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So there was this hole.

People said that it was older than sin, but no one really knew. It swallowed every word you spoke into it. Even if someone crouched down next to you, so close that your stubble brushed their ear, still they’d hear nothing.

People whispered their secrets into the hole. Maybe it was the shape or maybe it was inside each person, but still you always felt that at least you’d told someone.

There was a photo of Henry Ford speaking into the hole. They say his fingers were white as they clutched its edges. He spoke for hours and was seen to cry.

So that was just great, and everybody liked it. People came from all over, it was in the guidebooks, with a little icon that meant ‘attraction,’ and a single dollar sign, which meant it was very cheap to do.

A spring, down the hill, burbled up everything that anybody into the hole. No one minded, because its secrets were those of the last century, things spoken into the hole by people’s grandfathers. With their out-of-date fears and ridiculous synonyms for fucking their stories were more amusing than sad. Also, it was in real time, so it wasn’t like you could look and find what Babyface Nelson had said to the hole.

It was just what somebody’s aunt had said one afternoon, one hundred years ago.

Why would anyone worry so much about such a thing?