A Graveyard of Dreams

The insatiable desire for a nap overcomes me, but alas, my eyes do not shut for more than a blink. No, I have a long night ahead of me. Too long. A night from which there is no return. The mere thought of it overwhelms me with a voice saying the journey I’m about to embark on will never end. It will swallow the rest of my waking days.

But I must finish this. If I don’t, then what am I? I would no longer be a man, nor even human. Perhaps some form of insect, somehow able to survive every hardship thrown at it, yet never able to make a name for itself. 

Are the lives of insects truly as meaningless as we believe them to be? The insect lives as humanity used to when we were savages: searching for their next meal, seeking protection from the elements, uncertain if their life would reach tomorrow, or meet an unfortunate end from a bad case of dysentery. That’s how my father went, you know. One day, his life ahead of him, a wife waiting in bed for his return, his child asleep fifteen feet away. There was even a dream in my father’s head finally coming to fruition, one which had the potential to change the world. And the next minute, the next second, the ambitious dream which would have shaken the very fabric of society, gone. 

Back to the bugs. The creepy crawlers. The gross spreaders of putrescence and pestilence. Of course there are the jainists, who must repent if their foot finds its way onto some unsuspecting centipede. Others, like you and I, maybe we do our best to remove them without causing harm. We aren’t like a child sitting next to an ant hill, setting aflame their home. We pay a bit of care, unlike the filthy pigs, sitting in their towers of babel reaching up to the heavens, flying to and fro, one paradise to the next, destroying the very earth which graces us with life. 

To them we are all insects. 

I digress. Tell me, do insects have time to ponder their own deaths? What future may await beyond? Or is it only humans who do so? In truth, the ponderance changes not a thing. We all die. Humans and monkeys and dogs and cows and fish and whales and roaches and spiders and amoeba. No amount of thought about God or the afterlife changes where we end up. 

Enough dilly dallying. I leave my home, careful to close the door with a dexterous precision, turning the handle just as the latch comes into contact with the wall. A habit I picked up over the years.

I step foot outside into the city with an air so thick I feel the minutes subtract from my life as I inhale and I welcome it as everyone here does. The musk of urine and rotting food. 

A gray drawl begins at the ground I walk upon, infecting the color of high-standing buildings, and bleeding into the overcast sky. At night the stars remain invisible and the moon hides behind a cloud. Even the stars do not want to see what goes on here.

I walk these streets alone. It is 3AM. Even the homeless are asleep in their tidy corners now. I have lived in this city my whole life. When I leave, it beckons to me, a siren’s song. Oh, how I miss the sound of the vagrants yelling and spitting incessantly. The cars’ blaring honks. I miss the fact that there is never truly silence, and I loathe it too. Quiet seems…wrong. 

As I arrive at my destination, there exists an all encompassing stench of misery. I read the name of every gravestone I walk by. Liam Johnson. William Smith. James Jacobs. Emily Woodard. Sophia Monroe. Elizabeth Miller. My eyes gloss out into the distance over all the graves. Countless of them. Well, they are countable. I performed that grave endeavor one lonely Saturday. There are 8,614. I think of all the other cemeteries in the world, for this is but one, and a smaller one at that. How many are dead? And in another 120 years everyone currently alive will be dead too. It is unfathomable to me. 

The fact that every tombstone represents someone who had their own thoughts, family, friends, pets. Inside each of them existed a universe, a story. Their favorite memories. Their least favorite. It is difficult to grasp, isn’t it? That everyone in the world has thoughts just like you. Personally, I don’t believe it. It is only me here.

We all live ignorant of the atrocities committed everyday by the craven beasts at the top, and they hold no remorse for their actions. You’re telling me they have souls? Thoughts and dreams and morals? Everyone else is no better, sitting idly by. My father knew it was wrong. He did something about it. Instilled in me the same righteous wrath he had, and what did the universe reward him with? Death.

Finally, I am at the gravestone I have come here for. My father’s. Death’s dominion over him ends today.

You see, many believe there exists the soul. Our tether to this Earth. Something which makes me me, and you you, and it passes to another form of life when we die, or into heaven or hell, this little invisible essence none of us can see. 

No, I have studied the soul for countless days. Weighed the body of a man as he took his last breath. Performed dissections of animals and vivisections of men and women (with no pleasure, I might add), and the results yielded naught after naught after naught. I have studied for twenty years. I am the foremost expert in this field (although perhaps I should clarify I am the only member of this field, as far as I am aware, unless there’s another curious soul out there), and I state with absolute certainty, the certainty Abraham had as he prepared to take his son’s life: Nay, the soul does not exist. Is the expulsion of fecal matter from one’s body the soul? For that is the only tangible change. The heart stops beating and oxygen no longer flows to the brain, and then there is nothing.

