Aravene

Standing in the graveyard at the top of the hill on the reservation that morning, Carson beheld what was left of the people as they walked on the roads beneath him in pairs, or in and around their homes. He listened to the silence enveloping him, save a light wind swaying the leaves of trees nearby. Some days on the plains, it looked as if a storm would come and bring rain with it to drench the countryside. Since the great flood before that nearly destroyed the reservation itself, the times rain came were few, with the already infertile ground having turned to dust. Watching those beneath him live out their lives, Carson remembered a place in his own life when he willingly walked hand in hand with The Specter. It was a place near death, of wanting and praying for death as he inhaled the new drug over and over again wishing to never see the light of the sun exposing his lack of hope. He remembered how he had given up on life, on love, on people, on God himself. Carson only existed upon the surface of the earth, addicted to the promises of The Specter and his talk of a new life away from the jealousy and hatred of people. But those promises, like the drugs Carson were a slave to, like The Specter himself, were only lies. The Specter was a being who was real only for those people who held no real hope. I have hope- yet I still see him. Do I realize something yet to come? Carson looked down the hill at the people of the reservation- at so many people who walked with The Specter, aware and unaware, away from God’s word. Carson knew how the people who listened to The Specter were not just in the throbbing metropolis up the road but also sitting in Carson’s congregation on Sundays, waiting only for him to finish preaching, thriving on the lukewarm spirit of others, hostile toward the upbeat words meant to save their own lives.