Out of The Gloom

They were everywhere. Humans, scattered among each other covered in dirt and grime, wrapped in sad tattered rags worn for clothing. The raggedy clothes hung limply from their bony limbs, looking much more like cobwebs than anything else.

I found myself gawking at the grotesque sight before me, watching with utter abhorrence as moving skeletons shifted over bodies. Unmoving bodies. Dead bodies. Of a mother. A father. A sister. A son. A child. An abandoned infant....all cast aside as the remaining people clung to one another, all equally cold, starved, and decayed, clinging feebly to each other until finally, they were forcefully separated from another. All awaiting their turn to be tossed like a rag-doll into the seething fire blazing from the many incinerated flesh and bones, polluting the air with the foul stench of death.

Then soon after the fires were extinguished, the ashes were collected and all the miserable, dead mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, old and young, were carted away and buried beneath the earth, making it sterile.

Innate fear of such horrendous agony and great anguish of loss, all those remaining futures paling as their lives dashed effortless away from them into the cold ground.

It was in the dead of the night. The humans and their ragged bodies were hidden away within huts made of either mud or wood that looked as if fire had struck long ago. Some even finding shelter among the the gutters.

A few scampered around like rats, forced to move and have whatever sense of humanity left within them fade away, degraded by starvation and desperation. Forced to live with the lingering thought of death constantly branded into their deepest thoughts.

The smaller feathery shadows of mice moved about, small and quiet, moving in cautious pairs over the grime plastered cobblestones, moving among the dying streetlamps to fulfil their duties.

A hungry shadow clings desperately on to my sleeve. My stomach churned as I gazed down at the owner of the hand clinging weakly to my sleeve: being only a mere child no older than five to six, looking deathly pale with a flushed face and glazed over eyes. He, like everyone else, appeared to be nothing more than a walking skeleton, looking to be nothing more than a cluster of bones and skin. He had thin ragged hair that ended around his shoulders, looking to be no more than a bundle of tangles. He could very well be mistaken for a girl.

The child couldn't seem to speak, only muttering sounds or weak whimpers as he held on to me as if I was his own mother and he my own starving child. I felt his grasp tightened on me, his haunted eyes looking teary eyed at me.

I felt Searching hands running up my uniform, as far as they reach, looking for something, anything to deter the demon growling within the child's stomach.

I was frozen in place, like a stone in the chilled air, unable to move, to look away from the pitiful child touching my uniform and whimpering with need. Water blurred my vision, the film of tears creeping up and reaching my eye lashes. They did not spill, only because I found that I couldn't blink. My mouth opened, but no words came out, my lips twisting up in such a way that it looked as if I would sob. But still no words came out, not even the faintest of sounds escaped my lips. Even after minutes had soon passed, my face remained the same, twitching in a painful grimace, my mouth gaping open in horror.

I needed to move, yet I also felt that I needed to hold this helpless creature in my arms, patting his matted hair while trying to find something to stop his frail form from decaying further.

"Police girl." My eyes shot back to the crimson figure, a gasp escaping my lips, the breath pushing away the haze of panic in my mind. Grayson's gaze doesn't even touch the starving child struggling to get into my pockets. "lets Go."