I'll never forget the day the scissor man came. Total carnage. There were a lot of us then, couple of hundred easy. We were everywhere, I mean you couldn't walk through the room without kicking up a few of us, and we loved it. We were happy, not a care in the world, and we thought it was going to last forever. It didn't quite work out that way. You couldn't have asked for a merrier bunch of guys. All we wanted to do was party, bring good cheer, and maintain a festive outlook. If you had told me before that day that we had any enemies I would have said you were crazy.
Then the man with the scissors came through. It's never a stranger, that's what they say, and in this case they were right. We knew the guy. Hell, we figured him for a friend, in fact he was kind of like a father to us. Oh yeah, occasionally he'd kick one of us a little too hard, send us into something sharp, and we lost a few of our boys that way. But those were accidents. We knew that was part of the deal and we didn't hold any grudges. Nobody lives forever. But that was nothing like this. Nothing like the day he came with the scissors. Nothing could have prepared us for that.
I was looking at him when it started. He picked up Edgar in one hand and started pulling at his neck, stretching him out. It was grotesque. Then he sorted of pinched him off there, by the knot on his tie. That's when he pulled out the scissors with his other hand. Snip. Slit his throat in one motion. Edgar went flitting around the room, spinning crazily, hissing in his death throes. It was kind of comical, in a way, actually, but I stifled the giggles. I realized it wasn't going to stop there when right away he reaches out and picks up Harry. Same treatment. A quick pinch and a stretch of the neck, and then the snip. Harry didn't go out with any more dignity than Edgar did. Whizzed around the room, bouncing off walls and ceilings before landing in a crumpled heap, motionless. Dead. It was like the air went right out of him.
He still wasn't finished. He went through the room, calm as you please--methodical, you might say. Pinch, pull, snip. Pinch, pull, snip. One by one, we all went down, all of us. All except me. I rolled behind the couch as soon as the reality of the horrible spectacle hit me and tried to lay low. I'm still here. Maybe he got it out of his system. Maybe not. I'm not taking any chances, because I'm the only one left who can keep the party going. I'm the last balloon.
