The Thin Ones

It is dark and raining. The wind blows a rogue hanging wire against the metal lamp post making it sing like a muffled bell. I was out late, I don't know why, but I always find that sound so eerie, like something bad is going to happen.

I thought I saw something, but I really couldn't be sure, but my blood ran a little colder and I started to feel a little less safe.

I was here, a sort of crossroads between a railway line and the road I am on. There is no pavement and there are no houses near, a few derelict buildings along the rail track and on either side of the road and track, it is scrubland. I am not sure if the trees and bushes are alive or dead, and I can't really tell as it is rainy and dark.

There are no barriers at the rail crossing but I see the lamp posts every two hundred yards (or should I say metres, I am European) and the only other sign that humanity has any dominion here.

I am not sure how I got here, but it is familiar, I feel that I need to get home but I have forgotten where home is.

I have not seen a train or a car here, and the rain keeps falling.

In the distance one more I see figures but I don't know if they are illusions, the light from the street lamps is inconsistent, always flickering but never going out, like a spluttering candle.

I walk along the road and rail track in all directions but every time I come to this crossroads/cross track. I don't know if it is the same one or it is a different one, but I am sure I am being watched and being stalked.

How long have I been here like this? I know that daylight and sunshine exist but I have forgotten the last time that I saw it, or saw another human or a house or a shop.

I have just realised that I am not eating or drinking, but I do not feel hungry or thirsty. I just feel permanently uneasy.

Then I see something close it drifted from behind the lamp post and was as thin as the lamp post and though it was ten feet high it looked like Beaker from the Muppets but frightening rather than funny, but I still grabbed it.

It shrieked

It: "Unhand Me"

Me: "What are you and why are you stalking me?"

It: "Unhand Me, and then we may talk"

I let it go and I think it was looking at me, but the eyes were just like black circles painted onto a black drainpipe.

Me: "Ok now tell me, what are you and what is happening"

It: "We are the guardians, you are heer to pay yur penance"

Me: "Penance, what do you mean"

It: "You are aware that you are dead, and are now paying penance for your sins"

Me: "I'm dead? You are joking. I can't be. ANd why is there nobody here but me and you?"

It: "There are many here, but you cannot see them, or they you, you are here to consider your sins in life"

Me: "And then what? What happenes if I consider all this and don't think I have done anything wrong"

It: "You must be penitent, and then you will move on"

Me: "Move on? Where to? Where is this?"

It: "This is a holding area for the unrepentant, you must accept all that you did wrong in your life"

Me: "I had a good life, I never did anything wrong"

It: "If that is so you are likely to stay here"

Me: "Who decided that"

It: "You know who. Be penititent and you can move on"

Me: "So I just say sorry for whatever, and that's it"

It: "That will be decided by them"

Me: "Them"

It: "They have no gender"

Me: "Oh my, so the afterlife is woke as well, I hate political correctness"

It: "You know what you have to do. I will say no more"

The thing disintegrated into thin air, and I started out along the road. I did nothing wrong but was being punished, just like every day when I was alive, and now I knew this could never change because I can never change.