To whom it may concern

It's 2022, and for the month of January your prompt is "New Year's Tradition". Do you let off fireworks, kiss someone on the twelfth stroke, make a resolution, or gaze into dark water to see your future?

Euclid Daganfort looked out over the rows of empty graves, leaned against his shovel, and sighed.

Looking north, he could see the winding road that connected Eerie Cemetery to the rest of the town disappearing over the crest of a hill. Barely visible against the darkening sky of a late January afternoon, the last straggling members of the risen dead stumbled along it. The bright colours of their brand-new sportswear contrasted unpleasantly with the grey-green of rotting flesh as they dragged themselves towards the lights and sounds and smells of the living world.

Wearily, he rubbed his face with one hand, calloused fingers rasping against three-day stubble. He sighed again, just to let the universe know how tiresome he found all this, and began cleaning up the scattered mud and soil left by the departing zombies.

As he worked, he was pleased to discover that many of the grave markers were simply crooked, and resituating them in the newly disturbed soil was a simple enough task. Some, however, had fallen completely, chipping or cracking on the stone pathways or knocking chunks out of their neighbours in their collapse.

It was here that he found it, a glossy trifold pamphlet advertising Eerie Aerobicize. "Get fit and have fun!" declared the bold print on the front. "Special offers for new customers: see inside for details."

Euclid Daganfort, keeper of the Eerie Peace Garden, protector of the living from the dead, and the dead from the living, opened the colourful piece of discarded junk mail and signed for the third time that day.

"Get the life you always wanted!" screamed the headline above a pricelist only mildly inflated for the post-Christmas rush. "New year! New you! Visit our state-of-the-art facility for more info!"

"Well," thought Daganfort. "Even the dead are entitled to self-improvement."

Ongoing Verse: Euclid

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Submitted by froodle:

It's the first day of 2020 and already my inbox is overflowing with emails offering "new year, new you." Doppelgangers, evil twins, changeling babies, android replacements - anything surrounding a new (false) version of a character we know and love.

It's 2019, and for the month of January your prompt is "New Year's Tradition". Do you let off fireworks, kiss someone on the twelfth stroke, make a resolution, or gaze into dark water to see your future?

It's 2018, and for the month of January your prompt is "New Year's Tradition". Do you let off fireworks, kiss someone on the twelfth stroke, make a resolution, or gaze into dark water to see your future?