I was about to doze off despite what I sarcastcally call my sweet, old friend.  Every brick is my tormentor, this cell mock be with it's every creak, it's every groan.   These walls have been with me for years.  Each brick knows me and I know each one intimately.  And today had been an especially exhausting day.  So right after dinner,  I snuggled in with my bottle of stale water, my recently purchased copy of the latest officers poor attempt at a novel, and the peace and quiet of a September night in this god-forsaken hole. 

With a sweet sip of the good stuff, page one.  I didn't even get to the first word, when the Westminster chimes of my well-priced doorbell rang. 

"A visitor? After all these years?" 

I went to the door and found nobody there, only a package wrapped in brown paper waiting for me to adopt it as something new of mine.

I have this thing about packages ... I just have to open them ... and when I opened this one, my life did take its turn.

I pulled the package into my cell through the grate in the door, which was promptly slid shut behind it. No visitor it seemed but instead this. I was so desperate for something, anything that might give me a diversion from counting the bricks again or from having to suffer another novel hastily written by an officer turned amateur novelist that I opened the package without thinking.

Inside was an apple, a small wedge of cheese and a note, rolled up, tied with a ribbon and sealed with a red wax stamp. I began scoffing the apple immediately, It was so long since I had fruit last.

Biting greedily into the apple, juice running down my chin, I pondered on what I had done to deserve such a gift. Perhaps the guard who I'd last paid for a novel. I shan't elaborate on how I paid or these novels, as you might imagine I have little to offer, being a prisoner, but in these last few years I'd do nearly anything for some literary stimulation. Maybe my criticism had helped him get published and this was my reward. Certainly, I hadn't seen him again since then.

I moved onto the cheese then, broke the wax seal, undid the ribbon and began reading. As my eyes reached the bottom of the page, the remaining cheese stuck in my throat and I felt rather ill.

So, they'd finally done it. They'd poisoned me, the last of my kind. I suppose by now it was a release really, I was almost grateful. As the light faded from me and I began to sink into blackness, I felt a spiteful joy that they'd never be able to benefit from
my insights, that society would be left to continue it's horrid path of self-congratulation and consequential stagnation. As if ignoring all their faults and mistakes could make their lives better.

I died then, the roll of paper falling out of my hand. It's message plain to see to whoever would find my body.

Death to the last critic! No longer will people suffer under another's judgement! Death! Death, to you and your kind!

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Here's a challenger. The Package is the same short, short story over and over. Same intro ... more or less, including but changing the underlined items ... and then telling the tale of what you find in the package ...

Any takers ...

rt

updated Sep 25 by TheRiverTalker