Dead Children Stop Playing For Ungrateful Audiences

News report of an orchestra of ghost children who return to play after their untimely demise.

Photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash

A summer ferry on its way home to the coastal town of Mer Pointe sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic on the night of July 20th, taking with it the community’s entire pep squad. No one noticed that their children did not return from their concert performance until the morning.

It was then, in the dawn that felt so much like midday, that people started seeing the bodies washing up on the shore. The sea had been decent enough not to strip them of their ornamental garb.

Out of respect, the press did not capture photos of the collapsed loved ones in the sand mourning their loss. There does exist one single everlasting Snapchat of a duck-faced shoobie, and just behind her a man raising his daughter out of the waves — her trumpet spilling water down his body.

When asked aggressively to delete it, she surrendered that it had already gone live.

The small coastal town held a community funeral to lay their children to rest. Head plates, chiseled gold with the name of the dead, their instrument, and a quote by a close relative, set as a constant gleaming reminder of what Mer Pointe, as a whole, had lost.

The cemetery is on the highest point in Ohio Bay, facing away from the sea toward the town, Crest Inlet, with its mounds fertile and sprawling. Eighty-five* graves occupy the fenced off area of The Children of Music Memorial Park. Survivors ask that you not enter or disturb the area.

But in late September, storm clouds danced in and ghosts drifted up from the waves to frighten the devastated shore folk. To the town’s astonished horror the children had returned.

Their beautifully decorated outfits had taken a sour turn beneath the coastal waters and what was once red and gold, was now green and black like the growths covering their skin.

How would you describe the music of the dead? Would you use words such as soulful, everlasting, macabre? If so, you would be wrong. Their music was terrible.