Just scenes from somewhere close to home (Part 1)--- Contributed by @warpedpoetic

stach.pay (60)in #story • 6 years ago (edited)

The chairs are scattered about the room, broken, dusty and sweat-stained. Iron springs jutted out from between rusty, torn foam that spilled out from the tattered chair covers like a wound in some alien flesh. The chairs used to be brown but the brown had slowly turned to gray with age. On the edge of one was a brown stain that looked like rust, which looked like blood.

The carpet peeked at the cracked concrete that still served as the room’s floor. In some places, charcoal stains had managed to rub the edges of the concrete and the stains had spread slowly to patches on the wall. The wall paint had faded from white to a sort of milk that was on the verge of becoming either a dirty yellow or a pale brown. Cobwebs mixed with old ash hung from the ceiling like chandeliers but no beautiful light reflected from this hanging beauty. Rather, dead insects, dead rodents, and spider eggs hung like miniature Halloween decorations from the cobwebs.

The low table in the middle of the room reflected the sunlight that peered in through the half-opened ceiling which the storm of two weeks ago had opened like the open veins of a suicide on its cracked chipped face. Two empty bottles of beer stood on the table silently watching several flies swirling about in drunken flight on their open lips. A gas lighter sat beside them as well as a pack of cigarette, a half empty bottle of cough syrup, a half full bottle of Coca-Cola and two rolled up joints.

The whine of the zinc spilled into the room and the shadow of the loose roof swung on the wall like the wings of a huge bed of prey. It hid the snoring form that hugged the floor in the mindless bliss that alcohol gives. The form scratched the eczema on his stomach and snorted then he turned and resumed the cacophony of snores that complete the scene.

_{Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash.}

The dirty torn lace curtain on the window fluttered and a huge hill came into view; a mount of debris, trash, rot and memories. The stink climbed into the room and the room embraced it and rubbed it all over the walls.

Tiny figures trudged, ankle deep in the filth, seeking for gold, for silver, for bronze, for iron, for dust. Their noses were covered and the smoke of burning fires shrouded their forms to the eye. They appeared this moment, then the smoke closed the view like a curtain and they were gone. There is no sound, no singing, no talking, no mingling, just mindless hunger and misery. The land is green.

When we have become saints,
We will tell God that we were alive,
That when we felt our limbs go numb
We woke it with pinches and slaps
And paid people to keep us awake.
We will tell him that needles became lovers
And smoke became the sun.
Will it matter?
After all, are all
The saints not dead?

The little girl rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and yawned. She stared at the street as it woke and slowly crept passed her.

The smell came first; the waste disposal men were passing, rolling their wheelbarrows filled with the rejected carcasses of old meals, broken toys, forgotten clothes and memories best left alone. She pinched her nose together with her left index finger and thumb as she watched the men wobble silently passed.

They seemed like ghosts as they passed in the morning air that still suckled the dew from the breast of the night before. They seemed like warriors returning from battle, carrying their beloved dead along. Every few seconds, the cry filled the air;

To be continued...