| abstract | - I've heard of a place out here where I live. It's on one of the backroads of the Alaskan new growth forests in one of these valleys. They say that if you drive down this road on a day when the sun is shining so brightly as to make everything appear black and white, then you might come across a girl walking along the side of the road. She is said to be easy to recognize because whether it is summer or winter she is always wearing a heavy wool overcoat, and a set of oversized headphones like those big Skullcandy headphones you can find in the stores. According to this story, if you drive up alongside her and roll down the window, you might hear her singing. The song, some people around here say, is Rezso Seress' Gloomy Sunday. If you interrupt her, asking the question before she's finished the song, it's said that her answer will be, 'I can't remember,' and that in the next town that you enter you will be arrested for the kidnap and murder of this girl. However, if you were to wait for her to finish and then ask the question, being, 'When did it last snow?' and this is to be asked no matter what season it is, she will give you one of three possible answers. If she says, 'Thursday,' you will continue to drive ahead as if nothing has happened, but though you will be able to see and control your actions, it will be through a thick fog, as if you were asleep. You will live out the rest of life in this empty dream state, and when you die, your soul will be condemned to a black emptiness. If the answer is 'Today,' then you are far more fortunate, you will continue on to your destination without event, and upon returning home, find that your greatest wish has been realized. However, if her answer is 'Last Friday,' then may whatever entity controls our fates have mercy on you. You will vanish for over a year, no one will have the slightest clue where you have gone, and your family, in despair, will give you up for dead. Then on a Friday during the following year's snow melt, your body will be found hanging from an old black spruce in one of these swamps. Your face will have been eaten away and your body in such a state of decay that you'll only be identified by your dental records. Your spirit, however, will be trapped. Forced to walk that road every day when the sun is so bright that everything seems black and white. How do I know this? I have never done this myself, only heard the stories, but I have also lived up here for most of my life. So I can tell you this honestly, six years ago this entity was a little boy. Then they found my sister.
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