Protest the Hero Follow

Down the street half a block away, in a familiar place regular people agree with each other in smoke signals. Brought together to burn the thing that brings them together, each in turn interprets the law as aging with its eyesight failing. Sitting across the tables spending nights talking about other nights, our eyes unclose like books we've read twice. On the shelves lined with spines, the dust collects as scattered ash from an urn unturned, spilling over with somebody regular. And other such regulars cry ghost and boast of the friend of a friend who saw a strange sight, or heard a strange sound, who now whispers tall tales of murder most foul. The scene hits the moon with a rise from the shelves, alive on the myths of ordinary people past: somebody's little girl dreaming of the things she reads, or the monsters in her bed who hacked her into blood-meat.