Categories > Original > Drama

Where People Lie Down and Never Speak

by ArsenicAutumn 2 reviews

A drabble on a place where people lie down and never speak

Category: Drama - Rating: PG - Genres: Drama - Published: 2015-01-31 - 588 words - Complete

2Ambiance
The people lay down there and never speak. It's peaceful. It's the only place free of crabgrass and weeds in the entire town. The lawns are always green, even in the sweltering summer when everything else turns brown. The trees stand tall and haven't been disturbed for almost a hundred years. They circle around the property and only three of them have the courage to grow near these people. There are stone benches all covered in thick vines. A wooden cross stood near the path to an abandoned party spot in the back. The cross was as tall as those trees but we knocked it down, over the cliff behind the property and it shattered in the creek below. We wanted to prove that God was not as strong as those trees, and we were right.

There's an old stone house near the cliff, far off to the side. People reside there but the door is always locked. No one ever answers. A little girl was the last person to move into the house. The townsfolk found her hiding beneath a home down on 3rd street. We still don't know her name, but I think the people in the stone house are good company for her. Sometimes, I think I hear quiet whispering while sitting on the front steps. I wonder how they feel about the people who hang out in their front yard?
The people in the front yard have mostly been forgotten. The townsfolk know their names, but no one remembers their stories. Two people who rested beside the cliff fell over it last year. They crashed with the broken cross. I was the one to find them. I didn't know what would happen to them, so I took a finger from one of them and a toe from the other to prove that they had been there. I took a piece of each of their boxes so that I wouldn't forget.

There is a mother who rests next to her children. All six of those children went there before they turned five. One is simply called "Baby" and no one really remembers why. There are whole families who have learned to coexist in silence. Each of the larger families have their own row. I read those names and know that some of them still have family close by, but no one bothers to visit anymore.

I can only visit them once a year now. I live so far away and the journey is so long. But no one else will set foot there anymore. The church that used to fund the property burned away years ago and the caretakers went away. I feel along the stone markers at the heads of their beds. They are all so smooth and worn like the sun and the wind caressed them until they were made beautiful.

The sun sets incredible patterns into the grass and onto the gravestones on the not so cloudy days. The birds never sing there and I have never seen animals wandering through, even though there is a forest across the creek and the place is always quiet. The trees drop thick, colorful leaves on the ground at this time of year and they patch themselves together like a quilt to keep the dead warm. The wind picks up at the strangest times, and I swear it feels like fingers running across my cheek. The leaves and grass transform into waves and the rustling sounds like voices. Maybe the people there speak after all.
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