tales for dreamers: the street of the dead

The street is thronged with dead beings.

Zombies, vampires, ghouls, they rule this place.

Like monsters running amok on Halloween, the place is littered with all kinds of dead beings – the half-deads, the ones barely alive, some who died barely a moment ago and are only just getting used to the sudden turn of events in their lives/deaths, and then those who died several deaths every day, and then some more.

Every evening they emerge on to the street, dressed in their finest, from the edges of existence. They wriggle out from the cracks in tombstones. They bleed into existence from the horizon. They surface from the walls that partition homes.

The vampires sashay in their overrated capes, hissing and flashing their fangs at innocent bystanders. Some of the dead are reduced to bare-bones, their dead, decaying skin clinging to their skeletal frames. Some others, freshly lowered into their graves, appear rosy-cheeked and wide-eyed.

There are no leaders, no followers. There are only those who have walked the street a countless times, and those who are new to the ways of this world.

Every evening they stomp down the street in revelry, sharing stories of their past lives, and their hopes and dreams for future ones.

Some look forward to their new lives, other are unhappy to have lost their old ones.
Sooner or later, however, they make their peace and step off the street, back into the world of the living.

Truth be told, even on the street they are more alive than dead.