title: Concrete
date: 2017-03-08
author: Wolfgang Müller
Concrete. Drab, lifeless surfaces, complete in their sterility. Dust
from abrasion dancing around in the few shafts of light like
poisoned spores, carrying death across the hallway. Lying against
the blood-stained wall, this should be his last moment in life. Born
in concrete, deep below the earth, away from sunshine, green grass,
sunflowers, singing birds; Killed in concrete just the same, smashed
against the wall, shot into the lungs and shoulders, bleeding out far
away from light or happiness.
The others were all already gone. Strewn about, lying atop of each
other, dead eyes, pale skin. Grey and feeble, like the concrete all
around. Pools of blood under the bodies, a dark coagulated red. Life
forgotten now seeping into the devouring pores of the cement floor.
"I'll end up like them, eaten up, rotting here where there is
no sunshine. I'll end up in the belly of the concrete monstrosity, my
skeleton grinning sheepishly at the unlucky dwellers who find this vault
expecting riches, but getting only death; death grimacing back, and the
concrete, silent as ever, watching, waiting."
A putrid smell lay in the room, ironlike, miasmatic, and
dusty. Thankfully only a few more breaths left. Complete silence,
except for the ghastly wheezing of ruptured lungs. A last reminder of
life dwindling between the uncaring walls. Nobody listening except the
elongated and lobeless concrete ears, the rough surfaces like petrified
skin.
Darkness slowly crept in; first at the edges, concealing the unnatural
smiles of mutilated faces. Faces of friends, family, faces of enemies,
of bullies. Everyone's face. Nobody's face.
He drew his last breath. The darkness crept more towards the center,
towards that one fixpoint; towards the concrete wall he had been staring
at all this time. His enemy. Mankind's enemy. And yet it was just a
wall. Something so simple had become the name for all the horrors in the
world, and it was staring back. Endlessly it was staring back, loudly
accusing in complete silence.
It resounded in the corpse-filled room, mangled vocal chords in an
undead chorus.
It resounded in his dying, confused mind.
Concrete.
