Tea Party

When I came back from walking the dog, everything had changed. Deteriorated faces looked back at me with mouths that hung open because they no longer had the strength to close. I was motioned to a dusty chair, noticing the thick cobwebs that stretched from the underside of the table to the floor. My breath came out in hacking coughs with the dust that flew up from my chair and the floor.

 An ancient thing I imagined was female judging from the ragged clothing, offered me tea from cracked pottery to which I acquiesced for some unfathomable reason. The putrid brown sludge she globbed into the cup nearly made me vomit but she drank it willingly and even daintily. Two more of these impossibly old beings joined the table, and something I took to be a clothed skeleton sitting on the couch made a rusty mewling sound, raising an arm emaciated enough to look as though it would break just from the movement. The woman gave him a cracker completely black with mold which he ate rapaciously with the sound of clacking jaw bones and teeth.

 They looked at me intently yet I could not distinguish who they were as age had made them nearly sexless. Only when the ancient woman attempted to smile at me--Dear God! Her milk colored eyes looked directly into mine and I knew who they were.