Alarmingly Strange Stories
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Dan gently lifted the ruin man out of the box and held him up in front of the group, and they stared at him in the dim evening light. It had been three weeks since they had first seen him, but even now they were awestruck. His smile broadened a little as they muttered praise, but except for that his face remained the same, calm and serene, eyes closed. His neck was truncated close to where his shoulders should have been, but it was bloodless, smooth and rounded, like it had grown that way. "Does anybody have an offering?" asked Dan. They had taken to bringing little gifts to the ruin man, small trinkets that they arranged on the ground like a makeshift altar. "I do," whispered Bianca. She fumbled in her pocket and brought out a delicate silver pendant on a chain, swinging and catching dim light as it spun. It was a tiny horse with wings. "It was a present from my father," said Bianca, biting her lip. "It was the last thing he ever gave to me." Bianca's father had abandoned the family when she was eight, leaving her with her mother in a one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Salinas. Eventually Bianca's mother had gotten a job in Monterey, near Seaside, where she moved in the hopes of finding a safe place to raise her child. Bianca dropped the pendant and it fell to the concrete with a pitiful tinging sound. She muttered praise to the ruin man. "One day," said Dan, "The ruin man will lead us out of our poverty and help us overthrow this oppressive system. What else could he be but a god to guide us? What else could he do but help us be free?" The group sat in silence for a while as the ruin man smiled down on them and the fog continued to drift overhead, soft and wispy like the cotton nest in the cardboard box. * . . . . . * . . . . . * Amy broke the silence by reaching into her own backpack and pulling out a package wrapped in tissue paper. "I have another offering," she whispered. Amy was a skinny girl with very short red hair that stuck straight up from her scalp, making her whole head resemble an apricot. "What is it, Amy?" Bianca leaned in curiously. It was a large, strangely shaped package and she had no idea what it could be. She hoped it would be a worthy offering. Skeptical, independent Bianca was now fiercely devoted where the ruin man was concerned, a true believer in three weeks. Her science and reason had no explications for the ruin man, no justifications for his existence. After a period of denial and then hysteria she had abandoned both science and reason and settled down. Although she had never heard the ruin man speak, she believed that someday she would, when the time was right. "I found these under a rock next to the ruins," said Amy, tearing through tissue paper. Bianca leaned closer. "They're arms," she gasped. Amy had torn through the last of the tissue paper to reveal human flesh, soft and pink. Two human arms lay in her lap, each one truncated near where a shoulder should have been but bloodless and rounded like they had grown that way. Amy brushed the palm of one of the hands and the hand gently closed, clinging on to her fingers like a trusting child. The group stared in wonder. "I know what he wants, now." said Dan. Everyone turned and stared at him, wide-eyed. "He wants us to put him together! Don't you see?" "Well, yeah." Bianca looked around the ruin. "But where is the rest of him?" "Let's look," said Scott. He got up from his concrete block, and began rooting through the piles of debris. Scott, a muscular boy who looked vaugely oriental, quickly sorted through the rubble.

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