| Having gotten wind
of the soon-to-be-built play-park, the children of Rockclift had come to
claim their inheritance early, many of them even going so far as to dance
on the ashes (much to their mothers' dismay!).
I shouldered my way apologetically to the front of a group of people gathered
around what now appeared to be an Olympic-sized grave site, and looked
down into it where they were looking.
There, standing like a short, fat version of the monolith from 2001, with everything around it either melted or reduced to a fine white ash, was all that remained of the Rockclift First Church of the Gadarene: the safe. If somebody didn't come along and claim it soon, someone quoted Myrt as saying, it would be 'dozed over with the rest of the basement, and buried forever beneath the children's play-park. Hoping I wasn't too late I excused myself, and ran off in search of Myrt. I needed that safe. I had to have it to protect my manuscripts, upon which I had labored many long years, and which had become extremely valuable to me, determined as I was to finish them, or else die trying. The only thing I worried about was fire; I was obsessed by my fear of it. But after such a graphic demonstration of just how much fire this safe could withstand unscathed, I knew it had the power to liberate me from the nightmare of my terrible phobia. That safe, I said to myself, would probably survive a direct hit on the cabin by an atomic bomb! To my amazement I discovered I was the only person in the whole world who wanted it. Thus having no competition, I was able to purchase it for a song. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get it up out of the basement, across the graveyard, and through the forest to my cabin before day-after-tomorrow, when the bulldozers were scheduled to begin. |
