Memoriae

by Rex Clark

mist. There were women in bonnets and gingham dresses, men in grey Confederate uniforms with muzzle-loaded rifles, children, and old folks. A teenage boy shuffled up to them, his body broken and twisted beneath his shredded work coveralls.

  An old woman stopped beside the guide. “Did you have a good night?” she asked. Her voice was harsh from too many cigarettes, which only added to the disdain that laced it.

  He turned to look into her burned face. “About average,” he replied with a dismissive shrug. He had learned quickly not to discuss his tips with her; she tended to take it personally. “Which is to say nothing to write home about.”

  A middle-aged woman in a blue sweater walked up beside the burned old woman. Her sweater and shirt were slashed and bloody, her torso a raw tangle of flesh and exposed organs.

  “They’re all getting to be like those kids,” she said, and the guide knew exactly who she was referring to. “They’re rude. They don’t care anymore.”

  The guide nodded with a sour look. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not like it used to be; it’s not the same crowd anymore. They used to come out here because they really cared. They wanted the stories; they wanted the experience. They wanted to know what happened to you. They believed. Now all they want to do is come to town and see how many moonshine samples they throw down their throats before they get cut off and have to figure out what to do with the rest of the evening.” He shook his head, the sour look spreading into a disgusted grimace. “No one cares anymore. All they want is the next thing. And the next. And the next.”

  He looked back over the group. They shuffled in place, looked around, and seemed to be at a loss for what to do next. Most of them seemed normal enough, but most of them had died of natural causes. There were a few that were so disfigured from a violent end that it was hard to describe them as people. All of them, however, seemed to growing thin, little more than mist themselves, and the guide knew it was only a matter of time before these souls were lost to the emptiness of time.

  “What’s gonna happen to us?” a little girl said.

  The guide looked down at her. She was six, and her right arm hung from her shoulder at an odd angle, and her long, wet hair was plastered to her skin and clothes

  The guide bent and picked her up and gave her a little kiss on the cheek. She put her arms around his neck, and the boneless way her arm moved felt so normal and right.

  “What do we do when there’s no one left to remember us?” Eric asked in a quiet voice.

  “You remember yourselves,” the guide replied. “You remember only yourselves, because the living can’t be bothered to spare a thought for you anymore. And those of us that do remember you are quickly becoming ghosts ourselves.”

  He held the little girl tight against him and turned, walking slowly into the night, into the chill and the mist. And one by one, they followed him, until the street was empty once more.