Lonesome Souls - Tales of the Souls, Vol I

Proem

7 Mirage Street in Presborokum, Central Zemjia

Surreal silence resonated throughout house number seven on Mirage Street. Even a gentle whisper roared. Death, as if this silence saluted her, arrived like a phantom. She did not speak. She only came to spread her truth to yet another mortal whose hourglass of life poured the last grain of sand.

Arina Turan, who led on the floor of the dark parlour, also knew death was near. In desperation, she held onto the gold thread of memories or what remained of them.

Until they were no more.

Mortal life became insignificant, yet the emotions held onto the reminiscence of the past.

Until those emotions, too, evaporated.

Helpless and static, she remained on the floor, in the same place where she fell a few minutes ago when a fatal heart attack seized her chance at greeting another day. Without a single sound or a moan, she waited for her departure. Yet that last, heart-wrenching exhale had the power to pierce an eardrum or even a heart of stone.

Flesh to dust.

Ragged breath to nothing.

Grave eyes seeing to not seeing at all.

Mirthful laugh to silence.

Life was only a distant spec of light; already gone, yet still visible.

In the middle of the commotion stood a woman. A mere marble statue was it not for the slight heartbeat. A black satin cloak concealed her from spectators. Yet mortals could not see, and the dying were too weak to recognise.

Like a stoic, she watched while a black, colossal king cobra slithered on the cream carpet towards Arina's frail body. The snake seemed at least five metres. Its forked tongue extended, and the forks transformed into a funnel three times larger than its head. Then, with a blurred movement, it sucked out the soul from Arina's mouth. No matter how much the soul struggled, as soon as the tongue grazed the skin of the dead, the soul surrendered. Inevitably, a white portal unravelled and snatched them away from the world they did not belong to anymore.

Once the bedlam settled, the snake's slimy scales stroked the skin of the cloaked woman's arm as it trailed towards her back. It halted once its weight dug into the woman's spine. In its place, a stitched art of a king cobra appeared on the cloak, reaching from the first vertebra to the coccyx.

With an inaudible sigh, she averted her gloomy eyes away from Arina's defocused irises and walked out of the house, just like a stoic, with no remorse. Yet a tiny, wet trail on her cheek glistered in the light, which escaped the narrow gap of the closed curtains.

Outdoor, the symmetrical street continued as normal. No one knew of the saddening events, yet the overcast sky, which poured rain onto grass, splattered with golden dandelions. Proud apple trees on the right danced in the wind and waved goodbye. Behind the apple orchard, parks adorned by bright tulips, from radiant parrot to elegant Didier, decorated Arina's way to the afterlife. A vast display of poplar trees bowed in melancholy amongst crescent-white terraced houses on the left.

Its uniformed front gardens, a cheerful, flowery display but one. The front of house number eight mourned. Its black walls, fence, doors, and windows were a death's lonesome, it seemed.