Awoken Among The Dead
by: David Michael Campbell III
You don’t know how it started,
How it came to be this way,
For nothing from before the Awakening
Can be recalled to mind,
Almost as if it had never even
Existed to begin with, but who knows,
Perhaps it didn’t…
It all began as your eyelids,
Oh, seeming so heavy after what a journey,
Flutter open, and trying to comprehend your
Surroundings, you sit up, and feel something
Warm, and oddly vacant of the life it once
Brought.
You do not need to glance down to
Realize it’s the reddest of all bloods, not
Even beginning to dry yet.
You lay in the grass of a large courtyard,
Tall, rubble style buildings tower around
You and stare down fiercely with flaming
Exterior features.
But between the blotches of blood and
Garbage littering the once beauty of the
Courtyard, lie bodies,
Scattered and torn gruesomely,
Projecting the most grotesque of images
That man can imagine.
Weak stomached and unable to take the
Misery, you double over to vomit, but hold
It down with a gag or two when you
Realize you are starring into a fraction of cracked
Glass, and you vomit anyways, not capable of
The will power after seeing your own face.
You wipe your mouth from the rancid
Taste with the sleeve of your white coat
You wear, linen and matching long, scratchy pants.
Trying to recreate the reflection of your face
In your mind makes you wish you had never
Woken up, although that should be the
Least of your reasons why.
You recall a bald head, infested with long,
Bulging scars and veins, seeming as if they will
Burst all over the rest of your scalp.
Your nose is crooked and tilted slightly upward,
And as for your mouth, the corners are stitched
Sloppily and barely, disabling you ability to
Fully open your mouth.
Your eyes seem to be the worst remark
Of horror, for no pupil exists on either of them,
And the surrounding area remains bloodshot and
Hinting a slight tone of yellow, fading into
A whitish blend of colors towards the center.
Shakily, you hobble up and plant your feet
Firmly on the ground.
A quick scan of the surface area shows all
The limp, lifeless bodies to have the same
Features of yours in a general sense, and also
The exact same apparel, looking past the difference
In blood splatters and various tears and wounds.
You look up at the buildings, only to
See more bodies hanging over the edges of the broken
Windows far above, their arms swaying in a some what
Gentle sort of breeze.
Foundations look as if they are starting to
Crumble and collapse.
Flames flicker throughout, randomly, and
Other then the occasional crash or bending of falling
Concrete or steel, silence fills the
Crowd of the dead like a plague.
Behind you, three enormous crosses stand,
Burnt, black, and blowing away with the whistling wind
As ash and faint traces of smoke, spiraling upwards.
One, crisped skeleton like body is stapled to
Each of the crosses,
Jaws hanging open in an endless scream,
Eyes nothing more than pits of everlasting
Blackness, just as their nimble, twig like bodies and
Limbs portray quite sickly.
Shocked, you stumble back and fall over one
Of the thousands of bodies, only to make
A sound similar to that of a scream, and jump back up,
Then hurry out of the courtyard and
Crashing down a door into one of the skyscrapers.
You curl up in a blood soaked corner and
Cry in your hands, and think in between sniffs
Of sorrow: “Where am I? What am I?”, for
Because of your monstrous voice and identical
Appearance to the dead things, gender cannot
Be determined.
After all this trauma, you cannot take it,
“For how had it come to be such as all this?”
You think as you start to climb the
Stairs up the building, maneuvering around bodies
And gaps that lead all the way back to the
Ground below.
“Why must I be the one to endure this
Purest of all tortures?” You think as you
Perch yourself on the windowsill, the
Jagged glass sinking into your already blood
Covered, bare feet.
And with the extension of your legs, you
Go flying through the air,
The leap of faith, the tragedies of buildings
Pass by in a sudden blur of vision,
And as you become eye level with the three burnt bodies,
Hanging form the crosses, time seems to slow,
Almost to an utter stop.
A whisper escapes your stitched mouth,
And a tear flows from your cheek.
“Why have all these people died?”
Suddenly, the first body on the cross opens its
Mouth, and yells in a raspy scream:
“It hath cometh when all of mankind
Had seemed to begin to deserve all that
Hath rained down upon this land!”
And its jaw slowly closes and does not
Move again that you can easily tell.
You look over to the second body on the cross
Just as it speaks in the same voice as the first:
“You, out of all the others that lie before me, have
Been thought to have the richest, strongest soul,
Although, now as you fall, I doubt us three had made
The right assumption,” and just as the first,
It closes its jaw and stares far ahead at
Nothing in particular.
You don’t even have time to gaze over to
The third body when it speaks in the same
Pitch as the first two, although much less polite:
“Why have these people all died, you ask?
Aye, well they have done the same as you
Are doing right this instant, youngest one!”
And all three skeletons mouths open
Crookedly to utter a hardy, yet quite terrifying
Screech of a laugh as you near the ground.
Nothing more is remembered.
No feeling of impact or pain.
The Others have told you it was quite the
Same experience with them as well,
And although they have no one more to watch,
Effortlessly trying and killing themselves, all
The same way,
They do enjoy the company of one more, just
As they always have.
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