A Halloween Affair

We meet on the edge of dusk as the moon starts to rise, its misty light highlighting the lacy stonework of the church tower and the shadow of its silent bell. Eleanor leads me through graves blotched with moss and lichen that over hundreds of years have erased the inscriptions and life stories of the dead. To her, death is quite romantic, I think, my heart thudding as we pass under overhanging yew branches clad in needle-like leaves.

Before us looms a mausoleum, black with damp and covered in ivy. The open door reveals a chamber illuminated by flickering candles throwing dancing silhouettes against shelves of catafalques.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Eleanor says as she leads me inside, where the temperature is much colder than the October graveyard. The air is heavy with the dust of ancient bones.

Her kiss tastes of immortality.

Kim M. Russell, 10th October 2022

Image by Kenny Orr on Unsplash

For this Monday’s Prosery at the dVerse Poets Pub, Björn has chosen to put Bob Dylan’s lyrics under the spotlight, specifically ‘Desolation Row’ from his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. Björn points out the link between Dylan’s song and last week’s Beat Poetry prompt.

The line we are working with today is: ‘To her, death is quite romantic’.

As usual the challenge is to write a piece of prose of maximum 144 words that uses this line as it is. We must not change the order of the words, but you are allowed to include line breaks and change punctuation.

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