Kind of a weird initial submission, but hi! Thanks for checking it out.

This ended up being a VERY LOOSE interpretation of the original prompt, "prospect." Wrote around the envisioned prospective (future) encounter described by the narrator. Kind of developed into an excerpt of a journal entry. After spending weeks on a relatively involved piece of fiction, it felt so good to just wing it and find a vibe.


 Thursday_Prompt is really cool and inspiring :) glad I finally had the time for one. Feedback is welcome <3

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"An Offering"

From the vantage of sober reflection, I find it hard to believe that I was comfortable alone in such a place. In that moment, leaning back against the moss and lichen of that headstone, sitting on grass and dirt, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. It was as if, the descending chorus of the others stumbling away, further into the pitch black of that consecrated place, that I was finally, for the first time in years, offered the kindness of silence.

In all the time I had previously spent within mausoleums and cemeteries, during even visits to my mother, the experience was wrought with grief and mourning. It occurred to me that, upon a resting place of an unknown, long dead stranger, I was taking advantage of a degree of separation. Should someone drunkenly stumble over my mother’s resting place, could I allow them such comfort?

I pondered the last visit I had paid her; of the wilting bouquet, bought at a discount from a nearby grocery, that I brought to replace the dry and dead ones that marked the visit prior. A pang of guilt interrupted that peaceful moment; I promised myself I would make time to see her soon.

From where I sat against the stone there were no signs of visitors. It stood bare among rows of other neglected stones, save for the few ribbons dispersed among the war veterans. When was the last time someone left flowers for the poor soul beneath me? It occurred to me, then, that I hadn’t even read the name on the headstone, and I felt an overwhelming desire to know, and to pay (presumably) long overdue respects.

I downed another swig of vodka, letting its sting and burn coat all of my mouth and the back of my throat, and then let the warm sting work through my esophagus. Holding the bottle between my sprawled legs, I drained a generous amount of its contents unto the soil. It felt proper to offer something in return for that fleeting moment; perhaps once I, too, rested in a long-forgotten grave, I might offer a similar comfort to a stranger. Though the nature of that prospective encounter was grim, I it brought a sense of wonder. My self image, up to that point, was entirely rooted in my time alive. Never before had I contemplated what I might offer once I returned to the earth.

The struggles of my daily life seemed so insignificant on that scale.

When I finally composed myself enough to stand, and to cast the light of my phone upon it, it struck me how plain and utilitarian it appeared; particularly when compared to the massive, ornate carved names and statues that lined the later additions near the entryway. Neighboring graves showed similar markers, though many in disrepair. It’s strange, I could not find any hint at an inscription on its surface. I wondered if maybe it had been lost to years of erosion. On leaving to examine the adjacent stones, however, I found them to be completely legible (even those whose faces bore similar coats of lichen and dirt.) Even stranger, these stones bore even more evidence of weather, some even cracked and chipped away in places.

My examinations led me several rows away from the stone at which I had been seated, and when I looked up in its direction I froze, for though my light could barely reach a few paces ahead, I could see a faint refraction near my destination- an impression of two eyes, standing where I had been moments before. In my state of intoxication, I could not be certain of what I had seen; drawing nearer, with careful, slow steps, I could not find where the light may have reached, nor any hint of the standing figure I had briefly perceived.

I had only just reassured myself of my own solitude when, as a whisper raises the hairs on your neck, I heard what was unmistakably a voice. It was such a low timbre, yet against the silence and stillness of the night, save for my own pulse thrumming in my head, it shattered that intoxicated confidence that allowed me to stay alone in that place for any duration. I called out to my friends, reminding myself to not acknowledge what might be heard in such moments, and began a brisk pace in their direction. As I approached, I could not shake the frightful sense that whatever made that gesture, from that place I had found such solace, those same eyes watched me leave.

This may seem an excessive amount of context to explain the contents of a dream, but I felt it necessary to fully understand its elements, no matter how brief it might be in comparison. The events that I’ve described did not leave me shaken or disturbed for long, for the vodka had left me lethargic and exhausted. By the time I had finally made it home, I was not in a state of mind that would allow my own fears to haunt me, and was quickly in bed, with the lights off, drifting to sleep.

I found myself standing in the cemetery again, feet away from that curious gravestone, and it felt so viscerally real that I briefly wondered if the return home had been imagined or dreamed. While that idea was distressing, I found myself in a similar state of peace as had prompted my examination of the stone and those that neighbored it. Then, breaking that serenity, I heard the same whisper in my ear again.

It seemed to permeate my senses, resonating in my ear, leaving me shivering from the sensation. I tried my best to understand what it was saying, what it meant, and what it wanted.

An old memory of my Mother paid visit to my thoughts in that seemingly endless moment- of her alive, in my childhood, on the day that we buried my grandmother. Of my first time feeling the gravity of death and the span of eternity, and how she took care to console my feeble grasp of the world in the face of hardship. The assurance she provided, that the dead survive in our thoughts and memories, brought me so much comfort. I remembered how she would console my nightmares and fear of the dark with the same sentiment. The dead may only haunt our thoughts.
From that memory stemmed a horrible remorse- who, in that expression of gratitude, in a moment that offered such a beautiful outlook upon existence itself, had I regarded? Had there been a reason for their resting place to be unmarked and forgotten?

As my concerns grew into a panic, in the moments before I woke. I could only watch in terror as light refracted from eyes above the stone. I saw, with frightful clarity, how they ascended from the earth; how they opened, slowly, to meet mine.