A cold, windless night where the air was still and limen blanketed the desolate cliffside. The cliffside rose far above the glasslike sea, the water leagues below voidlike and the waves strangled. Roaring silence was all one could hear, every fragment of life absent. It was like every aspect of the world had been brought to a cadaverous pause. Not a haggard raven streaked the sky, not a miry worm wriggled about an ashen corpse. No breaths even polluted the air with sound. The only sign of what must have been life was an insignificant, aged shack perched tediously on the bleak cliff, threatening to fall at any sudden moment. A single candle flickered into being, illuminating a gaunt face. A face with a pair of dark, enervated eyes, an overgrown beard and a limp, wordless mouth. The shadows danced about his face like laughing phantoms, and the lone flame did much to illuminate him. His breath formed a frigid fog that hung in the air, suspended by some incomprehensible force. The clouds of living breath billowed in the air until they were ensnared by the weight of it, still. The skeletal hand that held the cold brass candelabra tightened as the man stepped out from the decimated home. His sunken, lifeless eyes flitted about as subtle fear soon washed over him. His eyes searched the lifeless terrain around him, and in his search, he found nothing. Where were the vibrant, delicate blooms nestled in the long dead planter beside the ruined porch? What about the violets that were the favorite of his bloodless mother? Even the daisies she had mustered were wilted and gone. What about the crude doll that his guiltless sister frolliced with every brilliant afternoon? No little hands clutched it more as it lay untouched on the path. The man felt nothing upon these discoveries. No icy tears ran down his wilted face, no memory echoed painfully in his empty head. He was devoid of sorrow, joy, grief, or even normalcy. His steps were muffled by the deafening silence as he walked down the stone path. The hairs on his famished body raised from the cold that he hardly felt. The only warmth he felt was the searing wax that dripped down onto his hand as the candle burned. Every step made his body feel more and more weightless, even as his feet remained fast on the earth. No dust was kicked up by his boots, it was almost as if the earth itself was sealed tight. He walked to the edge of the cliff, staring into the horizon. The line where the sea met the sky melted into one, and it was not possible to tell where one started and the other stopped. His eyes wandered. His eyes wandered from the horizon up into the empty sky. He was met with an aberrant sight. Nothing. The sky was a smooth, blank vacuity, where not even a single star shone. As far as he could see, he could see nothing but darkness. The sky was as empty as his failing brain, starved of light. Where had all of the light gone? His eyes did not part from this sight. In this moment, acceptance was all that he felt. The candle burned until it died in his fingers. The cooled wax hardened in streaks down his hand as the light succumbed. He was left alone there, the world motionless and without a star in the sky. |