He had slipped through the cracks.
When he was a child, he had made a game. Whenever he walked down a pavement, he would have to avoid stepping on the cracks, or else he would fall through and the game would be lost.
Thus, most of his childhood would see him stepping gingerly on the sidewalks and then giving himself a little applause when he got through that stretch of the sidewalk successfully.
That habit gradually died as he approached the cruel teenage years. It just wasn’t cool to keep acting like a child, and games were something only children played.
He hadn’t intended to bring it forward to his adult years either. Perhaps work had put too much pressure on him. Perhaps his wife had nagged him too much that morning, or his children had demanded too many gifts from him. Whatever it was, it brought him back to the memories of his childhood, and the longing he held for it made him avoid the pavement cracks once more.
But this time, he had fallen through the cracks.
He had imagined this moment many times in his head. Sometimes the sky of the city underground would be a clear blue, other times, when his mood wasn’t quite as good, it would stay in eternal night.
All those years, it never occurred to him that he could be wrong.
The skies down here were a bleak gray.
His laughter could be heard through the crumbling walls.
Ghosts of his glee lingered behind, a pathetic shadow of their original self. The echoes came back detached, completely devoid of emotions.
It was every child’s dream. A whole abandoned city, to explore, to play in. It was all to himself and him alone.
He had been skipping for a few days now; after all why walk when you can skip?
The thought made him joyous.
He hadn’t felt this free, this alive, in years.
It’s been so long… so very long…
He threw up his hands and another boisterous guffaw came out.
But his hilarity was cut short. The slapping of his soles against the ground slowed down in its frequency and eventually came to a halt.
There were people. It was the first time he had seen people other than him.
They looked human enough. They were of the right proportions, the right number of limbs, of eyes, and some even had a head full of hair.
Except that there was something very wrong and worrying about them. They weren’t really like living beings. At least not like him.
They shuffled instead of walking. Their arms didn’t move with their legs, like it was too heavy to be lifted, and so they left it stagnant at their sides. Their eyes were wide, unblinking, their pupils looked like shriveled raisins in a sea of white.
What perhaps was most unnerving was that they said nothing. Not a single word, not even a single sound. It was a complete absence of noise. Never in the history of mankind, could a group that large be together without causing any noise, not even a little cough.
None of them turned to look at him. Not even after he deliberately exclaimed very loudly that there was a bird above them who seemed intent on unloading a cargo over them.
Their feet just kept dragging on the ground, always facing ahead, always going straight, without a sense of direction, without a sense of anything.
He wanted to turn and run. And he did.
No, actually this wasn’t the first time he had seen them. He had met them countless times before. He just hadn’t noticed them because… Well, because they were always there.
Then a memory he had been repressing since he arrived at this strange place made itself known.
“My family?”
Guilt and agony took over.
He stumbled blindly. Every pillar looked the same as the last. The streets wound the same way, the layout of the cobbles were identical. Even the walls seemed to have deteriorated in the exact same pattern.
He wondered how long he had walked. He wondered how every corner could look the same. He wondered how he could get out of here. He wondered where his family was.
“Have you seen my family?” For the past few days, those were the only words that he could say.
Psst…
He trudged on.
Psst…
He stopped.
Psst…
“Have you seen my family?”
Psst… Psst…
“Psst… Buddy. In here. Come here.” A wooden door creaked open, nearly off its rusty hinges, hanging on only due to sheer will.
He half stumbled, half ran to the open door.
“You’re looking for your family? So are we. We are looking for our families too.”
“We’re looking for the way out of here.”
He stepped through the door into a room, a tiny house, maybe.
Then, in the darkness, they enveloped him into a tight, tight embrace. It squeezed out his tears.
“Have you seen my family?”
The sound of heavy boots came from the street.
Eyes peered out of the grimy window. The dirt wasn’t thick enough to completely obscure his vision of the street.
There was a funeral going on.
Was that what the zombie people were shuffling to?
Six undertakers marched, in the way that soldiers do. They didn’t have much room between them, yet they still managed to do so, somehow.
The coffin they carried on their shoulders was either for a midget or for a child.
A child. He had two young daughters of his own. The very idea of it filled him with dread.
He wanted to look away.
“Don’t ever ask them.” One of the refugees of the house had sidled up behind him, silent as ever. He no longer jumped when they appear behind him like that.
“About my family?”
“Anything. Don’t ever ask them about anything.”
He had been waiting. He had been hoping. They were supposed to be his savior. They were supposed to be his ticket out of this place.
It turned out that they were lost souls too. They were every bit as lost as he was.
He went to peer out the window, as was his habit these days.
The endless funeral march.
A different coffin, this time, a full grown man.
“Don’t ask them” Their warning came again. His fist clenched.
“You tell me not to ask them, and yet! And yet… And yet you give me nothing!”
“Where is this way out that you keep talking about? Where is my family?!”
“I will ask them.”
He wanted to shout those words at them. Yell and yell at them till he could yell no more. Till his voice broke so badly, it could never be repaired again.
He couldn’t. He didn’t want to appear ungrateful.
“Don’t ask them.” He nodded.
But his legs moved on their own accord, and before his mind barely registered it, he was already wrenching the door open and running towards the undertakers.
Those in the house didn’t come out to stop him. He thought they would.
What were they afraid of?
Forcefully ripped off its hinges, the wooden door now lay on the dusty cobblestones.
“Have you seen my family?”
They kept on walking.
“I’m asking you a question! Have you seen my family?!” He moved to stand in front of them. If they had to trample on him to give him an answer, then so be it.
The head undertaker, if they even had a leader, gaunt as Death, raised a dirty hand, covered in layers of soil and hard labour, and the party, as a whole, stopped, for a moment.
The lack of emotions on that pale, scrawny face was frustrating.
“I will ask you one more time or so God help you… Have you seen my family?!”
The soft voice reminded him of cob webbed mausoleums and of the dry rattling of skeletons.
“You talk too much for a dead man.”
“I am not dead - !” Distant sounds ambushed his mind. The groaning twist of metal. The gentle, sickening snap of fragile bones.
Blood seeped through the cracks on the pavement.
His arms went slack, his eyes took on a familiar glassy sheen, his once confident stride changed to an awkward shuffling, and he shuffled his way to join the ranks of the zombie people.
The black march went on.
Eyes peered out of the grimy window to witness the somber occasion outside.
The ancient door hung on its reddish brown hinges once more.
A funeral procession. Who would have thought that there would be undertakers in this place?
“Don’t ever ask them.” He flinched. Damn them and their quiet ways.
“Why?”
“Because they will tell you the truth.”
A/N: As you can tell, my blog title was derived from my latest achievement in the art of writing. It's not much, but hey, it's something.
