. As I was sweeping the kitchen in the morning she fell down the stairs and sat their heaving for at least a half hour before screeching at the top of her lungs. She couldn't speak, naturally, as her mouth was used generally just for eating. I tried dribbling some mashed potatoes into her mouth using a funnel, but she just rolled over and began to vomit profusely.
This just would not do. So, on the coldest winters night I dragged her out of the house using a tarp and some elbow grease. A wheelbarrow was then used for further transport. Sat her down at the windmill, threw some potatoes in a bucket, covered her with the tarp and left. I slept soundly that night knowing that she was not here. The mice began to live again, at times vicariously. It seemed that evil had stopped.
I did forget to feed her but that was just one time. I would watch her from the window while she sat shivering by the windmill. I used a large slingshot to fling bails of hay from the window so she could eat, occasionally buckets of water but mostly she just ate snow. One day I awoke to find a group of mice surrounding her in a semicircle, dead. The crickets were next.
In the night, their weird dinging and bugging, ceased violently, and I felt her staring at me through the window to my bedroom. I tried flinging several more bails of hay from the window mounted slingshot, one connected solidly with the side of her head and she spun around again to balance herself, sniffing the air furiously. Detected? Definitely not detectable, not from this angle.
Now, she wasn't especially leashed, she just wasn't one for movement or any sort of exertion whatsoever. The goal was to get a leash and attach it to her. Couldn't find it, but hey, I had a rope already so I just figured I would use that. Tied only her front arms together and tied that to the post. When the struggles began, the post was wiggling before starting to crack. This windmill just couldn't handle the immense force of such a beast.
The screeching began, and again, more potatoes wouldn't do anything for her. The effect was seismic and the post finally snapped, the windmill pathetically tipping over, as it was not a sturdy foundation to begin with. She did something amazing then, she began to walk on her hind legs. She even appeared to be having fun as she hopped through the snow and ice, skidding on a pond, screeching the entire way. Further through the field, another appeared, identical to Sally, and they frolicked into the woods screeching in the winter night with absolute glee and no restraint.
I contacted an institution to discover exactly what Sally was, and why these events had occurred. The professional stated that her diet was poorly construed, and that she may have eaten more cheese whiz. Particularly, these creatures are known for frequent, low distance migrations to forage through cabinets, officially. Sadly, Sally had to be apprehended as she was embezzling a pack of American cheese, she was hit with a tranq. She continued to eat the cheese as she went into a deep slumber, fighting the effects of the chemical it would seem.
Sally awoke with a spotlight directly upon her. She tried to move her hands but they were bound behind, as she sat awkwardly upright in a chair, her spine contorting with obvious discomfort.
The sound of applause.
