Whispers (Kantubek)

There is a place in the wilderness to which all paths have been forgotten, lain out like faded outlines of memories people gave up on long, long ago, their mysteries left unsolved for fear of what truths may be uncovered. Investigations remain fruitless, for the tattered spirits offer no good will to anyone who may seek answers or justice, once commanded, now disparaged.  

Ivy clings to brick walls and slithers through iron grates, through the hallways and across the concrete ceilings. It is all-consuming, covering man’s wrongdoing in something far more judicious and resilient. Nature always has its way.

At some point the pitched roof collapsed in the dining hall of the old laboratory, revealing its guts to the elements, to be consumed unceremoniously. Now, a single tree rises from the old wooden planks of the floor, stretching upward towards the light, panels and terracotta tiles propped precariously against its sturdy trunk; it is young, and strong, and will likely outlive its manmade confinements. Its branches will reach across the crumbling pillars, over the corpses of the old and decrepit, to new life. It will spread its seed in a way not even man can imitate, for if it could, the laboratory would continue to bustle with white coats and shining shoes, hands of blue, faces of rubber and plastic.

In a large room lie sagging tables and chairs, moldy test tubes and petri dishes containing live samples of nature’s little gift to mankind, rusted bed frames lining a back wall. This is where the atrocities truly took place, hidden from the sight of the natural order while the vicious sounds forever resonate down the halls and through the cracks of perdition. Life was tortured and mutilated here, and terminated wastefully, without further concern. It was buried within the fertile soil, for it is Mother’s duty to care for all of her dead, as it is her duty to provide for the life she creates; but the life that once resided here was so despicably coerced into death, that she weeps forever upon the graves in an unceasing rain that drowns the shrieks and hushes the terrors.

Masks, like the mutilated faces of insects, stare hollowly into the sky, or downwards into the putrefied mud, in sorrowful remembrance of what man wished to accomplish here, and its failure to act mercifully and naturally towards the world it was permitted to proliferate in. Now, as the metal beams turn to reddened dust, and the blood of innocents is absorbed by the vegetation to be converted into new life, memories are finally allowed to fade, into convoluted oblivion and peace.

 

*The author of this piece is H.P. Wolf, and I have his permission to post this piece

12/2/16