Wasteland

A hue of silence settled upon the ashy sod – vapid, encapsulating, and absolute – drifting over the land like a shroud cloaking everything in an eerie stillness. Confined on an isolated wasteland - decrepit stones slouched beneath grey skies - hundreds of names, people and memories were all slowly lost to the unwelcoming void of time. Inadequately thrown upon a plain of jittering trees, hail dug its serrated claws into the earth's flesh, like a claw parting fragile skin. Devoid of all life, the graveyard stands as a desolate testament of something that once existed and will never return. 

As the seconds impatiently saunter; I feel my heart pound with a frantic intensity. An unsettling feeling is slowly gripping onto my soul. Something's wrong. What is this place? Why did I come here? I watch as the trees sway ominously in the developing breeze as they huddle beneath the suffocating shroud we call the sky; a musk of death hanging dryly from the trees. Grave upon grave, I uncomfortably wander around, hardly managing to make out letters from the withered cracks and crevices, between the mounds of lichen and moss. I listen as a noise – like a distant whisper carried by the wind – pierces the silence, melding an eerie symphony that bewitches the atmosphere. And me. 

A nostalgic sense washed over, a flurry of youth, from my childhood village - a euphoric landscape bathed in the golden luminescence of the sun; where the children and townsfolk pranced through the serene valleys adorned with palatial flowers. The sky was a sweet sapphire blue, the grass was an opulent shamrock-green, and the warm summer's spirit placed its grip onto the luscious fruits hanging from the branches. The wind sang a mellow lullaby, infusing the village with a lively – almost magical – affection. This place was once a vibrant paradise. At least, it used to be. 

Stop. There's something new. Something beyond the haunting ballads of the wind; beyond the relentless fog; beyond the hails’ icy grip. Something. My gaze seems to uncontrollably jerk across the deathly landscape before I can steady myself. Involuntarily, a particular grave cultivates my attention. Its stone, once bold, now sits a muted grey, bears the scars of the centuries laid behind it – or so it seems. Faint cracks veined its surface; its sharp edges had slowly withered smooth. Moss clung to its base, ever so slowly creeping upwards in a determined advance, as if it were slowly being reclaimed by the earth.  

I can't seem to move - yet I have no clue why. No matter how fiercely I try to pull myself free, my limbs seem to be constrained to the ground by the chains of my anxiety. All that surrounds me is a caliginous smog of grey ... and the grave. I can make out the sonorous melodies of the wind twisting into soulless harmonies as something subtle presses against my back, edging me on as I try to cautiously brush the grime from the tombstone. My hand slips right through it. An indelible glimmer tremors across the rock’s surface – like water clattering underneath a flickering light. The stone dissolves into static pixels, its texture disillusioned to the void. The grave - it’s a holographic echo of what once existed. Fake. A wave of nausea rushes over me as the name flickers faintly across the vanishing stone, one recognisable. 

Decrepit, dreary, dilapidated: the enveloping hue of silence remains unsettled. Waiting and lurking to draw another into its ataraxic grasp. Again, and again.