Amnesty Hill

Dirt;
Where life begins and it stops…that’s all that lay in the stretch before me. The grass covered dirt, the rock covered dirt, the dirt path that rolled on before me like the center aisle of a weathered church. And I began to walk it, as many times before. The rows and rows of headstones flank me like the pews with their decayed members. Watching…watching as I go by. I hear the clicking; the bones hitting against each other. I hear the stretching; the weakened, rotting flesh being pulled to its limits across the bone. I hear the scratching; as they turn their bodies in the coffins. My head lowers and my hair covers my eyes. The grizzly wolves of the wind howl at me; and the howls stretch into the mournful, out of tune hymns that screech like nails across the black board of the sky of this dead, overcast day. I look in no direction, I’ve seen it all before- like an epitaph the imagery is engraved into my memory. And the path leads to the same place every time; the hill.

Amnesty Hill

This hill, a sanctuary; a place to go to slice my mind open and let my bad thoughts and memories bleed out. The little world in which to melt away into, a place to bury all the evil inside me…and to it I go, as I do today. Blades of grass ruffle underneath my shoe as I have met the end of the path. I stand at the foot of the hill and turn my eyes to meet the fresh green of the hill illuminating with life in the gloom of the cemetery. Its allure pulls and tugs at me and invites my company. I sigh and my body gives under the bait. I climb the hill till I’m near the top. I pause for a moment and then feel my body begin to descend upon the grassy slope. I assume my usual position; with arms and legs spread wide as if I were a starfish nestled into the wet beach sand. The grass yields and conforms to my body like a familiar, worn mattress as it ever so lightly caresses my skin causing it to tingle. My body tenses up, locks, and then, with a heavy sigh, relaxes. My eyes skywards; I gaze blankly into the overcast, burnt nothingness of the sky that blanketed the cemetery. Slowly, my eyes roll into my head revealing the whites and exposed nerves of my eyeballs. My eyelids flutter and close softly over my eyes.

And I cut open my mind. Out bleeds all the stress and burdens; the depression, the sickness, the torture. All the evils run out my mind and down the side of my head onto the grass covered hill. It begins to puddle as all the inane contents continues to flow. The puddle turns into a pool on the ground; turning the grass a sickly, pasty yellow as it grows. Soon, the hill is saturated in my waste; grotesque and pallid, the hill has died with me.

And then, I hear it, as I always do. The massive pounding from within the hill, rhythmically beating to a lurid ensemble; I have awaken the heart of the hill and it rampages deep down in the core of the itself. The hedonistic melody grasps me in an unflinching trance, injecting into me the silent lyrics of its unpropitious song. My breathing shallows and the drum of my heart picks up the tempo of the hill. Feeling the generating energy surging up I part the blades of grass- the hair of the hill- and dig my fingers into the soft, fleshy soil. It gives easily and my hands sink into the hill. The soil slowly turns into slimy, mushy mud between my clasped fingers; I dig deeper, and the mud suddenly flushes to clear water rushing over my hands, cleansing them. Deeper, still I push on, stretching my arms deeper and further through the watery depths of the hill.
Gradually the water begins to bubble and toil, and then rapidly changes consistency…a consistency I knew all too well; blood. Flowing, rich blood splashes up my arms as my body twitches in uneasiness. But still, it’s not enough, my hands plunge further, reaching out towards the core.

My hands continue to grope and search through the blood; hungry, prodding… until finally, my palm plants itself firmly on the sponge like tissue of the hill’s black heart. My body tense as my hands grasps on to it and feels the throbbing contractions of the muscles as the heart pounds out the dark rhythm of its inner being. My lips taste the bland drool seeping across the corners of my mouth as my body grows numb to the constant vibration of the heart. I tighten my grip and the heartbeat crescendos to a racing pace. I grit my teeth as I feel my muscles tighten and contort and the energy pulsates through me in an unreal sensation.

Then, with a start, my eyelids explode open and my pupils dilate to bead size. My throat seizes my breath and I squeeze a gasp out as sweat begins to emanate from my weeping pores. I now hear the worst sound…silence. Complete, total, definite…the heart had stop beating. It now lay dormant within my grasp deep in the body of the hill. My mouth began to droop as the silence mercilessly tortured my eardrums with its deafening tone. I try to move but fail for I am paralyzed to the spot…by force…by fear…I do not know; the hill has me, I am helpless.

