“Just think, Muldoon – our very first X-file!”
I covered my ears, but I knew it wouldn’t help. Sally’s a cute bit of fluff, but once she starts talking in exclamation points there’s no turning back. You’re going to do what she wants you to do sooner or later. So, you might as well take it and like it. I turned to the death trap at the back of the cavernous garage.
The corroded tin box looked like a mad scientist’s version of one of those kiddie rides people rent for picnics. To operate this one, you wound a large crank, then convinced your marks that they’d win a prize if they could crawl through the open-ended cylinder in the center of the box in thirty seconds or less. But once the patsies had clambered into the drum, their weight tripped a spring that flipped them into the front of the box. Depending on whether the front door was closed or open, they either wound up “in jail,” or they tumbled out on the ground giggling and disoriented.
That’s the way it was supposed to work, but here something went terribly wrong. The first body sprawled almost upright in the open front bay as if flattened against the far wall by a giant fist. Her left arm reached skyward. Her lips curled back from gums dried to the color of blood, frozen in a scream of ontological despair against the meaninglessness of existence and the consequent certainty of oblivion.
At least that’s how Fox Mulder would’ve put it.
From “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space”
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