The Tomb 

To much surprise, the lights still flicker, momentarily illuminating this tomb’s squalor. In the light, I could see shiny black bodies of cockroaches scurrying across the walls, feasting upon a greenish stain covering the drywall. Dark voids of black mold eat away at floral wallpaper. The whole place reeks of ammonia, since the rats do as they please wherever they please, singing to the apartment with squeaks and murmurs. This place lives, breathes. It’s its own ecosystem. The decision to move away was the best I’d ever made. The decision to move here, a world of pure light and joy, away from that tomb. 

“That sounds awful!” A woman’s voice exclaims. “Glad you got out of that dump…” I look up to face my beloved, a face I could gaze into for all eternity. Her eyes, an olive-like hue, were still as wondrous and bright as the day I first saw them. A flood of pleasure, both physical and emotional, washes over me. The love of my life, Anya, is sitting there with her chin resting in her palms, a lock of curly brown hair hung before her sharp eye. I raise my thumb, brushing it behind her ear. She makes me so happy. Every time I see her is just like the first. 

“I’ll never go back. No matter what I have to do, I will always be here, by your side, in our little desert oasis.” 

Whenever I see her smile, a fire is lit within me, burning me up inside. I’m so happy. I couldn’t get any happier. She reaches over, picking up a bottle of lemonade and setting it down on the table for us. She quietly pours us both a glass, passing mine over before raising her own. 

“Here’s to forever!” 

“Forever!” 

I press my glass against hers, saluting with a clink before I start to down my cup. The liquid inside is rich and sweet, little juicy bits of lemon pulp floating about, which I crush between my teeth. It’s all so nice. It all makes me so happy. But as the glass nears half-empty, it seems to lose some of its taste, almost like it was watered down near the end – almost, water still has some taste. This was just a liquid traveling down my throat, causing my expression to sour for the first time in what seems like forever. I hold the glass in front of me, swishing it about. It’s lost all its taste. 

“Something wrong?” 

I look over to her, my smile assuming a more awkward connotation. 

“The lemonade, it uh… It doesn’t taste like anything.” 

Anya stares blankly, her head cocked to the left, saying nothing as beads of cold sweat begins to form on my brow. My lip quivers, and as I look around the room, my fingers begin to slip and tense up as I strenuously grip the cup.. 

“A-Anya, why can’t I taste the lemonade?” 

As tension heightens, I crush my thumb into the glass, causing the whole thing to shatter in my hands. Where one might expect shards of glass to pepper my hands, the whole thing seems to evaporate in thin air. Anya doesn’t blink, she doesn’t speak, she just watches me, as if wholly unable to form articulated thoughts. 

I’m not getting through to her. She can’t help me where I’ve gone. I violently sob, feeling neither pain nor relief as dark corners creep into my vision’s periphery. I grip the underside of the table, my heart beginning to pound in my chess as I hurl the thing over as far as I can, everything on top of it falling to the ground with a violent crash and clammer. I stagger onto my feet, digging my hands into the broken glass, but it sinks through my fingers without so much as a scratch. My chest heaves violently as I scramble to my feet, staggering drunkenly to the hallway. Anya is sitting there, glass peppering her hair as she just stares at me with those cold, dead eyes. Just as emotionless and hollow as the day we met. Screaming, I run outside to be hit with warming rays of sunshine. The encroaching black fog tightens around my vision, choking me, the sun the only thing in view. My legs like Jel-o, I collapse onto my side, curling up like a fetus as I stare at that big yellow demon in the sky. It mocks me, hiding the real sun. 

“Where’s the Sun?! Where’s the Sun?! Where’s the Sun?! Where’s the Sun?!” 

I scream at the top of my lungs as I stare uninterrupted at the unknown yellow object. My eyes do not burn, they do not even water. I fall to my knees, digging my fingers into the dirt, ripping blades of grass from the earth. My head pounds, a low-pitched whine emanating from every surface around me. My eyes feel like they’re going to burst out of my head. I scratch and claw at them with dirt-covered nails, hoping to relieve some of the pressure, let them out! I’ve been placed under a hydraulic press, my head being smashed to bits under an inconceivable weight. I can’t tell if I’m screaming, I can’t tell if I’m crying, all I know is the pressure, and the pulsing thuds of pain that fill my entire being. I’ll be trapped like this forever. Maybe I’ve always been like this. Where’s the Sun? – Oh! – There it is! 

Conscious thought slips from me like fat rendered from skin. A warmth spreads throughout my body once… Sweet, sweet release. Sweet, sweet warmth. There’s my Sun. 

… 

He had long since moved on, but his tomb still breathes for him. Within the apartment, a dull, wet, thumping sound can be heard from the door. Little rays of light shine through a thick layer of black sludge coating the door. The thumping gets louder as the sludge begins to tear, before entire chunks of it are ripped from the door, the stench would stop a man dead in his tracks, were anyone to try and enter. On the wall, bumps have formed beneath the mold. Roaches, dead, consumed whole by the biomass. The tomb breathes and dances with new life, its fire stoked with fresh meat. The cockroaches feast, the rats nibbling at the rotted stumps of what were once its toes, but have long since become nothing but marrow and stretched tendons. Thick plastic tubes still bloom from its arms, but many hang loose as the arms’ flesh begins to render.

And beyond it all, a faint glow emanates from where the corpse’s eyes might be, and as his skull begins to sink in on itself, a woman’s quiet calls are barely audible, as if she is calling out for someone. But only the tomb can hear – and the tomb does not listen. 

-Cray Brown