This town I happen to be stuck in for a year has one odd ritual. Every February second a spell is cast over the town and all those who come in contact with it. This spell is sometimes strong enough to drag the weak of mind out of their beds at two o’clock in the morning and stand in the cold while cult leaders, wearing black suits and top hats, dance around a fiberglass log.
Located within this fiberglass log is a fat rodent that I believe they breed to ooze some kind of pheromone to direct more people to it. For hours the arriving victims are hypnotized by one of the cult leaders, who carries around a giant clock and commands the audience to dance around and chant, “Hey Ben, what time is it?” and mock them by forcing them to repeat–which I am sure is only for the cult’s sick pleasure–“Hey Ben, how cold is it?”
Hours upon hours, as the temperature rises and falls somewhere between ten and ten below, the drunken males float through the waves of people and the occasional cloud of smoke rises above the crowd that I can only assume is to dull the overwhelming power of the pheromones.
Upon the time the claim to release the vermin, they distract the audience with bright lights, the Pennsylvania Polka, and a parade of more of the cult members. After they announce the each member of the “inner circle,” which I am positive is symbolic seeing as circles never end, they pull the groundhog out of the fiber glass log. The most disappointing part of the entire ordeal is that they don’t even sacrifice the bastard! The head of the “inner circle” talks to the animal and apparently, it talks back claiming to predict the seasons! Miserable from the overall experience, a train of zombie-people slithers through the town back to their beds, drained.
I’m sure there is a deeper conspiracy here but I myself am too drained to figure it out.
