the body - your body

The sun was setting on the hill. Strewn all across it were toys. Shards of glass. Pieces of metal. Remnants of a past wanting to be forgotten. Remnants of a life well lived. The sky was colored auburn. The sun was burning still, but it seemed aged and weak. The wind was soft, gentle with its caresses. Whispering slowly in your ear. It tickled. It smelled of memories, a whole host, a rollercoaster of memories and emotions. The hill was green, the sky was orange and brown and red. The tree standing, keeping guard, gnarled, and brown. It was halfway across the hill. It had leaves that had turned yellow, had holes in them. As if burned by age. Burned by the ravages of time.

The stream was loud but only once you reached the side of the hill. Otherwise, the hill guarded it and silenced it. From all sides but from the one you could see it from. The silence was deafening. The sound of the water was raging, roaring.

The longer you stood there, the more you felt something was wrong. Maybe it was the tremble in the earth, as if it were shaking, like a little boy who had seen his parents killed as he had hid under the bed and could not now stop shaking. Maybe it was the smell. Something smelt bad. Maybe it was the serene sight. The beautiful colors. Nothing could be this perfect. If anything could, it would be Mother Earth. But it didn’t feel right. Something was wrong. You couldn’t place it exactly but something was.

So would you try to observe the things that definitely seemed out of place. Figure out the stories. The toys, the garbage, the mementos. Why were there things strewn across a hill so far from civilization. A hill you had found by accident, and would never find again. How had anyone else come here? These were definitely human things. A black, bristly toothbrush covered with red toothpaste. A scarf with a logo from one of the designers on it. Glasses- You stopped. They were shattered. What had happened here, you wondered as you looked around and behind you, a tingle crawling up your neck, tears of anticipation in your eyes. You looked at the toothbrush again, and your breath got caught in your throat. It was not toothpaste on it. It was blood. You struggled to breathe. You started as a few shadows covered the sun. A loud sigh of relief as they passed and the dimming light came back. Your mind told you to return to the car, but your feet kept going up the hill. More objects. A shoe, the laces not there, the toe nibbled off. You look behind you, your body turning lightning fast. Glancing to the sides, you walk backwards. You stumble, and almost scream. A rock. The smell hits you then. Defecation. Bodily fluid. You cringe, your nose curling upwards in disgust. You try not take any more breaths in. But your nose, ever the rebel, breaths in heavier and deeper. The smell is overpowering, overwhelming. You reach the top of the hill. The body-