Unfathomable

It was a dark and stormy night in the Mariana Trench. 36,000 feet below the surface of the haunted Pacific. The waterwinds were blowing fiercely as the bioluminescence flashed like lightning. The thunder was rendered by the friction of the two shimmying layers struggling against their common thermocline. It was a perfect storm for the dead.

I, like the others, share this abyssal home with sailors of all nations and the machines that ferried them here. The skeletons, the plastic, the flotsam, the ghosts of the derelict vessels from a world that once mattered. The sparkly radiation is all that's left of the curies raining down upon us.

Months after, those from sea level and the hills and even the mountains started descending to join us. Occasionally, one came down who had to have been beautiful, before the sinewy burns. I suppose that sooner or later everyone up there will pass through down here. I'm counting them. And all of the ones who must have been beautiful at one time, will find a discordant resting place of ugliness.

The winds of fire are over, but replaced by the torrents of air and water and earth that sweep across the topographical irregularities, wearing them even and smooth and unsuspicious. Like nothing happened there. The fetid air will one day devolve into fragrant aether and hopefully some invertebrate will crawl out of the foam to start the new chapter of the Book of Life. It will be only a second draft, so hopefully the writing will be more sophisticated, unlike the tawdry comedy that just ended.