• Mariah R. Embry

Two Drifters

It's a perfect day for a funeral.

Mother Nature causes turmoil, matching the already cruel cruel world.

Raindrops on the grass create water-like pearls.

Thick gray storm cloud mass the sky.

A sea of black umbrellas shields the family as they cry.

A priest clutches to his bible for dear life.

Drenched in water he struggles to fight Mother Nature's might.

Wind rushes through the fields as lightning strikes.

Powerless to the world the family releases their right.

Man and wife covered by a willow tree watch their family’s flight.

Little remembrance remains.

Echoes of their previous lives.

Dreams they’d always envisioned turned out to be lies.

As they lower their bodies into the ground the wife wants to cry.

Yet, no tears fall from her transparent eyes.

Emotions held, fade away into time and space.

Man's desires dissipate.

The only remainder being her familiar face.

No ability to feel.

Mute to the world.

Life a distant taste.

The world's colors change with each passing pace.

Faded hues once considered potent, are replaced with dull black, gray, and red.

Nowhere to go.

Nowhere to call home.

The couple drifts with the dead.

They linger in the cemetery.

Where their bodies are buried.

Longing to belong.

The world becomes nothing more than the shadows of their previous home.

Suddenly, the husband stops.

The wife sees what he has spot.

A little black child with braided hair, dressed in a red sparkly gown.

A look of spook on her little transparent face.

The wife wishes she could give her a motherly embrace.

Then a toothy smile spreads across the child's little face.

She looks up to the sky.

The red sun turns its gleam on her bright eyes.

Embraced by a light.

She’s carried through the sky, until out of sight.

Longing to be embraced by that same light the husband gazes up.

Red sun turns its direction to him.

He senses the light shine through the grim.

Then he remembers a familiar phrase.

“Till death do us part.”

A symbol of undying grace.

He turns to see his wife's face.

Yet, she's drifting away.

As the sunlight dissipates, he leaves the idea with little trace.

No clue where to go, no clue what comes next.

They leave their former lives, consumed in a vortex.

The old world is now nothing more than shadows.

They drift down a deserted interstate.

Home to a black empty fate.

Shadows turn into glimpses of what the physical world once had to offer.

As they travel deeper into the plane, their perspective begins to alter.

Drift further down the interstate past grass that looks like clay.

The couple watches as the red sun moves throughout the endless day.

As if flying out of the sky, a white hunk of metal passes the couple by.

Control lost and running straight into a street light.

The pole descends down splitting the car in two.

Sparks flying as it is split through.

Igniting the car in a ball of flames.

A man falls out in clear pain.

The couple looks on at the scene.

Consumed with the image of death claiming this being.

Clothes melt away.

No longer recognizable as a human.

He lays in a puddle of his own skin.

Melted away limbs darken from a fiery death.

Blood trickles down his face’s flesh.

His mouth falls open as if he has something to say.

Yet, all that comes out are the flames that brought about his decay.

Interest fades for the man.

Wife turns, greeted by a dismembered hand.

Reached out to touch her face.

Reflex makes the wife drift back at a faster pace.

Burnt from head to foot.

Ruby red flesh hangs from a figure that floats.

Lifeless motionless, decaying body hovers over the concrete.

Two dark holes peer into the wife.

Thick black fog develops him, headed toward the afterlife.

The black fog clears over the landscape.

Dawning night in its place.

Black transparent fog like a spiderweb only lets out gleams of that horrifying dream.

The wife recognizes her husband drifting further down along the interstate.

With every passing pace they drift, the surrounding world becomes their fate.

The shadows from their previous life dissipate.

Shadows of men hanging from trees replace.

Transparent figures sway with no consequence.

Images of ghostly figures pass them by as they drift in sequence.

Civil war soldiers linger on the open plains.

Smoke is seen in the air.

Flickering light begins to appear.

The sights of figures materialize.

Moving bodies dance around firelight.

Native woman clings to her child tight.

White teepee huts ignite a glow of shadows dancing to flight.

A serene scene on display.

Forgotten colors no longer at bay.

Green grass which used to be grey.

People in the distance are physical and bright.

Yellow and black roach bounces with the Native Chief’s strikes.

Fierce ritual around the fire dawns out the tribe’s desires.

Sudden thunder light strikes down as horses storm the grounds.

Atop these stallions are men dressed in a completely different attire.

Off their horses, as the native people scatter.

Stampede of chaos engulfs the fire.

Native Chief knows how to end the brutality.

With an ultimate sacrifice.

He gives himself to the white men.

Bends to the knee.

Stares ahead.

Knife placed to the Chief’s face,

He saws the scalp off his head.

What little fire still remains, burns out in the Chief’s gaze.

