Crazy old Mr. Cordyceps, remember reading about him in the local paper when the Humane Society came that one winter and took away all those mangy ponies he had, with ribs sticking out and hooves that needed trimming so badly they were starting to curve around? What ever happened to him, you ask?
He lived in that old house until it got so full of junk he never threw away that there was only room for the mice, then he moved into that old trailer in front, the one covered with the green algae because it was so shady under the big fir tree and it rained all the time. He lived in there with his dogs. In winter he let them sleep on the bed because he had no heat.
The neighbors complained about the dogs howling. When the Humane Society came for those, they found crazy old Mr. Cordyceps dead inside the trailer.
The dogs hadn’t touched him.
His house was full of musical instruments and boxes of doll clothes.
Most of the musical instruments were warped and broken, because the roof leaked and the windows were broken; or gnawed by mice. The neck of the banjo curved like a boomerang, but the trombone worked fine.
The trailer was full of styrofoam hamburger trays, all licked clean. There was a bag of onions, and a couple changes of clothes. There was a stack of notebooks on a table, with the years written on the front in ballpoint pen.
The last entry read, “Everything will be alright, just not in the way you imagine.”