A Fragment

Four days after my death and I am beginning to itch. Is this normal? I do not know. The stifling loneliness is not abating. I had always imagined an afterlife to be crowded with corpses, the chatty throng moving along some twilight pastureland, I had not expected to be completely alone. Perhaps everyone’s death is like this, after the bizarre and annoying company of the forelife, you come to this place to be alone forever.
 
So many stories and films point towards those left lingering in the shadowy hinterlands, somehow managing to interfere with loved ones and enemies. As far as I can tell, the buildings and landscapes are completely unchanged, but there are no humans, no animals at all. When I wake, I can almost imagine the creaking of trees, sallow dogs, shrieking birds, but there is nothing. No sound. I can hear my thoughts. I can imagine the sounds of the world, but each time I wake, I realise with increasing urgency that the sounds of the world are gone. There is no point in talking.
 
All the forgettable rage of the world. The burning trees, the clouded fields, the mud ridges that loped with bodies. Tarpaulins sinking in squalid rain before the torrent bit through hills and spilled the lifeless into a lake of beige waste.