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Cemetery
Carissa Lau
The wind whistled over the wrecked concrete path, the street grey
and deserted as usual. crows howled on tall, strangled branches as the
storm swept through the cemetery. Broken weatherboard houses
creaked as the gust brushed through the tattered windows. Dying
clouds hung limply, rumbling and growling. The first drop of crystal
glass ice fell, ricocheting into trillions of pieces.
At the end of the wrinkled gravel path sat a miserable house, tears
streaked from its glassy eyes as the rain poured down. The tear stains
remained as a shrill cry ran throughout the town. Footsteps splashed
in the icy puddles, the sound quickly dispersed into a million
butterflies, the soft flapping of wings drifted and died away.
No one lived in Verac Manor, except a plump caretaker. White,
coarse bristles stood out from his shiny, scratched marble head.
Buttons bulged from his worn, cotton, striped shirt and his spiky,
barbed coat waved in the wind.
The days seemed endless, never ending, but the caretaker never
complained. Without Courtney, he was lost, living for no reason. They
were meant to be together for eternity, until the angels took her and
she rose to heaven, fluffy white candy floss scattered the floor. Angels
with long, pale, straight hair in flowing, white dresses flew, twirling
and singing as soft as a bird’s tune on a summer morning.
The day streaked on like water colours on a white canvas. The
colours danced around the page, blurry. Blotches of colour scattered
across the caretaker’s eyes: musky greys, ocean blues and a patch of
midnight black, where the cataract was clouding, like maggots in a
dead corpse.
The gate groaned and swung open revealing 12 by 6, neat rows of
emerald-green moss-covered graves.
The cemetery had been pretty years ago; white carnations with
cherry-blossom pink trimmings used to decorate the paths, dark,
olive-green ferns lined the rotunda and grass covered the rest of the
cemetery.
Photos of the past illuminated each grave, as if the people were still
alive. Dim lights lit the exterior of the brick mausoleum, vines hung
like dead spiders’ limbs and black cats prowled among the sleeping.
The caretaker tried his best to maintain the cemetery, but over
the decade, the plants had overgrown and the mausoleum was no
longer visible. The flowers had wilted and died while the grass had
melted and disappeared, leaving clumped soil.
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