Stray Country - Season 1 - A Carousel For Pigs - Chapter 2

Halloween night.  Four hours from November.  Jack-o'-lanterns flicker on porches.  Leaves fall from the trees.  The street is washed in all the milk colors of the moon.  And the trick or treaters have thinned to nothing.

 

A reverential hush has descended on Eastmoor Road after the passing of one of their own.  Neighbors are tucked back into their warmly lit homes to think on the lost bits and pieces of a woman named Mary Brogan - here only this morning, now plucked out of the fabric of humankind.

 

Mary Brogan.  The only smoker on the street.  A woman whose arms were lifted and lugged by a company called Phillip Morris.  A woman known for hoisting her automated knuckles, her marionette arms hauling tar and tobacco and the soft red glow of a cigarette.

 

Billy used to walk past her house nights and see her Marlboro Red blinking on and off like a radio tower.  The signal is gone.  But as Billy passes her house tonight, his ears tune into something else . . . something that sounds a lot like radio static.

 

A white plastic sack, fluttering in her willow tree . . .