The village elders warned me never to sleep on that black wooden bench,
because it was a "corpse bench," used to prop up the heads of those who died unnatural deaths.
When I was five, I didn't know any better and slept on it once.
In a daze, I heard someone calling my name, each time closer than before.
Twenty years later, I returned to the village to sort through my grandfather's belongings.
Inside a hidden compartment in that bench,
I found a sheet of yellow paper bearing eight names.
Mine was unmistakably among them,
and beside the first seven names were tiny blood-red coffins.
