Periphery ✔

• E L Y S I U M •

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In this story, it was a night in May. The sky was red, choked with dust and the moon hung in the sepia sky, red-faced and broken. The air seemed heavy with the tintinnabulation of bygone epochs. The wind blew slightly, laden with strange summertime sadness, faded and honey-sweet. And there alone, on the on the stairs, sat she, as the violet haze of an evening stuck somewhere amidst the lingering twilight, full of sad memoirs and regrets, shipwrecked in a place, in a time that seemed alien.

Ariana sat on the porch, watching the stars burn blue-green in the red-sky. On nights like this, she knew, how she would fall when morning came. Nights here filled her with alarming dread. The mornings with cold indifference. She died when the morning came.

At first sight, one perhaps would notice her flattered grey uniform, and a number, 34526. The shirt hung in loose folds, enveloping her thin frame, held in it's place by a couple of black clasps, that the Polish lady next door had been generous with. Her black hair tied untidily, streaked with soot and dust, had strands falling over her face. Her face, with its aquiline features, was covered with grime and sweat of a hard day's work.

In her hands clutched loosely was a chipped, dirty blue comb. Turning it over she smiled feebly. She remembered the day it had been brought, at a quaint little shop in Karolinenstrausse, in those lost years, when she had been just a girl. If she tried hard, she could almost remember Eliza's bashful face when she handed her the gift. It had been a May morning.

She had been friends with a girl from another universe, Eliza had been gone for years, but in her memories, she saw her laugh, laughing too, remembering the stars.

Here, she had found everything dull and grey. Death permeated the very essence of the place, it repulsed her, made her nauseous. For days, she could barely eat. And dreams. Her dreams were of twisted, grey phantasmagoria. For days she could barely sleep.

Yet here she sat. On the porch, silently listening to the secrets the stars whispered to her. They told her stories of distant lands and lost paradises. Sometimes, the sky would be like blood, and she, full of magic, tears and misgivings. An inferno blazed in her very soul. At times like this a strange alchemy sprouted in her mind.

MORNING, 19 JUNE, 1943, 8:24AM

The day was dull and somewhat sticky. Her hair was matted with sweat. The train was warm, like evening silences and smelled funny. Ariana sat, hugging her knees, blankly looking at the sombre faces around her, Her uniform was drenched. Flies buzzed incessantly in the carriage. The train was grey, so was the sky and her land.

The soldiers had told her that she would be going for a bath. After such grueling tasks, baths seemed like rather insignificant niceties. Moreover, she knew what happened to those who went to the bath. They never returned. Her eyelids felt heavy and gradually her thoughts faded away but her dreams were of twisted grey horrors.

She woke up with a start. The train screeched to a painful halt. Before she knew, she had been dragged off the train and was firmly planted to the ground. A desolate grey building with looming arches leered at her from a distance.

As Ariana limped towards the bathhouse, she knew something was wrong. This wasn't bathhouse. But it looked the part. She found herself too terrified to make any objections.

Ariana stripped. The soldiers shut the door with a loud bang.

A primal instinct crossed her mind, but no, not of trepidation, but rather of undesired uneasiness. A faint trace of an odor crossed her mind.

As her gaze turned upwards, she could see the sky changing, grey and red, and then pulsating with the glow of a thousand nebulas,

No words escaped her.

And in the end, everything was silent.

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L I K E✔
C O M M E N T✔
A D D  T O  L I B R A R Y ✔