Dreamless sleep in the lifeless world.
I was walking through the cadaverous forest, the smell of death thick in the air. The ghostly voices whispered in my ear. They spoke of things that once were, but their words from beyond the grave were obsolete and served only to worsen the state of my heart.
The great rivers were replaced by deep dry cracks open to the grey and lifeless sky. Acid rain poured on my pale and infected skin, and something beneath my feet broke and cracked as I walked. The forest bed was once full of leaves and flora, now it is only covered in bones.
With remorse and violent, silent rage, I fell to my bloody knees, cursing the days of old. Broken but not dead, alive but not complete, I closed my dry eyelids over my wet eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep beneath the soon starless night. The darkness embraced me in her cold and isolating arms and breathed its chilling sighs across my body.
Hell is Man's creation and the fruit of his own design. It is where I lay, amidst the black trunks of decayed trees, amidst the vacant homes where life once flourished. Hell is made of Man's own image.
In the morning, the sun found me suffering as I pleaded with whatever god existed to give me fresh, pure and clean water. My prayers were answered with the same fatal silence that has always answered them. There, in the abyss of my own resentful hopelessness, I allowed my mind to journey through my memories. It took me through the city I once knew that was rich and electric. It took me to my family.
I thought about her, the angel of my life, and how her eyes would meet mine. I thought upon the gaze that she had, always, when she saw me or the children. Her loving touch. her peaceful words. Her warm pink lips were soft and always spoke love to me when I kissed her. They would be cold, black and dead by now - dust in the wind.
I thought about our children who we tried so eagerly to protect from this cruel, demonic world. Their sweet innocence was what drove me, it was the fuel to the fire inside my heart. Now, their deaths are what drive me to the land of the insane. Crawling, gasping, breathing without air, living without desire, waiting only for my heart to give in so I may finally sleep a true dreamless night for eternity.
