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Tahlia McKinnon
The Children of the Killing Jar
The children of the killing jar live in a vacuum pack. They are the double-‐glazed
generation, brains basking in the heat of best-‐suite splendor. Their bodies are made up
of stale bread and curdled coffee. When they smile, their grins are like a plague, their
sunken eyes advertising ideologies. They spend their lives selling their money and
making a profit – but on this day, as they sit before their screens in silence, all of a
sudden, they hear a voice.
A voice.
The resounding voice of prayer and it rumbles through the murk, like the whump of a
whip, growing more and more impatient. Like salt to a blaze, like zest to a wound, it calls
to them. The air grows sharp as their souls dissipate.
A strong vibration fills the ears that no longer exist in the physical. The landscape begins
to shift around them, the cold concrete vanishing from beneath them, and they cannot
move. The children begin to burn at the core. Their sunken eyes surge with tears as they
attempt to squeeze them shut. Like fire, they snap and crackle. Like rust and bone, they
rot.
Of all nightmares, this is the worst.
Their bodies begin to swell, ballooning into big languid limbs, bloated crusts, prodigious
husks. Like rust and bone, like rust. This must be a test, they chant. Maybe we are
dreaming. They plead. They hope. Hesitantly, they peel back their imaginary lids, the
unmanifested flesh, and finally, the children can see.
They wish they could not.
The children of the killing jar are standing upon the beach, the sand unwelcome
between their toes. This is the first time that they have seen the sea, and it is a
treacherous monster, trying to grope them. The water bubbles and broils underneath
the heat of the sun. The children stare at the tawny titan as it turns the sloping horizon
into soup.
Here they stand, alone with the waves, feet sinking into the sediment, and now they feel
trapped inside this killing jar, this vessel of contempt, drinking in their own fictions. But
they do not cry. They do not scream. They are used to dying in the most violent of ways.
What is their purpose? Nobody knows, as they wear so many faces.
Their bodies begin to flake, and their brains begin to drip through their noses in
violaceous noodles. But they are stoical. They are unwavering. They yearn for human
touch, but as the unfamiliar air becomes closer and closer, their skin begins to pucker
and blister.
They will never grow up; they will never get older. They will turn to ash but will not be
scattered, and they will not be mourned for. Instead, they must plant their truths into
the soil, and then coil up, like little slugs.
And in a flash of suburban dust – they are gone.
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