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- Feb 12, 2007
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My second life began not far from where my first ended. I awoke with a noose around my neck, lying flat on the back of a cart beside dozens of corpses. They were bloated, ugly things of various shapes and sizes, not fit to be gazed upon by human eyes. As I stared at them, the stench struck me – a mixture of excrement and rotting pork, which would surely have undone bladder and stomach, were both not already empty. Somehow, I didn’t scream. Perhaps it was the shock of it all. One instant I dangled from a rope, feeling my life ebb away; the next, I was alive again. What occurred between those moments, I couldn’t say, save that remarkably, my neck had healed. I was never a religious man, but such an act defied any explanation I could think of. And the reason was an even greater mystery. Thinking on it, I found I couldn’t even recall why I’d come to wear this noose. Why would anyone execute a mere baker? And what had become of my wife and son? I had to return to them. Yet were I to flee immediately the driver would surely proclaim me a demon or a devil risen to make mischief and I would never see my family again. As my profession often reminded me, patience was everything.
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