Last One To See Me Dies

Five hours into clearing out my grandmare’s old house, and I had ended up in the attic. There were a bunch of old boxes there, and because it had become dark outside, the only lighting in the room was from the ladder leading into the garage, and from a single circular window in the top of the farthest wall.

One of the boxes had an old phonograph, an antique record player that could scrape a few bits into the bucket at auction, or sold to an antique store. Another box had an old rug poking out of it that was so covered in dust that I couldn’t even get close to it without breathing in the fumes of the probably decades old fabric. I would have someone else see to that.

Something that both really intrigued me, and seemed severely out of place in my grandmare’s attic, was an old digital camera. It didn’t look nearly as old as any of the other relics in the rest of the boxes. I jokingly tried to push the power button with my magic, expecting nothing to happen, but miraculously, the thing turned on! “Damn, this thing’s batteries must be as old as the camera itself. There’s no way they could still be working,” I said to myself in the partly empty attic.

I tried to see if there were any photos in the old camera, but the dusty screen flashed with the sign, “No pictures taken”. That was odd. Someone had to have taken a picture with the thing at least once before dumping it into a box, and leaving it to rot in my grandmare’s attic. It was strange, almost as if it wasn’t a normal camera, but it sure as hell looked normal enough. I shrugged it off as simply the feeling of weariness from a hard day of sorting, packaging, unpackaging, and repackaging.

I slung the leather strap around my neck and allowed the camera to dangle from it loosely before heading downstairs and getting the rest of the stuff I had claimed from my grandmare’s old belongings. I had a single box, which paled in comparison to what some of my other relatives had taken. My Great Aunt had taken an old grandfather clock, my dad had taken a collection of unique vinyl records, and my Grandfather had claimed most of the furniture from the second floor.

But me……. I only had a single little cardboard box. A box full of things that I held dear. Not only because they were mostly antique games from my grandmare’s childhood and old movies, but because that meant that even I had something to remember my grandamare by.

Everyone else had something they would either sell for money because of its value or something they could keep for either the memory or the rarity of the item. I gathered my things for the same reason I was now keeping the camera. I could use them while also remembering my grandmare through her things.

I levitated my box of new belongings in my magic and headed out the door, which brought me a new problem. I had no way to get home. I didn’t remember how I had ended up on my Grandmare’s front lawn, which meant I didn’t know if I had driven my car or not, which meant I either had to look for my car, or hitchhike along with one of my other relatives.

The moment I stepped outside the house, I looked up at the sky. The day had turned to night while my relatives and I had been clearing out my grandmare’s house. Luna’s full moon shone brightly in the clear, cloudless void of the night. I felt a sudden heat around my neck, which left as soon as it had come. Strange. It was almost as if the camera had suddenly heated up for some reason. But the air was crisp and cool. It was a normal Autumn breeze. There was no reason for anything to suddenly become hot.

I shook my head. My weariness was getting to me. I looked up from my camera and my mouth flew open. There in my grandmare’s driveway was none other than my car! There was no way! I didn’t remember seeing it earlier, unless I had been blinded by the fear of retaliation from my family for my mother’s death. This was insane! First, that thing took control of Shining Armor and allowed me to escape a mental facility, and now my car had mysteriously appeared in my grandmare’s driveway! There was no logical explanation for any of this! Nothing made sense anymore! All these deaths, the black smoke, Shining Armor, and my car, none of it had even the slightest bit of sane, reasonable logic to it!

My head dropped into my hooves, and I almost dropped my box from my magic grasp. I sat in my grandmare’s driveway for a few minutes, trying to get my head to stop from exploding. I was thinking about this too much. “Don’t worry about it with an enphous on IT ,” a voice in my head told me. It was my inner voice, but something was off. I shook my head again. “I really need to get some sleep,” I said under my breath.

Once my head stopped pounding, I got to my hooves and got in my car. This was too crazy for me to handle while also under the effects of sleep deprivation. I had to get home. I had to get some sleep. I had to not worry about it.