But there exists something. A place we go at the end and it’s…beautiful. Yes, the brain ceases to function, but in those final moments our head replays whatever our mind is truly focused on. That could be the most joyous moments in one’s life, or the worst. The most painful. We may wonder how someone we love is doing, or wish death upon one we hate, or wonder why our life must end while others go on, or see our most treasured memory, the one we long to go back to on a daily, or weekly basis, because back then everything worked. Everything was okay. If we could just return to the feeling of that long lost summer dream it could all be so much simpler.

And whatever we choose, that is our eternity. It is not a God casting judgment upon us, sending us to oblivion or paradise, weighing a scale. That wouldn’t really be fair, would it? Not that the universe must be fair. And you may say, we don’t have free will. We are simply a result of the actions done to us. Our circumstances and upbringing. No, we aren’t. We have free will and choice, and today I choose this. 

First I chop the grass on top of my father’s grave using a pair of shears I have brought, and then I remove my shovel and chalk. I draw an incantation circle upon the grave. One large circle with progressively smaller ones inside, and within the second circle a triangle. On each of the three corners a five pointed star, and inside the stars a tether my father had to this life. 

The first, his favorite book, Les Miserables. A tether to the mind. The second, a necklace he gifted my mother. A tether to the heart. The third I leave empty. For now.

Then, I go to the grave next to my father’s and I begin to dig. My arms were not made for digging. There is a technique to it I have learned these past few months.

As a child I never played sports. I stuck to books. Biology was my favorite subject. I wasn’t bullied or tortured every day like some. No, I simply didn’t exist to the other students. A shadow. If I went up to someone from those years now they would not be able to recall a thing about me. Not my name, or some oddly specific memory about something I said in class once. And I am fine with that. I was fine with it. Everyone wants to be known, to be seen. After this, everyone will know me. But it will be much too late.

Have you ever felt something to be your calling? Your purpose on this Earth? Known with the utmost certainty this action or project will revolutionize the way we view the world? For the briefest of moments it feels as if you are on an astral plane and a hand that isn’t your hand reaches upwards, and you feel the presence and touch of a being greater than any of us reach down. Then, right after this cosmic calling you’re forced to remind yourself there isn’t anything greater than us. But then what is this feeling? What evolutionary purpose does it serve? I haven’t figured that out yet. I can’t solve everything.

After a few feet of digging there it is. The casket. A beautiful mahogany. I am truly sorry for desecrating this person’s grave. I unlatch it, and a man rests inside. One I placed there last night. Don’t ask me what I did with the skeleton previously there. I promise, not every night has been as eventful as these two. Much preparation goes into a task as grand as this. His legs and arms are bound, and he still breathes. I timed it correctly. He remains unconscious. It took many trials to determine how long the average man will last within a casket underground. I kneel down and lift him, struggling while I do so, and the sound of my own breath misplaces me. As I stand up straight again I feel faint, but quickly gather my bearings. I place this man in the middle of the circle on top of my father’s grave, like an ant carrying a piece of food back to its nest, one amongst a couple hundred others, simply following my instinct. There is no choice left. 

I needed a conduit. Furthermore, a vessel. Now I am on a timer, for I cannot allow this man to return to the world of the living. He must be in between the two, on the brink. There is only the last part to this now. I grab the final instrument within my bag, a sharp curved knife. I lay down on top of the empty corner of the triangle, my heart perfectly centered: a tether to his DNA. 

I look at the man in the middle of the circle and watch the rise and fall of his chest with each breath. This is it. I’ve known this is what I must do. I’ve known this to be the last action of the night, everything building here, and yet I don’t feel ready. I’m certain it will work. It must. There is no room for doubt in my mind. Uncertainty is the death of every dream. And yet now I don’t want to proceed. I can’t deny it. I don’t have any good memories to replay. No one I love still walks this Earth. A life that has thus far sowed less than that of a newborn baby. What will my eternity be?

We’re all obsessed with this idea of being remembered. Of leaving our mark on this Earth. Through having children or writing a timeless book. Something to remain after we leave. Because if not, what was this all for? We want a meaning. We want someone to cry at our funeral to know our life mattered. How could eight billion people be remembered? Tell me, can you name your great grandfather? What about his father? Or his mother? You can’t. I can’t. Yes, without them you wouldn’t be here, and the gratitude we pay them is that we know not a fact about their life. 

What would remembering them even do? A name, or a favorite food of someone long dead. A recipe of theirs. It’s an imitation of meaning. Perhaps anything can have meaning if we will it to. 

The truth is that some of us aren’t meant for greatness. Some of us are merely meant to serve as the stepping stones for others’ ascent. For them to be remembered. 

If only I could be around to see the ascent of my father. I plunge the knife into my heart.