Carbon monoxide

I live in a land full of lonely friends. On my street there are no stray dogs, only overfed cats and by the time the mail arrives early in the morning, the streetlights are already shut off. Families have died in these houses. There was a whole block contaminated by a carbon monoxide leak. Twenty families died in their sleep and for days letters piled up in their mailboxes after the streetlights shut off. They still had smiles on their faces when those who claim the dead and dying came for them with cellophane and tape. Be careful! CO is odorless, tasteless and colorless: it is the dream gas. My house is a good house and even though I do trust it, after the twenty families died I had a SERVICE come out and tell me whether my house was really as trustworthy as I thought it was. Can anyone imagine how relieved I was when the SERVICE told me it was the most honest house they had ever met? In this land of flowerless fruit trees having your trust rewarded is rare enough that it merits celebration, so I bought a cake, so sugary and sweet I could only nibble on it. It lasted me for weeks and now that I come to think of it, the entire time the cake sat in my refrigerator getting nibbled away daily by my sensitive mouth, I received no mail. This is of no major significance, receiving mail has always been, in socio-historical perspective, very overrated. I do admit though and not without a little bit of a guilty conscience, to my secret delight upon receiving my first letter in weeks. It was my neighbor wishing me well from his vacation destination. He said in the letter that he was visiting a land where fruit trees bear flowers, great masses of them, blindingly colorful. I allowed myself only a passing moment of jealousy and then flushed the letter down the toilet. It is undignified to leave traces of such things. [Sometimes the closets rattle and the pipes break.] When my neighbor returns, I will have many things to tell him with words as odorless, tasteless and colorless as CO. Perhaps it is better I say nothing at all, perhaps I should swallow my words like alphabet soup, talking is sometimes far more lethal than any gas and this land has no mercy for imprudent lips. Then I shall have a party, with all of my friends. It will be the loneliest party there ever was, but there will be no cellophane and there will be no tape.