The Shrill

The Dead returned.  Billions of corpses began to move, convulse, groan, and then, quite horribly, shriek.  It was a high-pitched and piercing sound.  The world called it The Shrill.  And it was the extent of their cruelty.  There were no armies of dead, no brain-seeking deceased hungry cannibals.  Just the shouting from frail, weak frames which made no attempt to stand.  Cemeteries around the world became places of the unholy deafening Shrill.  Layers of earth muffled the shrieks, but the sheer volume of the deceased in one condensed location created a terrifying chorus that never stopped.

It was a sunny, windy day in late October.  I stood on the other side of the river across from the city's acres-wide cemetery.  I listened to the shrieks carried on the wind and over the water.  I remembered some lines from an old poem by T.S. Eliot.  He wrote

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Image by tombnails.