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Description
When I entered the marketplace, my lungs seemed to shrink in my chest as I was enveloped by nebulous, chalk-colored smog. I did not falter in my steps, but I walked slowly, peering about me as though I were in a dream.

The sun overhead looked like a molten chunk of white gold, turning over and over in the heated sky. It burned through the ghostly haze in such an overbearing manner that the townsfolk seemed loath to lift their eyes any higher than the brims of their hats.

The hard cobblestone pathways were laced with cracks, and plumes of dust rose out of them furiously whenever a wooden cart clattered and clacked over them. I saw a watermelon roll out the back of one of the carts, and as it collided with the stony ground, fleshy red chunks exploded wetly from the tough green hide and became a feast for the darkling crows. The demon birds pecked it apart, sharp beaks jabbing — glittering eyes opening and closing with mechanical precision — before they returned once more to haunt the thick mists above, out of sight of the crowd. All that remained of the watermelon was a large red stain dampening the dust... it could have been anything.

Even though it was only late afternoon, shadows leaned heavily from tall buildings and awnings I could not immediately see. They looked so strange, like jagged black teeth surrounded by nothing but white decay, for the air itself was rather pale. I wondered briefly if I was still walking through the marketplace streets or through a cloud of crushed bone.

Everyone was dressed in dark silk. The men wore black finery and shoes that reflected the harsh white sunlight, whilst the ladies carried lacy black fans and spidery-patterned parasols with ebony handles. I hadn't any idea why, but they all seemed to walk much more slowly as I passed, and more and more often their glacial black eyes bored into my own while I observed them. I resolved not to stare at the passerby anymore. An eerie sense that these people were attending a funeral began to creep up on me, followed by an absurd speculation that they were in fact attending mine. I suppose that would explain their hostility, as the sight of my ghost strolling the marketplace streets would be quite unwelcome indeed after they had already witnessed my body being lowered six feet into the earth.

Shaking such musings hastily aside, I remembered why I was here in the first place: to buy potatoes and a bottle of milk. But when I looked at the stalls to either side of the street, no one seemed to be operating them. They stood barren, empty.

A steady stream of carts edged down the cobbled road, but no horse pulled them, and no man drove them. All were moving completely of their own accord, and all were loaded with watermelons.

My breath caught in my throat as the cart directly in front of me scraped to a sudden halt. The people within my range of vision all stopped too, their mask-like faces frozen with something decidedly un-lifelike, their wide-open eyes fixed in my direction like black buttons hanging on to their eye sockets by a bare thread.

I watched as a single watermelon rolled out the back of the cart. There was no sound as it hit the stone floor at my feet and broke into a sloppy mess of solids and juices, but the impact resounded within my own skull as though my head had actually been the one to split open for the crows.

The dark birds swooped reliably from the haze above.

As I watched them wheeling closer, beaks and eyes screaming wide, I prayed that their craving was still concentrated on the dead melon.

Description
When I entered the marketplace, my lungs seemed to shrink in my chest as I was enveloped by nebulous, chalk-colored smog. I did not falter in my steps, but I walked slowly, peering about me as though I were in a dream.

The sun overhead looked like a molten chunk of white gold, turning over and over in the heated sky. It burned through the ghostly haze in such an overbearing manner that the townsfolk seemed loath to lift their eyes any higher than the brims of their hats.

The hard cobblestone pathways were laced with cracks, and plumes of dust rose out of them furiously whenever a wooden cart clattered and clacked over them. I saw a watermelon roll out the back of one of the carts, and as it collided with the stony ground, fleshy red chunks exploded wetly from the tough green hide and became a feast for the darkling crows. The demon birds pecked it apart, sharp beaks jabbing — glittering eyes opening and closing with mechanical precision — before they returned once more to haunt the thick mists above, out of sight of the crowd. All that remained of the watermelon was a large red stain dampening the dust... it could have been anything.

Even though it was only late afternoon, shadows leaned heavily from tall buildings and awnings I could not immediately see. They looked so strange, like jagged black teeth surrounded by nothing but white decay, for the air itself was rather pale. I wondered briefly if I was still walking through the marketplace streets or through a cloud of crushed bone.

Everyone was dressed in dark silk. The men wore black finery and shoes that reflected the harsh white sunlight, whilst the ladies carried lacy black fans and spidery-patterned parasols with ebony handles. I hadn't any idea why, but they all seemed to walk much more slowly as I passed, and more and more often their glacial black eyes bored into my own while I observed them. I resolved not to stare at the passerby anymore. An eerie sense that these people were attending a funeral began to creep up on me, followed by an absurd speculation that they were in fact attending mine. I suppose that would explain their hostility, as the sight of my ghost strolling the marketplace streets would be quite unwelcome indeed after they had already witnessed my body being lowered six feet into the earth.

Shaking such musings hastily aside, I remembered why I was here in the first place: to buy potatoes and a bottle of milk. But when I looked at the stalls to either side of the street, no one seemed to be operating them. They stood barren, empty.

A steady stream of carts edged down the cobbled road, but no horse pulled them, and no man drove them. All were moving completely of their own accord, and all were loaded with watermelons.

My breath caught in my throat as the cart directly in front of me scraped to a sudden halt. The people within my range of vision all stopped too, their mask-like faces frozen with something decidedly un-lifelike, their wide-open eyes fixed in my direction like black buttons hanging on to their eye sockets by a bare thread.

I watched as a single watermelon rolled out the back of the cart. There was no sound as it hit the stone floor at my feet and broke into a sloppy mess of solids and juices, but the impact resounded within my own skull as though my head had actually been the one to split open for the crows.

The dark birds swooped reliably from the haze above.

As I watched them wheeling closer, beaks and eyes screaming wide, I prayed that their craving was still concentrated on the dead melon.