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The music box sat on the shelf for years until he walked in.

For the first time, I paid it any attention. Today the lid was up and the tiny pink ballerina was spinning along to Lara’s Theme.

I think it caught my attention because it was not the tune I was sure it played the last time I heard it playing.

It had been a long time and I distinctly hearing the box playing when my Gran was alive. To make it worse I was sure the ballerina was green back then.

How could my memory be so faulty I asked myself?

Then the weirdest thing happened. The music stopped and the ballerina was looking straight at me. Her expression had changed to a malevolent grin, the longer I looked the more I seemed to be taken into the box.

Suddenly there was a bang and the lid had been shut, with me inside. In the darkness, I could not see any avenue of escape. In the distance a new tune was playing, “Hello, Goodbye” the old Beatles tune. Had to be an omen I thought.

Then a light appeared in the distance and I found myself walking towards it, expectant that at the end of the tunnel I appeared to be in there would be a satisfactory answer.

As the light grew nearer, the music played louder and was deafening by the time I reached the doorway into the light.

Blinded by the light I felt hands pouring over me, I was lifted off the floor and floated across a space and was unceremoniously dumped onto the floor.

I was lifted to my feet and in the background “Amazing Grace” was being played.

A voice announced: “Mr James Footer, deceased Green Grocer.”

There was a muttering of voices and the floor beneath me opened and down I went.

It was during the descent while listening to Mozart’s Requiem that I began to understand what had happened to me and where I was going. My mother always said the bad apple would be found out and float to the surface, or in my case into the furnace.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/first-line-friday-31-03-17/