The Sad Song of Autumn

Old Graveyard by Petr Kratochvil

Here in the Northlands, the temperature is dropping and the snow is beginning to fall and Samhain is already a fading memory.  Autumn is coming to an end, and it’s usually a bittersweet parting for me.  I look forward to the Holidays and my time with friends and family, but Fall is my favorite season. It’s my time to turn inward and reflect on the passing of the year (which is probably brought about by my wife’s Pagan influence).  It’s also the time when emotions and passions tend to run high, due in some small part to my changing of brain chemistry, the exacerbation of my depression, and, well, the changes in the season.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a state that experiences true Autumn–when the weather turns brisk and the days grow shorter and the colors pop from the trees–you probably get a sense of the magic of the season.  The air fills with woodsmoke. The night sky clears and the stars seem to burn brighter. Something sinister lurks in each dark shadow and something magical sets your skin to prickling and your hair to raising.  In other words, you feel alive.

It’s this time of year when I do perhaps my most honest work.  My passions are high, but my energy is low (due again to the depression) and so I find myself writing in small, but evocative snippets.  They’re seldom edited–due to time constraints and lethargy–but they are some of my favorites.  It’s a tradition for me to write at least one solid piece for the season, usually some sort of ode to Halloween.

And so I present “Survivor’s Guilt”:

Survivor’s Guilt

On this night, the believers told him, you can walk through the mist and see your lost ones.  His fingers drift over the stone, stumbling over the etched dates, twenty-two years snipped short like cut thread.

“-2012.”

He breathes in the  earthy dew, pungent like strong whiskey; it fills his nostrils, pushes the lump of guilt back down his throat, and levees the tears behind his eyes. Each wind-borne moan becomes the squeal of tires on asphalt. The crunching leaves groan like twisting, buckling steel. His knees sink to the dirt. He splays his hand on the chiseled stone.

“Please?” he asks.

And the night answers him.  Wisps of mists rise from the soil and coalesce above the stone.  The barrier dances on the breeze, a tattered spiderweb, and he rises, pushing his arm through. An icy chill nettles his fingers, wends its way up his forearm. He steps through the mist and finds her on the other side.

She looks different than he remembers–now wan and hollow-eyed–but his heart thumps a staccato beat and he runs to embrace her, his body cloaking her.  He pulls her head to his chest and breathes deep, hoping for the floral smell of her hair.  Instead he smells nothing.

He sobs, “Thank you,” and tenses his arms as if he could squeeze the life from her.   “It’s been so hard without you.”

Glassy, blind eyes stare up at him.  “I’m freezing,” she says.

He leans in, then, and presses his lips to hers.  It’s like kissing cold, unyielding stone. He lingers at her lips before pulling away.  “I’m so sorry.” Tears hot on his face, he cups her cheek and tells her, ” It should have been me.”

“I’m freezing,” she says again.  “Can I go home now?”

He purses his lips and nods, trying to ignore the pang in his chest. “Of course you can.”

Her mouth upturns into the shadow of a smile, wistful, and she glides past him and through the threadbare mists to the other side. All at once the pain hits, and she collapses atop the grave, her fingers digging rootlike into the soft loam as  tiny needles dance across her skin. It’s as if she’s been buried naked under deep snow, skin burning,  a trillion nerves flaring to life.  She cries out and tears–real tears!–trickle from the corners of her eyes. The sensation passes slowly, and when it’s over, she stands on shaky legs, flexing her fingers and curling her toes and breathing in the crisp night before exhaling it in a bonewhite cloud. The images come to her unbidden, flooding her consciousness. She thinks of bright costumes and laughing children and  the satisfying crunch of popcorn balls between her teeth. And she thinks of mom and dad. She imagines  a warm fireplace, a steaming bath, and a soft bed.  And a piping hot pizza–yes, pizza!  As if cued, her stomach clenches and growls.

She looks down at the stone. Sorrow swells in the pit of her stomach, and then ebbs.  His name reminds her of the  sour smell of his breath, his trailing syllables, the oncoming lights, blindingly bright…  And then nothing. She crouches and traces one dirt-crusted fingernail over the marker’s etched face. “It should have been you,” she murmurs from the corner of her smile.

“And now it always will be, my love.”

El Fin.

Now I want to know about you.  Are you influenced by the seasons, and if so, is there anything you’d like to share?