In a room with three king-sized beds, a woman writes a letter. The letter itself is three pages long, each page the size of the beds. The paper is black and the lettering is a pinkish-red, but the words are nothing I recognize. Each letter or word is an intricate pictogram of spirals and dashes. At the head of each bed is a window. Late afternoon sunlight falls upon the black parchment, partially bleaching the letters.
"What is it?" I ask, motioning to the mysterious words.
"A cursed reply," the woman answers.
A man stands at the doorway, agitated and nervous. He paces back and forth, occasionally glimpsing at the letter, but then looks away, shuddering. The woman draws out white translucent parchment to lay over the pages of the letter. The sky outside grows dark and the man hurridly draws the curtains. The only light now comes from the open doorway and a small lamp on a table nearby.
The woman hands me an instrument with a long wooden handle that is etched like an intricately carved bedpost. At the end is a hollowed out brass bulb. Inside this bulb, there is warm, white substance that looks like sugar or salt. She takes a brush, loaded with red dye and stirrs it with the white substance until the resulting mixture looks like hot red wax.
"You must help me copy this letter."
But as I raise the brush, ready to paint the white parchment, the windows fly open, extinguishing the room's light. Bluish-white specters swamp inside, howling. When they touch me I feel pain.
* * *
People have said that skim milk spoils faster than whole milk and that whole milk spoils faster than cream. And butter is practically indestructible. But whole milk supposedly contains more nutrients for bacteria than skim milk--so shouldn't the whole milk spoil faster (I wonder what Einstein would say about it)? I hope somebody with time on their hands will perform this experiment to confirm this.
Anyway, I found some information on how long dairy products should be kept if they are refrigerated: Hard Cheese - 3-4 weeks Soft Cheese - 1 week Cottage Cheese - 1 week Cream Cheese - 2 weeks Whipped Cream - 1 month Milk - 7 days ice cream - 2-4 months Butter - 1-3 months Buttermilk - 7-14 days Half and Half - 3-4 days Eggnog - 3-5 days Margarine - 4-5 months Pudding - 2 days Sour Cream - 7-21 days Yogurt - 7-14 days
