Short Stories

Descriptive Writing - Ghost Town

It had reached the end of her work shift, the sun had gone down and the moon was hidden away behind colourless clouds. Leaving through the back entrance, she felt relieved when the chilling night air refreshed her body, tickling her skin with wisps of icy weather which contrasted with the room which she had been confined to for the past five hours. Slowly stepping outside, she watched her breath condensate in the air. When she had arrived hours earlier, the sun had lit up the sky with bright burning colours; now her eyes drank in the noir palette, the grey of the clouds in the sky and the darkness in front of her which matched the jet black material of her shirt.

With tired eyes she tapped on her phone and enabled the torch to guide her way to the front of the car park. Her lift would arrive in ten minutes. As she reached the front she tucked herself under a building and quickly looked up to make sure some of the roof was above her head. Content with her spot she stood gazing around into the dead silence as it glared back. The air almost cloudy, had a supernatural feel, like she was walking through a graveyard or ghost town. Turning the brightness down on her phone - she did not want to disturb the nothingness around her - she checked for important messages she may have missed during work.

Closing her phone a short while later, it took longer for her eyes to readjust to the unsettling eerie feel of the night, discovering the increased blindness was caused by the lack of light that had previously shone from the large sign of the main building. Thinking nothing of it, she took her time to examine the horizon as new thoughts forced their way into her paranoid mind. She appreciated the silence, the lack of life and interference, wondering if this was what tranquility looked like. But then she realised that this was what death looked like. The removal of existence and the idea that nobody knew you were there. It felt like a ghost town, a spiritual bewitching hour that tricked wandering and curious souls into enacting their own death.