Our Lives

Ch.1

1

The body buried, the headstone pushed into place, the flowers dropped onto the freshly dug dirt, tears falling upon their petals and freezing to them in the cold winter wind as the first flakes of the snowstorm began to slowly descend upon the ground. The last good-byes were said quietly behind the sobs and slowly the mourning figures, dressed in black, took one last look upon the grave before turning away and beginning the journey out of the cemetery, walking up the hill to where a pathway awaited them and their footsteps.

The grass on the hill was a dark green, but it turned even darker as the flakes of snow sprinkled and scattered upon the ground. The grass began to appear black against the falling snowflakes and now the ground was nothing but darkness being consumed by the invading white, just like a cancer eating away at life like an acid. The very reason for the demise of the deceased who lay in the grave. With each passing moment the snowfall became heavier and faster, slowing the movement of the sobbing figures as they plodded through the piling snow.

Their struggle finally came to an end as they reached the top of the hill and moved on to the path that would lead out of the cemetery. The path was aligned with large oak trees that must've been planted nearly a hundred years before, when the first grave had been dug in the land. There were nine figures in the group, all walking in a straight line. One following the other as the marched on, like following a military leader. But they wore no uniform, only black suits and coats. And they carried no rifles, only distant memories and frozen tears.

The ninth member of the line followed at the very end. The oldest of the four children present, Anthony, a child with eight years of age, walked stiffly as he followed closely to the line. His small body shivered within the suit he wore. Not just because of the deathly cold temperatures, but because of the burial he was forced to witness. He felt weak as he moved along the path, barely able to swing his arms. Due to the slow speed he was moving at, there was hardly any need to force his arms to sway and so they nearly froze as he put his hands in his pockets. Anthony tried to look up into the cloudy white sky, but his vision was blurred by frozen tears that had not yet left his eyes. The leafless branches of the oak trees above stretched out across the sunless sky, casting visible rays of shadows down on the path below. The winter wind was very turbulent. Being calm and gentle at one point, as if to wipe away the tears from his face, but then it would became violent. Whipping across his face and blowing streams of snow into his eyes, like it was only trying to insult him as he walked blankly, only adding more sadness to his almost lifeless soul.

The sound of crunching snow beneath his feet echoed among the headstones. Hundreds of them were lined up in rows on the hills that followed along the path. Anthony gazed at them as he walked along. Hundreds of souls were buried in this lifeless place. The cemetery was a gateway to the end of all life. At one point in time, they had been living, breathing people only to be cut down by the inevitability of death. Now their bodies lay decaying in the crypts, returning back into the earth from which they came from, leaving their souls behind to wander the earth in a hopeless search for peace.

As this passed through Anthony's mind he began to wonder if there was truly an afterlife. Was there really a heaven or hell to which the souls of the dead would go? Or could death just be an eternal dreamless sleep? These questions continued to haunt his mind as the group approached the giant metal gate that marked the entrance to the cemetery.

The gate was gigantic in size, but a hundred years had rusted and twisted the black metal making the gate look like one to a haunted house. It would take nearly the whole group to push open the frozen gate, before they walked out in the snow covered forest in which the cemetery was built. On this day, even the animals of the forest were silent, sleeping under the blankets of snow that continued to pile up as the storm grew more violent. The wind wailed through the forest, carrying streams of the faces of those who walked on the path.