Black fog engulfs the scene.

It fades away.

An endless dream.

And back on the road, they drift.

Ignorant to the shift.

Yards away from one another.

Husband does not bother to wait for the woman he promised to honor.

It’s the husband that is seen.

Thick black fog engulfing his feet.

A different type of defeat draws a scream from somewhere deep.

And soon the wife can feel again.

As she watches her world begins to spin.

Husband gone from sight.

Being lifted makes the wife feel like she’s in flight.

Terror in both ignites.

Until they are whole again.

Warm, yet cold.

Soft, yet bold.

In a bed of their own.

What they had come to know, in another life.

At another time.

A memory of how their existence became.

Ability to feel again, the wife touches where a piece of her head should have been.

One look at the man she’d come to love.

One look at the gun her skull had hugged.

A shadowed figure stands above.

Silver metal in his hand.

And as he drifts away,

The scene begins to decay.

Black fog engulfs the man in what feels like quicksand.

Soon they are where they began.

Back on the road.

Back in the black and grey desolate world.

Transparent again.

They can’t seem to recall where they have been.

Upon a town, the road takes them to.

Where rain has fallen and turned the ground to dew.

Muddy puddles have no sensation amongst their transparent skin.

Buildings made of tin,

House beings all around them.

They walk along the town streets,

Where physical beings meet.

Hundreds of energies linger together.

Saloon doors fly open.

Full-bosomed whore runs out.

Chased by an admirer, the woman appears to shout.

Husband drifts into the Saloon.

Echoes of music sound in the room.

Townspeople turn to assume.

All eyes on the couple as they enter.

They drift out of the center.

Not the only drifters,

The couple spots a groom.

Dressed in a black tuxedo,

Eyes widen as he spots the couple.

He drifts away, fearing trouble.

The couple lingers along the wall watching the physicals, work the room.

Men dressed in period clothing trousers suspenders, cowboy hats, and boots.

Women dressed in Victorian style gowns.

Roundtables littered by beings as they chow down.

Bar is stocked.

People gawk at a naked woman emerge from the stairwell.

Nude woman ignores the advances of engorged men.

Grabs a bottle of gin before returning to the stairwell again.

Curious, the husband leaves his wife to follow the nude women's track.

Butterflies flutter up her back.

Space atop the bar dawn a new fear.

A bacchanal that’s crystal clear.

Women atop women, men atop women, men atop men glow in the candlelight.

Drifters linger along the sides, watching the physicals strides.

Women shared between partners.

Full throttle on the man's saddle.

Echoes of moans and groans fill the air.

The husband spots their coming despair.

Black fog that looms in the corners of the room.

It all happens too soon.

A couple’s ecstasy over the moon.

Engorged in one another fall atop a pin that holds the gin.

Liquor spills on the floor.

The people to sprung to tore,

Don’t see the man who enters through the door.

Black cowboy hat tilted back,

Exposes the face of a man who lacks.

Hand on his pistol, the man draws back.

Crimson liquid mixes with the spilled alcohol.

In the turmoil, a woman falls.

Knocking over the firelight.

The room ignites in a flame that can’t be tamed by anything but black fog.

Body lay among the floor, burning within the uproar.

Husband and wife hurry down the stairs as the chaos follows them there.

Death devours the entire room.

In the stampede most are doomed.

Consumed by a heated unnatural rage.

On to the next stage.

Black fog washes the saloon away.

Soon the couple are alone on the road,

Back at bay.

In the middle of a desolate space,

Is a watering well.

A figure stands before them, too tall to tell.

Intrigued, the husband moves to see who the figure could be.

Closer now, all that there is to see, is a black shadow being that leads.

The husband takes a look into the well.

Over his shoulder, he hears one sound, “seek.”

The husband offers a peak.

Deep into the dark water he sees.

White thick worms, crawling out of a face.

A familiar face.

One that he had seen in a different taste.

Fear pulls the husband back.

Fog makes the husband slack.

And soon he’s carried away.

To where he once laid.

To the place that brought about his decay.

The sight of his butchered wife he sees every day.

Replay, wander, replay wander.

This is the afterlife?

The road leads to the woods.

A trail that brings them to where they once stood.

Back again, the husband knows where they have been.

An understanding of the home they once shared.

Now nothing more than the falseness of their pair.

Everything the same as it once was.

Minus the life that used to be there.

As he stands before his wife, he gazes into her transparent eyes.

For the first time, able to see life.

Thick black fog crawls up his wife.

No turning back, he looks toward the light.

Red sun shines down gold.

And engulfs him in a tight hold.

As the warmth carries him away.

An audible scream erupts from the woman’s decay.

3 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All