I was incredibly bored.

"Happy birthday to me. I'm a hundred fifty-three. But I look like I'm sixteen, so somehow I must be," I sang in a whispered voice. Yay. My birthdays are the best. Sitting upside down on my ratty old couch with only me and my thoughts. Now that's fun right there.

I sighed and rolled of off the sofa.

Someone rang the doorbell. Wait, there's a doorbell? And it still worked? This building has been here longer than I have.

I opened the door to see Alli standing outside. Her hands were behind her back, holding some unseen object, and her hair appeared slightly tussled by a recent breeze. "Hi Bill!" she smiled.

"Uh, hi?" I stammered. "How do you know where I live?"

"You practically walked me here that night we had burgers, and then said 'bye'," she recalled. "What are you wearing?" she added, eyeing my suit quizzically.

Right. I was still wearing that thing.

"I don't know..." I responded, which was simpler and made quite a bit more sense than anything else I could've said. She flashed me an odd look. "So..."

"Happy birthday!" she announced, holding out a tray of cupcakes. I took them, and immediately, she darted off. How did she know it was today?

I shrugged and went back inside, shutting the partially rotted wooden door behind me with my foot. I entered the kitchen, and noticed a calendar on the countertop. Probably from the 90s or something. It was opened to June, and someone had circled the box of the 23rd in red marker. I smiled to myself. That was today, except maybe twenty years later.

Yesterday was Summerween. Nobody ever stops by my house for candy, and all my friends from highschool have gone off to college and are probably dead now, which caused me to not even try to make new ones, so I don't celebrate anymore. I don't think I ever did. But Summerween was invented during my lifetime, so that's cool. I think sometime near the 1920s.

I noticed the toppled cookware and spilled ingredients covering the counter from when I tried to make a meal for myself earlier today. Well I couldn't cook, so I just screwed it and ate lunch at the Spawn of Satan, the bar where I had the run-in with Cade before my date with Alli. Weird name, huh? But hey! Got a better name for us?

I popped one of her cakes in my mouth, and it was delicious! The frosting tasted homemade, too, not like that cheap stuff you buy in the grocery store.

A wave of sudden tiredness. It was just one, but food, no matter the quantity, makes me want to sleep. It's strange.

I yawned and lifted my arms above my head in a stretch as I stumbled into the living room, where I collapsed onto the sofa.

Instantly, sleep hit me.


I stared out the rounded window at the small, still-developing town illuminated by burning sunlight.

I sighed and decided to venture out to the kitchen.

I still needed to eat breakfast, and I did have an extra slapjack from yesterday. So I fixed it up along with a batch of insipid Indian meal, and washed it down with a swig of bottled cow.

Then, even though I had every last detail of it memorized, I pulled out the note Mommy and Daddy had left. It was all they had left me. Besides some awful memories of them with patches of skin that had been missing, revealing their muscles and bones. They were an unnatural shade due to what I believe to be their rotted flesh, and I remember them looking dead, but still somehow moving and talking, telling me that they loved me. The memories stop about three years ago, when I was almost four years old. They had just vanished.

But Oswald says I'll see worse things in my lifetime. I believe him. I like Oswald. He has a good risibility, despite his occasional seasoning.

The note told me to take care of myself and visit the tavern if I need anything.

Once I finished eating, I leave the building, gently shutting the door behind me.

After a while, my house can get to be exceeding boring, so every now and then I leave the skirts and enter the main part of town.

"Hallo Billy!" Mrs. Corduroy greeted. She had long brown hair that flowed down to her waist, and, even though I was almost as tall as her at a mere seven years old, she still seemed ages older. She was the only woman in the town, as she was the only one bold enough to make the wagon journey.

"Hello!" I chirped in response.

"How much belly timber'd you get?" she smiled.

The town was small, and everyone knew everybody's business. That being said, sometimes it felt like the whole town was trying to take the place of my long gone parents. They all knew that they weren't around any more, but only me and the others who congregated at the tavern knew exactly how my folks went and why. Oswald says it's because once two demons have a child, they slowly crumble into nonexistence. If they were to just die on the spot, it would throw the entire universe off balance and everything as we know it would end.

No one knows why they have to die at all, though. I never want to have children.

"I ate good his morning!" I replied happily, returning from my thoughts.

As I continued to venture onward, I heard her mutter something that sounded vaguely like 'little angel'.

Not quite, Mrs. Corduroy, I thought.

"Hey Bill," I heard a familiar voice greet. I turned around to see Daniel Corduroy, dressed in nothing but Levi's.

I flickered him a small simper.

"Where y'off to?" he pestered.

"I don't know," I lied. "Well, I suppose where I usually go."

"Oh." The boy, who was only older than me by three or four years, kicked a small pebble absently. "Why do you always go there?"

"'Cause Oswald's there," I stated simply.

"You know you're always welcome at our place. Sometimes it feels Mom likes you more than she does us."

"Okay..." I wasn't really sure where to go with this.

"See ya 'round, I 'spect!" he said merrily before skipping back across the dirt road.

Now to get to the tavern.