MY TOWN'S CURSE

My town is cursed, and has been for as long as anyone can remember. We’re a small community, far away from any large town or mid-sized village that might bother us. I think that’s why we were the perfect target for whatever malevolent being decided to mess with us all those years ago. None of us can leave this town to try to escape the curse. We all try at some point in our lives, walking along the main highway that leads into and out of town only to end up smack dab in the middle of the town square. Some spend days trying over and over as if the hundredth of two hundredth time might be the magic number that allows them to escape, but none do. So, day in and day out, we go about our boring little lives as if nothing is wrong, repeating the same conversations, pretending each new day is a new possibility, and generally trying to keep each other sane. We aren’t even quite sure what year it is anymore, how long it’s been since we were cursed. I know that I was born shortly after it, as were many of my friends, but it seems that once we hit adulthood, we stop aging. It’s hard to tell how old we really are. But all of this isn’t the curse, as much as it feels like one, only the symptoms of the curse, you see.

The real curse is what the older townspeople refer to as Forewarning. My friends and I just call them Prints. You see, when a person is going to die within the next 24 hours, a set of footprints appears in the spot they will die. Since no one ages outside of childhood, we know that whatever death is coming will most likely be a horrific accident. Prints don’t appear often, and it can be hard to know who they are for, especially when they appear in public places. There’s a tension in the air for hours after when that happens, everyone holding their breaths, wondering if the Prints might be for them.

“Well, Warren,” you ask me, “why don’t y’all just avoid that spot for the next 24 hours?” Well, friend, we can’t avoid it because when we try, the footprints simply move. A few months (years?) ago, old Joel Morrison tried to avoid the footprints that appeared in his kitchen one day. He stared at those soot-black prints that he instinctively knew perfectly matched up with his feet and decided to avoid his home for the next couple days. Instead of saving his own life, he just prolonged his fear and possibly his death. He spent days being followed by footprints, trying to leave town and reappearing in the town square too many times to count, before collapsing due to dehydration. We’d all tried to stop him, to calm him down and make him just accept that it was his time, but he wouldn’t listen. In the end, the spot where he collapsed on was right over a snake hole. He’d been bitten by a startled cottonmouth and started seizing on the spot. Now, not everyone is so sensitive to cottonmouth venom. Joel just got lucky, I guess. He died in the hospital later that day, the skin around the bite already dying and Joel himself bleeding from every orifice, even from the beds of his fingernails. At the foot of his hospital bed was a pair of footprints.

But, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m writing about this now, since we’ve been dealing with the footprints for years. Well, earlier today, as I was walking through the woods behind my house on my morning walk, and I came across a clearing that wasn’t there yesterday. It was filled with hundreds and hundreds of footprints, all spiraling out from a center completely blackened by sheer number of Prints there. The number of footprints there seems like it could be the entire town. What will happen to us, I don’t know. We have less than 24 hours, I’m sure. The only clue I have is the writing I found carved into a tree across from me:

Veniunt ad nos. Sunt pulchritudinem. Nihili sunt.

So friend, I know that my time, our time, has come to an end. I just ask that you remember me, in some small way. Remember my story, and, if whatever is going to happen isn’t unique to my town, let this be a warning to you too.