Tombstone Alley (UNREV, Final + Thoughts on WIP)[]
Foreword: So, this has gone through about two rewrites. Originally I thought of a gravetender who, after a nuclear apocalypse, is forced to crowd the tombs of the dead into a long alley. Then I wrote about a weird creepy liminal alley in a city somewhere that eats people. Hated it. THEN i wrote a poem about that idea, which I enjoyed enough to post below. Finally, I ended up thinking about something that particularly freaks me out; dreams, and how they often show me things I miss or have lost. This is the result of said introspection. - WS
———
Beyond the streets that have names and familiar faces, somewhere in the churning organs of my city, theres a forgotten place. It won’t appear on any maps, and you’ll never hear it spoken of outloud. I’ve seen it only once before, and I’m determined to never see it again. For if I do, I know I’ll have met an untimely end, born from a wound that should’ve vanished with time.
You can get there if you don’t pay attention. Don’t look at your phone, don’t bring up any maps, don’t even look up and watch the people go by. Eventually, you’ll end up outside Tombstone Alley. You’ll notice when the color has drained from even the asphalt, the sky, your fingertips. Be thankful you’re allowed to keep your senses. Its always in the peripherals - just out of reach for the perpetually monotonous and busy. Only those with creative eyes will ever come across it, but it always has to solely be an after thought, a required nuisance among one’s other obligations.
At first, it’ll look a lot like any decrepit project housing: crooked buildings, torn up grass like a bad haircut, windowless facades. It’ll feel very familiar to you; you’ll swear up and down that once upon a time, you lived here. But it always looks different than what you imagined. Theres no people or animals or sounds. Try looking at it from the other side - no parallel streets, see? Thats how it snags your attention, got it? That is to say, there isn’t entirely a reason NOT to visit Tombstone Alley…no, its not without its own reward at the end of the cavernous tunnel that yawns casually amidst the brutalist structures.
The tunnel is always tall enough to allow you and you alone; nobody else can enter while you’re present. Those are the rules. The tunnel extends infinitely, becoming more and more cramped with muddy red bricks of assorted shapes and size. They wriggle with anticipation. At the very core of that extraspatial place is something you’ve forgotten, something you’d do anything to remember. Maybe it was a shiny toy you loved dearly as a child, a familiar scent that brings comfort, a pale face floating in the dark. They moan with longing. Sometimes its a nexus of unspoken anxieties, of fidgeting wet fingers, broken game files and tarnished keepsakes with scratched out initials. Whatever the item may be, always keep it in your peripherals as you move towards it. Thats the only way it’ll exist until you’ve reached it. These things are nebulous and tricky.
And whatever you do, don’t touch the walls or the bricks. I believe its called Tombstone Alley because - littered with masonry as is the outer walls of the tunnel - those bricks represent the grinding, gnashing, empty maw of this city. They are its teeth, its mandibles and blood. They fly like birds and smash into each other, creating more and more piles of forgotten rubble to distract you. Don’t let them touch you. The gravity and guilt of such a place is liable to grind a man into pulp, you feel me? Tombstone-like teeth. Teeth for the forgotten god, Ennui.
You’ll know you’ve reached the end when you extend a hand into the discolored light at the end and wrap your hands around that thing you’ve been looking for. Is it exactly what you expected it to be? Do the faces look the same, and did you remember the words they said to you? Do you remember how it felt to be betrayed, or to commit that betrayal? Did that lusty dish still contain the smell you have ached body and soul for? For me, I was expecting a phone that contained texts from someone who’s personhood I’ve long forgotten. And even after I got it…I don’t think its really them at the other end of the line either.
You’ll turn around and around again, and you’ll be outside the alley. And the alley will be shuttered up, grave-like stone teeth locked up, the dampness escaping between the cracks me. You’ll try to explain that feeling of loss, of forgetfulness and nostalgia, but it’ll never make sense to anyone else. Ever. What you’ve gained comes close to what was forgotten, but like all memories, ghosts can be fickle things.
And sometimes, they linger longer than they should. They’ll point their fingers at you for bringing them back from a sleepless place. And it’ll be your fault, same as it always has.
——— Poem Variant
From across the street, do I lie awake
Searching for meaning in vanity’s sake
In moonlight’s eye, do ill winds rake
The form of Tombstone Alley.
Crooked buildings in distorted row
With spacious vacuity, did life bring in tow
No window nor board lay claim to facade present
Entombed in concrete, that hall which resents.
Extending indefinite into far South
Pitch black ichor bubbles within its mouth
No eye may breach that omen-depth, nor width
The alley within which all breath is sent.
All but ignored in favor of jests
Townsfolk resent introspective intents
All those who observe its crooked jaws
Forever are drawn by crooked law.
The place for the broken, discarded, and lost
A nexus of hosts forgotten to wroth
By whose conglomerate clambers within
Each block in the walls, a monument to sin.
Tombstone Alley, host to hungry mouths
Made flesh through stone, rank and mold
Each brick a tooth, each a soul - bound
No surroundings are left, no persons around.
Now the streets are dissolved and bricks lay flat
The Alley sustains not even a brood of rats
Alone, I sustain through oft-struck match
Afterall, what maw lives on without eyes to match?
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