Abstractions

A forgotten church by a forgotten graveyard.

The barren floor of the graveyard shuddered, breathing coarsely and speaking in abstractions. Bone white fingers scrawled unintelligible languages across ceilings within the miniature homes that were dug six feet deep into the multitude of basements it held within its filled yet empty spaces, the pine trees swaying in tandem with lonely midnight winds; the dirt groaned, coughed, and spat restlessly to answer in kind.

The night sky was clothed with impossibly bright stars, a countless amount sprawled out like paint on a canvas. Despite the frankness of the greeting, the cosmos was fragmented helplessly like pieces of a puzzle once thought to be solved but the answer now long forgotten; whoever sought to solve it had long given up by now, the darkness more than enough evidence to prove such a thing.

A cathedral with rickety wooden walls was set not too far from the desolation that plagued the cemetery, its stained glass windows harboring well-known and well-loved saints that could be seen clearly despite the imbalance provided by the dying stars that littered the naked galaxy above. These windows were less of a mystical portal to a house of the holy and more like a beacon for the wandering lonely, daring to not discriminate.

Walls sputtered and floorboards whined yet no footsteps marked the dust that found its rest across and within every crease of the safehouse. The nave was empty, cleared out long ago before the building had begun to breathe life into itself, only occupied by the occasional indiscernible insect or wisp of wind that would invade out of fear of the outside.

The pews were also abandoned at this time, only carrying hymnals with their various pages rotting out, the notes to each song an unknown language. Holy words no longer held power over any masses and yet the energy within the church had not left as mere wisps of memory, refusing to detach itself from its host.

On the small steps leading up to the pulpit sat a doll. Her skin, once a porcelain white, now mottled with black and yellow molds as well as noticeable stitches connecting her legs to her imperfect, wrinkled thighs. Tufts of stuffing were exposed in between her once slender fingers, now cracked and split at the knuckle.

Her outfit had not been treated kindly by the passage of time, either. The lavender-pink dress had been torn at the gut, exposing the doll's navel that had rotted from the inside out. Her dress had been torn at the wrists as well, the stained skin splintered to reveal bits of bone that had begun to thin out.

The toy's sky blue eyes were long fixated on a stained-glass window to her right, though the man it portrayed had a face impossible to make out from this distance. A bushy beard and kind eyes could be assumed as such details were true for a lot of the crafted windows, but could she really be sure? Her fingers twitched elegantly yet still frozen in time.

And then the knocking of hollow fists met with the weak cathedral doors, loud thuds droning into the long-dead air. The stillness now interrupted, shook to its core as the foundations of the cathedral started to shake uncontrollably as if it was now possessed like it had been a man touched by a mass of unknowable truths.

A flood of clawing, meatless hands dragged themselves across the paneling of the shaking, terrified floor as the convulsing mass lacked the means to walk dignified. The doll remained motionless as dozens, if not hundreds, of rattling fingers, pulled at her sickly flesh, and yet her usually still eyes shifted toward the mass, unafraid.

The dress dissipated into shreds, the stuffing joining its remains soon enough. Her eyes now plucked out haphazardly, and thankfully, no wound remained; merely a gaping void that had not been too different from the night's dominion.

The shambling mass ceased movement for a moment. Its bones clicked and clacked together, humming and buzzing as it seemed to look on with no eyes, with pride at the old, dingy painting it had cleared out, now a new and blank canvas.

Stripped down and barren, just like it.