As Silent As The Grave (Photo-Fiction)
The soundtrack is a must!
There was a cold breeze getting into the car from the half open windows.
He wanted them open despite the bitter cold outside. The snow all around made the air so clean, as if nothing but oxygen he could breath in.
His spine might shiver and his fingers might be as stiff as sticks, but he didn't mind. In fact he found that invigorating.
It was in the morning. The scenery was very bright. The sunlight reflected upon the snow-covered hills and offered a broad smile to his soul, much broader than the one he was wearing on his face. How much he enjoyed the drive on these snowy slopes. The mountains ahead towering, the roads he was on turning.
A dangerous route he had taken, but he didn't care. He knew those roads way too well to make a mistake. Every inch, every turn, every bump. He knew everything. His own body was not that familiar to him as this winter path on the mountains.
All this time he had no music on. The silence. He loved the silence of the winter. The cold, still silence, that no birds or running waters would disturb. The absolute, total silence. Silent as the grave they say, don't they? And he so much loved it!
Up there, alone he felt like he was free. He felt like he owned the hills, the slopes, the steep cliffs, the rocky ledges, everything. King of the Winter Mountains! That's what he was. A King! With no bosses and annoying customers, no supervisors, no landlords, no accountants, no cranky neighbors, no occasional girlfriends he would soon have to get rid of.
Up there he was always the King that had only met one and only Queen... his freedom.
And as he was driving and thinking to himself how lucky he was to be blessed with the luxury to own a car and visit such a heavenly place every once in a while, he felt a tremor in his steering wheel. Something was not right at that time. Something felt... ominous.
The view ahead started getting blurry, as if there was fog, very thick fog. He slowed down. The fog seemed to be getting closer to him despite the fact that he had immobilized his car. He tried to stay calm, with the smile on his face giving place to a look of worry.
"This is not right."
The tremors continued shaking his car and he could now hear a hollow rumble. Slightly from the bottom to the top and as the seconds went by the shaking got harsher and harsher and the rumbling noise louder and louder. Like those cheap VR simulation booths he'd get in in the local fairs, the car was rocking him up and down and the noisy fog was ready to swallow him and his cold, metal "capsule".
As the threatening cloud was surrounding him and he could see nothing through the windows, he felt a violent jolt coming from the left side of his car. In fragments of a second he found himself banging against the car walls, as it was rolling down the hillside, slipping under huge masses of snow that had been scraped off the mountains and sliding over the sharp rocks.
The snow was coming in through his open windows that soon broke under the huge pressure they were going under. It took only a few seconds until the whole of the car was filled with snow and he would no longer bang on the walls. He would no longer move at all. Like a glass statue in its carton box, protected by layers of white stryrofoam, he would remain still and cold.
The rumbling did not go on for long. The snow had soon reached the feet of the mountains. The weird fog would disappear after a while and everything would go back to normal and and once again be... as silent as the grave.
All images (not free for re-use) and story by @ruth-girl - Steemit, 2018
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You're right... the music is essential to the piece. Wherever did this come from? Some dark dream? 'Chilling' tale. Avalanches are one of those things that make me shudder--like tsunamis. The idea of being overwhelmed, consumed by such a force of nature.
You captured it. And the irony. The thing he loved took him.
BTW, I'm trying to delegrate 50sp to SteemSTEM but can't seem to manage it. Tried to sign up with Steemconnect, but this antediluvian brain is having trouble navigating.
Hey @agmoore! Sorry for the late reply, it's been busy around here.
I don't know how this one was born... Olympus (the highest Greek mountain) is all snow covered these days and it's the first thing I see from my balcony window every day. It's cold here and it was late at night when I started writing it listening to the "Sound of Silence". I miss writing, it's a getaway almost as good and addictive as photography.
I don't know what might be the matter with steemconnect (I 'm not that good with the technical stuff).
Thank you for reading this one!!
Have a happy Sunday!
Warm kisses, from cold Greece! 🤗😘
Your writing is very good... clear, logical development and a sense of enveloping doom that matches the fate of your character. Writing for me, too, is a getaway. People who love language (me, you) enjoy using it in a personal way, I think.
Thanks for answering the Steemconnect question. I'll figure it out, eventually.
Young as you are, I think of you as one of my virtual friends.
Affectionately....me, AG 🌼🙂
Edit here: I did it!! Through Steemworld. It was easier than I thought. @erh.germany sent me there. Just thought I'd let you know. 🙂
I like your story very much, ruth-girl. But he certainly didn't want that silence :D. He wanted to enjoy this beautyful landscape and then surely return to his girl. Natural disasters are terribly cruel, but even in normal life something can often happen very quickly. One should bear this in mind, in order to possibly quickly cause counter-effects. I also like the two videos The sound of Silence
Hello, @suntree! Thanks for reading this one, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The story was ironic and basically aimed to point that out, just like @agmoore above mentions "The thing he loved took him". Nature is unpredictable and so much more powerful than we are...
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A deceptive security that the man has succumbed to. If he were a man who moved routinely in nature and in the mountains, he would have noticed the signs in advance. But that's how he imagined himself to be in his vehicle as a connoisseur of the area, the road, the smallest unevenness. I like the way he becomes king and the way Mother Nature teaches him better. Especially interesting that you say he knows the area better than his own body. That's how it is. We don't know how to circulate our blood, how to make our eyes see or how to make our ears hear. It just happens without our conscious involvement. What he has admired kills him. That's where I join @agmoore, that's the irony of the story.
Very creative how you so light-footedly told this moral.