Tom

RS-5
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I was 5 years old the night lightning struck Mrs. McClacken’s tree. A chunk of it fell onto our side of the fence. The next morning, my father picked it up and took it to his workshop. He said Mrs. McClacken was an evil witch and she ate the fingers of little boys to stay alive. He said I needed something special to protect myself from her witch powers.
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Mrs. McClacken was very old and she had yellow teeth that looked like fat pieces of corn. Her house was as old as she. The neighborhood kids would tell stories about how she had a family and kids. And then one day, she snapped and killed them all. But I knew better, she was a witch with a taste for little boy fingers.
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The next morning, I woke up and found a little rounded wooden object on my nightstand. It had my initials and age written on it; RS 5. I took it to my father and he told me this was my enchantment and that if I held onto it, it would forever protect me from Mrs. McClacken. I took the enchantment and tucked it between my belt and pants and it never left my side again.
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I spent that summer fighting hordes of 10-foot tall, bug-eyed monsters in the wasteland city of Maljeton. Giant mounds of garbage were processed in machines that ground the waste and churned out monster after monster. They carried little sliding pieces of metal that looked like cigar cutters and had coin-sized holes in them. The monsters walked around collecting little boy fingers for their witch queen.
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One day, I was looking out my window and into Mrs. McClacken’s yard. I needed to know when she was coming and going. I had fingers to protect. That day I watched her come of out her house. She was dragging a burlap sack that looked too heavy for her frail frame. She dragged the sack to the tool shed in her backyard. I had to know what was in that bag. I waited until nighttime.
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I jumped the fence and carefully made my way to the shed. It seemed darker than usual outside. The grass was waist high and everything in Mrs. McClacken’s backyard looked like a shadow figure waiting to grab me. I held tightly to my enchantment and opened the door to the dilapidated tool shed. The bag was sitting in the middle of the room. I bent down and opened it. Inside there were hundreds of little boy fingers. All cleanly cut with blood drying bright red. The door closed. Mrs. McClacken was standing there with a cutter like the monsters had on Maljeton. She smiled and I saw her teeth and they were glowing bright, bright yellow. The last thought I had was… my dad is a fucking liar.