I Came Home

I walked over the broken pavement, on my way to the Western side of town. It must have been around eight in the evening. The Sun had set. The cinema seemed out of business. All the shops were closed. The restaurants, empty.

The lights weren’t working—most of them were off and the rest were dull or flickering. There was not a sound to be heard aside from the distant crashing of the waves and the snapping of the bones breaking as I walked over them. From afar it may have seemed as though the city was blanketed in snow. However, it was only the bones of the decayed bodies of the deceased inhabitants of the town.

Every building, every house around me was crumbling. Each street I walked through looked the same as the previous. A stranger would not have been able to navigate through this disintegrating town. But I was no stranger. I knew this town like the back of my hand. This town was my creation. Every shop, every café. Every saint, every sinner. Every plant, every animal, every person. Everything was mine.

I passed the old police station. The sound of the waves had completely diminished, yet the bones under my feet only increasing in number. The sound of every crack and every crunch resonated through the street.

Everything I saw was black, grey, and white. The trees that once lined the streets had fallen over as their roots stuck out. I walked past the park where children once played and families held picnics. It now looked like a dump yard. A dump yard for the deceased.

The town looked like Death. It smelled like Death. It sounded like Death. The town went from everything I was, to everything I am. It was in sync with me, it resembled me.

I stopped walking to look across the street. There was only one gate there, tied to which there was an untarnished sign board: The Graveyard.

It had been centuries.

I was home.

And I was Death.