Eternal Embraces

by: Emily Conner

Lonesome petals of the blackened bouquet floated down to the stone upon which it sat. The vase had become chipped and scratched, indelicately carved into the porcelain’s skin. Once bright, the purple chrysanthemums had turned fragile and decayed like the body they comforted. Under the flowers sat a century-old granite slab, with a lively corpse below it. Time had worn away the owner’s name and only the last letter was legible. It had been either 1862 or 1885 when the spirit walked into the glowing gates. There was a quote ingrained in the stone, faded, but completely coherent after so many years; “Man, though dead, retains part of himself; the immortal mind remains.” It brought a voice to the body, gave back the privilege that had been stolen so long ago. While the flowers had been silenced, the stone screamed with the ferocity of its memories.

Past the slab, out of the plot, the garden stretched out into the waking night. Overgrown weeds and grass clambered onto the path, covering it with its raw madness. Abandonment did not suit them well, and they had since taken to rioting. Roaches, which seemed to be the last living thing around, were figure skaters skittering across the icy grass. Mushy and moist, the land had begun to soften and decompose, similarly to the bodies in the ground. Inside the patches of grass, marble statues with missing limbs and bludgeoned heads guarded the gravestones. Most were donations from old French missionaries who sculpted the bodies with calloused hands, many centuries ago. In the garden, cold and foggy air nipped at the rare skin that passed. Bodies bundled up in their caskets to avoid the chilly air. Even the stones seemed to shiver. The cold corpses in the ground were the only thing still bringing warmth to the land.

At the end of the artery, the office of the last living soul sat with its white wood wearing away. Inside the creaking door that barely hung onto its hinges, strewn about papers and ink-leaking pens covered the coroner’s desk. On a file sat a coffee cup, but the grains had separated from the milk and risen to the top of the mug. Next to it sat an abandoned sub sandwich that stunk of a rancid tavern, stained bitter and acrid. Flies and their maggots squished through the lunch and filled the air with the echoes of their hollow feasts. They devoured it like a foreign delicacy. Past the desk, the last empty body bags to be delivered still sat next to the crematorium door. The insides were still soiled with the stench of death, and they seemed to breathe with the frigid air. Steady puffs rolled from their lungs as they fought to stay alive. Out of all the spots on the land, this office, the last place to be inhabited by a living spirit, seemed to be the deadest.

Back outside the office, past the plots and off the path, the metal guard welcomed the land. The iron gates, engraved with swirling flowers and past lovers’ promises, wallowed in its rust, and groaned like a maternity wing whenever it was touched. Although it rarely had visitors anymore, the land stayed joyful in its solitude and languished in the freedom. For so long, wandering footsteps above the grass and the tumbling dirt in the beside blots had tortured the bodies of the land. In their death, the bodies wanted silence, which the acreage now gratefully gave. The gate to the land, comparable to the gates of heaven, protected the habitat and all the ghosts inside it. Over a thousand lives inhabited Dunciad Cemetery and whoever lived in its ground, did so with the magnanimity of a millennium’s memories.