Redepopulated

The truth is that they cannot propel a real thing a single inch, nor could ten thousand ghosts united (be happy that you are not yet a ghost!); it is only wind that blows the tumbleweeds about, whistling through their weed-bones while the stagnant ghosts swirl in the night-dust behind, indefatigably pretending to push them, not only to propitiate the owls, but also to keep from considering themselves even more superannuated than they already do when, knowing the outcome and hence snarling in such despair that they expose their clacking teeth, which resemble those icicle-like fangs of the deep-sea fishes, these revenants lay their heads upon each other’s breasts and listen for a heartbeat, as is customary at the termination of a deathbed scene; if even one soul were to have within his chest the pulpy mechanism which emits those dull and bloody thuds, they would be soothed, just as a puppy taken from his mother will stop whimpering when a loudly ticking clock is placed against his belly; but of course the ghost hear nothing and furiously rake each other’s non-existent chests with their non-existent fingernails, and then, afraid of the owls, return with increased anxiety to their delusional project of the tumbleweeds; meanwhile, more mathematically minded sprites play “Musical Chairs” between the tombstones, trying once and for all to solve the problem which eluded Leibniz: how do you put ten bodies in nine graves while adhering to that monadist doctrine of one body, one grave? – for they want privacy when they rest their cool cheeks against the cool cheek of earth; and meanwhile young ghosts creak doors beautifully, ingeniously, as they are expected to do. Thus every spirit does its part. – But turn your back and walk over the dunes for two dozen steps, and the night is depopulated. (William T. Vollmann, The Rainbow Stories - The Indigo Engineers)

The Like Paradise (a.k.a. Andrew Witrak)
via PaintSpeak