One foot in front of the other. Heavy, heavy feet in heavy, heavy shoes. Dust covers me. Dirt. The dirt of the grave. The dirt of death. I’m dead. Gone. Kaput. But the dead survive. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t care. I’m just…tired. Each step is agony. I want to lie down and go to sleep but my body doesn’t know how.
Once I was living. Once I slept. Ate. Fucked. I had friends. I was happy. Content. But that’s all faded away to nothing. There is nothing but hunger and the need to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. I can’t help myself.
I know that I have changed. A part of me mourns, the part of me that still feels but that shrinks by the day, a small light of humanity that has dimmed and almost gone out. I know this is Hell. It must be. Where else but Hell could there be such cruelty, such torture? Hungry all the time but nothing to eat. Forced to move, to walk when all I want to do is sleep. Sleep is denied me. Oblivion is denied me. If I had tears, I might weep.
This isn’t what it was supposed to be. I thought that when we died, we’d sleep. We’d go to heaven. We’d be reincarnated. Not this. Not this agony of walking and hungering. I’ve walked…hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. My brain can no longer comprehend numbers and distance. It’s been years since I died. Years since I began walking.
Food was plentiful once. The living were everywhere, like ants. One small child was a meal, a small adult a feast. Their blood and brains gave us sustenance. Their still living tissue was sweet. But like everything else we did, we over-harvested the food supply. Like the fish in the ocean, the food grew less plentiful. We tried eating other living things – dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits but it wouldn’t do. They walk with us now, no longer in fear although our scent disturbs them. They are not our food.
I haven’t seen a living human in a long, long time. They have gotten adept at hiding, maybe. Or maybe they’re all gone. This might be a dead planet with the reanimated corpses of the dead all that remains. How long can we live without food? Can we die, at last? Will our rest finally come when we all simply drop, too tired to walk, no food to sate our hunger?
I no longer have the ability to answer such questions. I no longer have the ability to ask them. It is a thought, quick as lightning that passes through what was once my cortex and is gone. I shuffle my feet. One step. Another. Another. Moving forward, ever forward. Others of my kind are nearby but nothing living. Nothing human. We all walk, aimlessly. We are pointed in one direction and will walk until we can’t. What will happen when I reach the ocean? I have no need of breath; I will doubtlessly walk beneath the waves until I come to another beach, somewhere else.
It doesn’t matter. I’m merely a reanimated piece of meat, going nowhere and accomplishing nothing. My mind is flickering out and soon even these brief flashes of thought will cease. I don’t remember my name. I don’t remember my life, only a vague recollection that I was happy once. Now I don’t feel anything – not even pain. All is compulsion; compulsion to walk, compulsion to eat.
The dead don’t have lives. The idea is contradictory. We merely survive, one day into another and on and on it goes into infinity. The road stretches out before me. Grass grows through the pavement. The sun shines and butterflies flit across the landscape. Birds sing in the trees and a soft cool breeze rustles the leaves. It’s a beautiful day but I don’t notice it.
I must keep moving. One step. Another. Another. Walking, always walking. Never running. Never stopping either. Just an aimless, ceaseless journey on an empty stomach that has no meaning and no value. Reduced to bare functionality, sheer instinct the only motivation. I shuffle my feet. I stumble. I fall. I get up. My legs don’t work very well. My arm is broken but I don’t know it. I wouldn’t care if I did. The dead feel no pain. Only compulsion.
Hell. This is hell. One step. Another. Another. No bed at journey’s end. No soft pillow to lay my head on. No sheets to cover me in the night. No rest. No redemption. Just one step. Another. Another. My stomach growls. It doesn’t matter. I will walk until this planet is no more. I will walk until the end of time. I am dead and death is eternal. Death is walking. Hell is walking. One step. Another. Another. Another. Another.
Cinema365 