Tag: Depression

Purgatory

https://pixabay.com/photos/theater-bratislava-old-town-6066228/

The harsh brightness of the midday square angered him. Even the fountain stood dead before the theater, colorful banners hanging breezeless above it, hallmarks of the latest empty dance of gauze and orchestral cacophony. Sweat beaded in the furrow above his eyebrows, daring him to mop it away with the napkin crushed in his grip.

He reached for the bottle again, the gesture oddly aimless, groping. Why were his eyes glaring at him from that warped sky? The artificial moon above reflected gables stung his cheeks like seaspray. The street dimmed through dusky glass belied its stillness, demanded the bustle of crowds and music and life. He shook his fist at it for its twisted pretense.

It should remain empty, an exoskeletal tomb for what was. What morbidity to lash himself with this scene, this memory. Not even ghosts remained to share a toast. Only frozen heat to layer dust on old chalices.

The clang of a solitary coin met the pavement, pulled from his pocket with the price of the wine. He let it spin to stillness in his wake, payment over a dry river.

Sunset

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The deep rays surrounded her, burning deep into her skin. Her tears were flame, paths of umber scoring her cheeks. She screamed at the sea below, at the calm waves whispering against the rocks. Her hands trembled on the railing, knuckles white and stiff against the gray wood.

Where was the peace promised? Where were the crashing waves swallowing the cliffs? Where was the roar of raging wildfire on the horizon? A silent disc floated on a raft of molten gold, bathing in her pain. The roar inside her soul grew, tinting the gently waving leaves with its inferno. Her eyes ignited in the sun, searing the tears from her mind.

The memory of his hand was a phantom on her shoulder and she whirled to empty air. Flame faded, leaving black emptiness. Charred and crumbled, she lay staring into the fading glow of stone that cooled but never turned to ash.

Apocalypse

The bomb hit at sunrise. Shards of glass melted into the asphalt, like black ice waiting to land me on the flat of my back. Twisted metal beams hung overhead, barely visible in the greenish haze that should have been sky. I couldn’t breathe.

Debris filled my vision, the emptiness overwhelming. The whining creak of frayed steel grated on my awareness as the beams cast weird, indistinct, swaying shadows into the ash. I shuddered, unable to step over them as if they were as tangible and insurmountable as their counterparts above.

The clatter of falling brick jerked my gaze painfully to the side, and I gasped into the wind. Smoke threaded into my lungs and I clutched my throat, coughing desperately for what oxygen remained in the thick air. The bomb would kill me yet.

I tripped over the layers of blackened sheet metal littering the street as I stumbled back the way I had come. I had forgotten to put on boots when the bomb woke me, and the metal sliced through my toes, blood drenching my sock. I clutched at the wounds in fetal position, wailing like an infant. My cries mingled with the creaks and rattles and drifting smoke until no other thoughts penetrated. I slept, utterly spent, alone in the silence.

The bomb came at sunrise and I lived death again.

Empty

https://pixabay.com/photos/ruin-monastery-graves-fantasy-3414235/

The blast zone was eerily quiet. Sophie walked slowly over the dead ground, footfalls crunchy in the charcoaled remains of the world she had known. Her heart thudded, as loud as the sobbing breath heaving in and out of her lungs.

Already long shadows fingered the valley, shades of glory made barren. The time between first light and sunrise was pitifully small, but it was her only chance at leaving the Settlement. The Conclave allowed no one into the Barrens. First offenses meant time in the brig; second offenses meant one ration per day for a month and exclusion from assembly for a year. This was her third.

They had thought the plague would be the end of everything. It was the reason the Settlement had formed, deep in the mountains with rules designed to prevent infection and preserve a pocket of humanity. Sophie herself had spent a month in quarantine outside the border after plague took her parents. They had remained on their own land in the shadow of the monastery, cared for the sick and frightened, but with them gone there had been nowhere else to turn.

She wished she had stayed; Hell had arrived within weeks of their deaths, ending the suffering of all outside the Settlement. Leaving her alone. For two years on the Day of Purification she had snuck away to their ruined graves, her tears the only memorial left to give. For two years she had been caught by the Conclave and ostracized. This year they would Purify her in the square, though nothing remained to be cleansed, her soul as empty as the excoriated land.

Tears of the Cyborg

I walked through the empty rooms, no footprints visible but mine in the soil-thick dust covering the floor. My steps echoed thinly from the metal cabinets lining every wall. My ears tingled from a faint hum that could be felt more than heard, and an occasional click or whirr felt like a church bell in the silence.

Double doors, windowless and cold, jerked on clogged tracks into the wall, exposing thick darkness tinged by a faint red glow. I took a ragged breath, my chest aching with anticipation that bordered on fear. Two agonizingly slow steps carried me over the threshold, and I strained for every shred of light to illuminate the room’s contents.

The whirring and clicking surrounded me here, along with the faint gurgle of some sort of liquid, and a steady drip against a puddle. As my eyes adjusted I could make out the source of the red glow, clear tubes filled with a luminescent fluid snaked toward a single point against the far wall. I walked toward it, a shape materializing slowly as I drew near.

The whirring grew louder, and I could make out exposed gears, wires, and pulleys against a narrow strip of white somehow untouched by the dust that pervaded the place. A little closer and something moved; I jumped backward with a compulsive squeak as a pale, expressionless face rose to view, colored only by the glow of the tubes that culminated behind it.

A crack appeared at the edges of the face, and a light breeze fanned the loose hair at my neck, obviously the reason for the lack of dust on what I could now see was an old-fashioned dress collar. A drop of blood-red liquid spilled from the corner of a dark eye and rolled down the delicately human cheek to drip on the floor. Another followed it, then another. The lips parted with the whir of gears, and a mechanically female voice spoke incongruously through their stillness. “Is it the end?”