“I took the boxes home and started going through them one by one. Each dive into the box called-up a distant memory from deep inside the vault. It was a flood of reflection that drowned me in both nostalgia and uncertainty. I could recall places that I hadn't thought of in decades. I could feel the air, smell the smells, and experience the emotions welling back up inside.”

“Were these real memories? After so many decades tucked away up a ladder, through a door, across a room, inside a box were dozens of memories stuffed together burning through my psyche once again. How was I to best preserve their memory and my own? I didn't want to just give them away, but had no intention of continuing to store them. What needed to be done next was ascension by destruction of my polysynthetic friends that comforted me when all seemed strange and what I now know was trauma boxed away for years to come. So what’s a boy to do?”

“Burn them all. I set them on fire. I set myself free. Not of the trauma, but of the attachment that it ‘had’ to be part of me. Love, desire, childlike innocence, all the things we associate with stuffed animals burned to a crisp for the sake of sending pain into the ether.” 

- Justin Nolan Key