Chernobyl Curs Audition Pg.1

An empty winter gust snakes across a forlorn plain, driven by a brewing tempest in the bleak sky.

It weaves through the desiccated vegetation, shivering the dried, gnarled branches. They release a deathly rattle to match their sickly appearance. The stiff breeze drives a beady string of gray-black clouds across the dusk tinged sky. They shrivel and swell erratically, refusing to release their bounties of rain.

A dark-brown furred dog struggles through the nets of dried foliage, sniffing at the cracked earth. Its flat-muzzled head juts out ahead at an odd angle as its eyes, hued like a winter morning's sky, twitch about rapidly in their sockets. They flick to gaze at every last glint of motion in sight, never coming to rest. Vivid streaks of red ring the blue orb, throbbing faintly with the creature's fluttering heartbeat. It stands two feet tall, perched precariously on thin, bony legs. They flex awkwardly, as if the creature were unsure of how to carry itself. A rotten and frayed collar hangs limply around its neck, the tattered fabric long bleached by time and sun. An identifying tag clings tenuously to the loop; creeping rust mars the disk beyond recognition. The red scrap of metal brushes against the matted branches, ringing with a solemn clinking.

With a subdued whimper the mutt noses through a hedge of brambles, plodding up a barren slope. An acute pang of hunger jabs through its gut like red hot poker, steadily weakening its hobbling step. It reaches the crest of the ashen hill after what seems an eternity and collapses in exhaustion, panting heavily as it splays out on a patch of grass struggling to grow in the bone-dry ground. The twisting wind throws a blinding hail of dust into its eyes, causing it to yelp abruptly and bury its head in the mangled fur of its scrawny underbelly. It lies still for a long while, shivering violently in the frigid gale. As the gust subsides, the brown furred creature rises shakily to its feet and sojourns onwards through the bleakness. It leaves shallow paw prints in the parched soil, leading off into eternity.

After a short while it comes across the ruins of a quaint suburb. Disorderly rows of abandoned homes and shapeless snarls of rubble jut from the else wise featureless terrain like islands in an ocean of gray. It approaches warily, its vision fixated upon the crumbling wall of a musty home. As it watches, a faint scuffing noise emanates from within the worn domicile. It flicks its eyes to a nondescript portion of the wall as if having sensed movement. A low growl slips out from beyond the barrier, closely followed by further scraping and the snapping of either twig or bone. Without delaying a moment longer the dog scrambles back a score of feet, vanishing into a wizened clump of branches. But a minute later a trio of large feral-dogs emerges from the ruin, biting and clawing one another as they mill about aimlessly. The far smaller brown fur stills its breath as they tarry for a short while before drifting off into the distance. It blinks the dust from its deep blue eyes as it struggles to make out their forms, which soon fade into the dark gray haze. Convinced of their departure, it breathes a weary sigh of relief and crawls into the demolished home. The unmistakable stench of freshly spilt blood hangs heavily in the air. After a short while it comes across the tattered remains of some sort of a rodent, which it picks at halfheartedly in its exhaustion. The itching-dust borne on the wind slips through the gashes in the ruined home, abrading the dog's throat like harsh sandpaper. Its unquenched thirst only exasperates the irritation, cursing the creature with raspy breath and a weak cry.

The weary cur glances out to the endless gray plain in an attempt to regain its bearings. A cluster of tiny gray shapes peeks out from the horizon, hiding itself within a wavering cloak of equally colourless gray. But a short distance away stands a massive ring, greater in height than the surrounding lumps. Long, spindly spokes run from its broken outer arc. Each thread connects to a central hub like a poorly constructed spider web that might collapse in the gentlest of morning's breezes. With its vague understanding of the terrain, it guesses as to its location and leaps down from a window.

The choking dust subsides during a brief respite of the driving wind, revealing a great swath of blighted plain. Clumps of ashen shapes dot the hazy juncture of ground and sky, each an unexplored locale- but never one of mystery. The dog wanders through several ruins not unlike the first, each and every one composed of no more than crumbling stone and blood red rust. Little punctuates this mind-numbing monotony, save for the occasional creature struggling to eke out a meager subsistence from the inhospitable wastes. An unceasing wind suffuses the barren silence with a sickly moan.

It subrogates the silence of a million creatures denied their very existence.