What Will Be
I had come to believe that there is not much reason to the passage of time. I am certainly not trying to suggest anything as clichéd as the phrase “life is not fair” or to ask where is God. I am merely stating that our very existence is absurd.
We spend our entire lives trying to fill up the empty minutes and hours with pleasant distractions. With things we believe have meaning. Killing time, as it were, and yet our greatest fear is death itself. We ask each other, so what are you doing tomorrow? I ask does it matter at all. Everything is going to keep moving regardless, so how much influence do you really expect to have on the universe? These are my questions on responsibility and consequence.
And for all my philosophical musings I get weary of it. Like everyone else I forget about the meaning of life and attempt to move forward, giving into my ego that somehow I do matter in the scheme of things. I can make myself believe this sometimes. I imagine you can too.
Then tonight I saw them coming out of the cemetery. Not in the darkness of night like you would expect of monsters but in the orange glow of an autumn sunset. I saw them clawing their way out of the earth. Using concrete slabs to pull themselves out of it and up onto all fours. These were not humans returned from the dead. No rotting zombies or walking corpses. These lurching staggering beasts were something else entirely.
I felt the stab of fear in my gut that one always feels when one thinks they see something horrible. Only this time it did not fade with the relief that it was just a trick of my eyes. This time the adrenaline rush continued because it was real.
Still my horror was limited to the fact that they existed. I had no real fright for physical self. Somehow I knew they were not coming for me. One of them passed under the streetlamp and I saw its matted dirty pelt and the yellow gleam of its eyes.
I knew it wanted her. The girl across the hall who wears her doom on her face like makeup. No one could see her and not know that she was meant for an end like this. Her fragile beauty marred by some kind of malignant destiny. No one would talk of it, but anyone who saw her would know such tragic beauty would never last in this world.
I watch as the creatures make their way inside. I hear their lumbering up the stairs and the click of paws on the tile outside my door. And now I wonder what is it I should do?
Warn her? Attempt to fight the demons and save her? I don’t even know if anyone can truly be saved. Or if it is my place to do so. Maybe she even has this coming.
Maybe she is evil herself and these are harbingers of her sins past. Maybe I just don’t care what happens to her.
I hear the sound of cheap wood cracking beneath their paws. It will happen any moment now. I hear her screams. What will I do? I am eager for any scenario as though this is the answer I have been waiting for. What will I do?
I’ll do it any moment now.