I wake up in a room filled with quietly humming Cērbēræ, dazed and heartbroken. As the small creatures scurry over to me, scenes of my terrible last day alive play in my head.
My mother, screaming through a dead wombat, threatening my only love.
The submarine and the horror of Keyboard's untimely demise.
The antelopes.
I realize that I am sitting in a recreation of my old room, deep within the vehicle underworld. Mom. She must be here. The Overlord always is. I can tell it isn't real because the lettuce on the ceiling is slightly less yellow than mine, although the slices on my bed are just right. The Cērbēræ circle around me, chanting the same song about twelve ducks that Keyboard awoke me with last time I found myself passed out. How does Mother know about the duck song? I wonder to myself. After all, it is she that plays it for me this time. Finally raising my wheeled feet to the floor, I slide through the Cērbēræ and underneath the locked door.
Falling down the stairs for the third time since Christmas Wednesday, I question why I am here in the first place. How did I die? I quietly spin towards the door, hoping my mother doesn't find me. Where did my slinky go? If I've lost it again, then I must become it myself. This has happened too many times, I think as I remove my ribs to return to my spring-like state. In another room down the spiral hallway I hear her voice, probably threatening another young vehicle, but it doesn't seem to be getting any closer. I slide under the door and out to my getaway vehicle: Jeffrey's firetruck. Pedaling away from the prison that my mother lovingly created, the tiny Cērbēræ wailing in the distance, I feel a psychic transmission from a fire engine that I thought I would never hear again.
"Hello, Keyboard." I say into the night.
