Glass Balloon

"With the sound turned off I'm waiting, Like a glass balloon I'm fading into the void."-Marilyn Manson

It stood opaque upon the dark hill, framed by slivers of lighting that lit up the sky.

The people were climbing in and out of its basket, smiles upon their cracked faces and death behind their sallow eyes. When they leaped from the balloon's wicker basket, their eyes died a little more and the wrinkles upon their faces deepened.

A flash of lighting shown bright through the great glass balloon which they were so eagerly awaiting the takeoff.

I pondered the possibility of such a creation. A great, glass balloon? Would such a thing work?

I approached the decomposing jumpers. Blood seeped from their palms and soaked through the wicker with every touch.

"Greatest thing in a century, for certain." A mustached, monocled man spoke, eyeless sockets filled with cherry red fixed upon the monstrous balloon.

Fog seemed to emit from the very ground we stood on, and got thicker with every word spoken by the deceased.

I approached the basket and peered into it. Gore littered the bottom, and flies danced on.

"You mustn't touch the balloon." Stated a curious jumper. A woman, with hair the color of the full moon and skin to match.

She appeared to have stopped jumping. An eyeball hung from its socket, its opalescent glare fixed upon my hands.

She did not move, and others followed suit. They stopped jumping, and what was left of them, they dragged bleeding, cracked hands and feet across the grey grass to stand before me.

Among themselves they whispered furiously, casting me one-eyed glances and speaking in tongues I could not decipher.

"You must be the conductor. Good man." A lanky, skeleton of a man leaned forward to take my hand in his.

"Beautiful weather for a balloon ride." A small girl with worms in her mouth and a gash in her head stated dreamily, peering into the sky with bliss.

They all at once pushed me into the basket, as I felt the parts of my fellow travelers crushed beneath my feet and the flies flew into the air, their feast disturbed and their territory invaded. They crowded around me, fitting all of them into the basket along with me. They continued to fall apart as I peered around, wondering how the great glass balloon would lift itself from the ground.

Skin fell from faces and arms as they muttered excitedly. The flies became more severe and their numbers increased.

I felt a tug on my trousers and looked down into the face of a little boy. His scalp was peeling back from his skull and bunched around his chin in rivulets.

"Take this, sir." He put in my hand a matchbox. "We have not yet been buried, sir." He stated, and turned his gaze from me to the sky.

Not quite sure what to make of it, I reached up a single hand, and touched the great, glass balloon.

And all at once, the balloon shattered. Thousands of shards pierced my face, my chest, and the remainders of my passengers were nailed to the ground in a shower of glittering fragments.

As my heart beat its last, I saw a map drawn on the back of the matchbox. It was marked with the destination of a cemetery.