For six generations, my family has lived in this village.
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Full transcript of For six generations, my family has lived in this village.
For six generations, my family has lived in this village. For just as long, we've followed one rule: never look at the monsoon dancers. Every year, during the monsoon festival, they appear. Figures in ancient folk clothes and heavy wooden masks, dancing through the muddy streets at midnight. Their music is beautiful, haunting, but warped, like a melody played on a broken tape recorder. Last night, I broke the rule. I had to know. I peeked through a crack in my window shutters. The dancers moved with an unnatural, perfect synchronization. As they passed my house, the music abruptly cut out. Every single masked head snapped to my window at the exact same instant. The leader slowly reached up and removed his mask. Beneath it was no face, just a smooth, blank expanse of skin. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Then, that blank skin on his head tore open, a massive vertical gash, and my grandmother’s voice whispered from within: "I told you not to look.