In the Dusk of Time

by Martin "Eudoxus" Hlavacek

The room was empty except for an aging wooden chair against the far wall. It was as if the occupants had methodically cleared out the contents, rejecting the chair as old, tired and irrelevant. What was left was a mere shadow of a former existence in which happiness grew and blossomed. Through the ages the furniture, the lovingly carved chairs, ornate coffee tables and stoic cabinets beared witness to the relentless passing of time. They saw the winter of lovers’ lives; kindred spirits departed, as one generation made its way for another. The omni-present observers saw the countless beginnings and endings that constituted the all too brief period of human life. Beginning in a time too long ago, a time remembered only by those now departed, had the skilled hands of a carpenter given birth to these oaken creations. To have made their journey through countless hands to have finally found abode in that of a young family. The birth and subsequent childhood doings, lead the household furniture to see much usage, and at times minor damage. Though as the years wore on, a certain turbulence was afoot. Tiny babes grew to little children, who grew on to be mature young adults. All the while, their parents grew older still, yet growth for the household chattels was all but nil. For passage of time meant all but nil. So the hatchlings finally stepped into the bigger world, their candles of youth burning insatiably, lighting and forging a life for their own. Once again that great seasonal cycle of life drew on another revolution, thus became the Parents’ winter. And so begot an empty family, that which begot an empty house, that which begot the empty room. All victim to the vulturous hordes of ‘close’ relative, all picking and scwabling over the remains of the family estate. All picked clean save for a lone and aging chair.

Now a lone aging chair lies silent, dormant in its isolation. As light filters softly through the dust caked window, and a warm breeze blows the yellow mottled curtain. A musky ambience is held in the artificial hollow of a new spring. Though this time no happiness blooms, no urchins scabber and claw over the once proud and albeit ubiquitous furniture. The dust wavers, lingers in the still yet warm spring air. It settles upon the vacuum of a memory.

Now all is left is a lone chair, a sentinel of the past, in a husk of world that became the skeletonised reality of today.