Cold stained bodies of ancient ghosts march single-file along the edge of the street, militaristic to a default, uniform in progress, translucent shapes that hold delicate creases in memory of casings once inhabited. Spirits walking, spirits searching for an afterlife they were all promised in accidental lifetimes, spirits who will never rest. Matter cannot be created nor can it be destroyed, or so they have all been told, whispered into disembodied ears as they continue the parade, past empty lives contained in houses, past open mouths meant for food, past hungers that will never be satisfied.
Spirits breathe, lightly on the shoulders in front of them.
Spirits have an odor all their own, one of funeral roses, cloudy death musk, superimposed sweetness and putrefaction, toothache this side of a beloved aunt's messy demise.
Spirits make no sound as they march, no footfalls to echo in still evening water, nothing to rattle the shadows during the locust seasons, no shared conversation, nothing rhetorical, nothing dramatic to exhale. ,p> They are right when they say death is the great solitude, the communion of everlasting stillness, the playback of a thousand regrets. They are right when they say the dead have sour dreams.
I promised them all a memory to savor, a chance encounter to pass the eternity away. They understand how time can grind at the sanity works, and believe me, the dead are a sane lot. They're not afforded the luxury of madness, as the living are. Static periods intermingle as they progress through overgrown road weeds and fragments of flower petals.
The dead have no calendars, yet they feel time pushing at them, when they wish to be still. Time is progression, and they have told me that it forces them as hard as it forces us.
Death is not an escape, but merely a continuation.
The dead must walk; they've been reduced to this.
The great equation that enslaves us all, living and dead, is thus: an absence of the presence of time=pure freedom. The only difference between the living and the dead is that the dead know this painful truth, and must mull it over until time itself finally dies, and joins them in their endless march. When death dies, I have heard them ask themselves, what will propagate the fields?
A thousand questions the dead ask at once, inside my head, reverberating, pan the echo back and forth between the ears as an incessant static.
When death dies, who will feed the flies?
When death dies, where will dreams come to rest?
When death finally dies, will the living still believe in heaven?
When death dies, will be condemned to a final hell, a burning furnace to make us fragments of what we believe ourselves to be?
Will we eventually come to rest there?
I can look out the window and see their ranks, continuing the chain down the street over the horizon. Colours I have never seen anywhere else, colours that move and change in swirls of pinks and purples, rippling inside crude human forms, lips murmuring but no sound from them, only inside my transistor, inside my skull, their voices have found a home, have found a place to rest, to allow time to overlook them, a cold peace overcome by interference, signals twisted and interrupted, but at rest.
Inside of my head is where pieces of the dead can finally die. I can close my eyes and see endless graveyards.
I hide from the dead, for if they knew what I hid from them, all of their weary forms would come to rest here. To allow this would surely bring an end to what I know as myself. Am I selfish to withhold something so precious from the multitudes?
It's not my fault that they're all dead. I am still living, but one day I shall join them, and wouldn't that just bring them back to where they started, walking across the world, following twisting roads, all leading to a resting place they'll never find?
It's hard not to feel sympathy for them, though.
The dead wear invisible chains that keep them here, when all they want is to find an exit.
Death is not an escape, but instead a flashlight beamed aimed at a locked door. Death is an eternal frustration. 