Unsure at first…curious and prodding, then violently devouring and aggressive, I feel it. Recoiling in maniacal pain as the needle like punctures transgress my skin, recklessly searing through my body. Suddenly, revelation rips and ricochets through me like whiplash from a wrecking car; the hill was possessing me…millions of piercings as the heart’s veins reached out and burrowed into my tender flesh…I am now the hill. Try as I might, I could not resist, the more I struggled, the deeper the veins buried themselves into me. Without warning the heart roars back to life and begins its carnage, forcing itself upon me. Nerve frying numbness racked my tense, contorted form as the veins came alive and began pumping its river of vile, distorted darkness into me, planting its seed in my soil. Raped, the putrid, shadowy liquid courses through the entangled web of my veins, searing and melting until my vessels collapse and the sickening mess spews into my innards staining and lacerating my engulfed organs and ravishing my beaten and weathered soul. Evil, wicked; the horrid ghost of the hill is rising in me, covering my entire cavity in an oily black and scoring my bones with the acrid burn of sin. Up my spine, to the back of my throat, filling my head and the vomiting forth; I now disgorge darkness. Pieces of my shattered screams swim out on the waves of this cesspool as my eyes bleed; streaming, flowing with red tainted abyss of all fears. I am consumed, overwhelmed, buried; I have become my own grave.

Cascading down my body milky and boiling the dark matter then solidifies on my body and becomes wood. My eyes scramble desperately across the cemetery for help…hope…but only finds the walking dead. In unrest, the deceased had pulled themselves from their shallow homes and dragged their tattered remains toward the hill and its calling. As they approached, with each step they slowly began to recompose themselves; piecing back together their mortal, decayed parts and becoming undead…unwhole. They streamed in myriad numbers across the graveyard, a silent black and white horror show; too gory to watch, too shocking to look away.

Fear; mortifying fear shackles my body with paralysis to the point of irrefutable submission. Undead moans and screeches of misery and subjugated damnation drive the nails of agony and frantic dementia through my unbecoming soul. With every last fiber in my unraveling, waning vessel that I could muster, I compel myself to stand. Glimmers of rescuing hope…my outstretched arms…belief…salvation…doubt.

Enraged, the black surges up my surmounted, dilapidated body. Violent and irritated, the
evil ransacks my body; contorting it to its will, it scatters my organs and decomposes all
levels and layers of my body and mind…packaging me in a burning cold that could only come from the depths of Hades’ bowels. And the glimmer of life fades steadfastly into the carnivorous blacks of my pupils as my feet sink into the fleshly soil of the hill and take root; transforming and drawing deeply into the dirt. My fingers stretch beyond their limits and become thin and spindly as my body hardens into sculpted wood. Page after page of memories shred and disintegrate as the scrapbook of my mind burns into the ashes of the forgotten. My body temperature soars and all my insides melt and liquefy into a sticky, nauseating brew that quickly funnels out all orifices of my body. Evaporating, my soul becomes a vapor mists the hill inhales into its unholy core until I am just a shallow, empty, reprobated shell where the echoes of a person now faintly bounce off the cracked and peeled walls of what used to be me. I whisper one last feeble prayer in the words of David: “God help me!” He’s the only one who can hear me now…I can’t even hear myself. One final glance at the cold, menacing world…
and my eyes blank.

* * * * *

The pale complexion of the moon shines onto the cemetery, the sun of the night. The cemetery lay in its eerie silence; gothic and repose. The soft rolling flats of the land stretch on into the dancing creep of shadows, only disturbed by the ominous, tyrannous tower of the hill and the weeping willow perched squarely on its top like the crown of thorns worn by the savior; topping it with its twisting, wretched, sobering beauty. Just like everything else in the graveyard, it is dead…yet, in an unnerving, almost enchanting way…alive. Adorning the hill with its outstretched arm like branches adjoining to the twisted torso of a trunk. Smooth, porous bark with almost skin like quality with sap oozing and running like blood from cuts in the wood accompanied by the mournful, chilling singsong sigh it breaths as the wind rustles through the leaves…

The weeping willow sat rooted there as a mark of the living dead; it watches over its hill
as the heavy, creeping fog lingers over the headstones. Silence, quite as a tomb.