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104
Ghosts Of
The Past
overwhelms as she touches the man’s face in the image. She closes
her eyes and envisions the feel of his arms around her again, his
warmth shielding her from the wind and promising her protection
from all the troubles of the world. Her eyes begin to sting but she
forces them to look at the disgusting guard.
‘You have ten minutes’, he sneers through a thick accent. The man
pokes the ghosts with his baton and a sinister smile spreads over his
face. He chuckles to himself and beckons her forward.
The woman clutches her coat and follows, staring with equal
horror and sadness at the ghosts below. Their clothes are worn and
baggy and she can count each rib on their bare, malnourished chests.
They stare at her with hollow eyes and concave cheeks. They see
nothing but fading colours and shapes.
The picture feels heavy in her hand as if the smiling people in the
image don’t belong here. Her heels crunch against the small rocks
between the stones on the floor causing her legs to wobble. However,
the woman retains her balance and studies each ghost’s face. She
looks to the left, then to the right, then behind her shoulder and
back again. She looks at over one hundred ghosts yet only sees the
one face plastered on each.
Two particles draw closer to you. They confuse you. They are inside yet reek
of somewhere else. They don’t belong. They’re not the same. You cringe away and
protect your face but the particles and their strange noises creep closer and closer.
A particle wobbles then steadies itself in front of you. It somehow shrinks in size
and two circles open and close in front of you. You look at their light colour. They
remind you of the sky and those fleeting images you get through the hole. They
seem so familiar, so wondrous. The circles are halved as they point their wondrous
colours downwards to two even smaller particles, embraced in each other like the
ghosts. But different. Different… yet familiar.
‘One minute’, the guard calls, his voice bouncing around the
ghosts.
The woman sighs and desperately looks at the ghost in front of
her. Unseeing eyes, sunken face; they were all the same.
An excruciating thirst suddenly comes over you. A tickling sensation ripples
through your mouth as colours and shapes match. Those beautiful, blue circles
belonged to a woman. A much, much younger woman. Why was this older
woman wearing them? Strange lines crease the younger woman’s perfect skin and
sadness – such sadness – engulfs her beauty. Your thirst increases. You are
searching, scraping for a noise.
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