‘’Peaceful Land’’, by Dina Sarakinou (a short story)

In the new era, they were the first to close. 
The abominable funeral homes, the professions of the gravedigger and the funeral makeup artist disappeared.
Chrysanthemums even stopped to be cultivated. Cemeteries turned into parks and beautiful hammocks were hung between the cypress trees. When the luxurious trains appeared, tickets were being sold like mad. 
First class with all the luxuries was expensive. 
Beautiful nurses with athletic bodies and bright smiles waited for patients on their last journey. Humanity treated them with elegance and class sending 
them off to their last place of rest. 
The only condition was their consent to euthanasia. Final stage patients gained their dignity. 
Human species realised after two and a half thousand years A.D. that there is more to life than misery and mourning. Dealing with loss was taught in schools, in order to establish the belief in the necessity of euthanasia. And as for society, the joy of life earned its rightful place. 
Why should the healthy go through the ordeal of sorrow? 
Those sick people had lost all sense of humour in their dying moments. 
Before the new era, there was at least one relative who was sick in every family and daily life had become anti-erotic. 
And everybody accepted and admitted the divine inspiration which was brought upon the states, by this change. At first, people were baffled by the World Ruler’s proposal. 
He made it during the world summit and was voted for in a secret ballot. 
The benefits for the developed countries, he stressed, would be immense. People, without being reminded of death, would be more productive. 
The essence of this political decision was more than clear: to send them elsewhere, neither to bury them, nor to cremate them, not even to experience the end of their fellow human. Simply put, if they could just hide them it would have been even better. For that time, it was evident. 
As long as any country on the planet would accept to undertake and absorb them in its soil. Indeed, it didn’t take long for this country to be found. 
A country-island of two hundred thousand square kilometres, in the south hemisphere, volunteered. It was the only one. 
And the trains from all over the planet set off for a new destination, to the Peaceful Land, as they called it. 
TV adverts showed the magnificent vast green expanses and the viewers were reassured by the civilized images. 
And this is how daily life was polished. Hospitals were refurbished and received the healthy. 
A new need, was emerged: not just being healthy but to look healthy as well. Minor surgeries were performed, mainly cosmetic, although nothing could save them from aging. As a tendency but also as a plague the fear of euthanasia crept into other behavioral trends as well. Everyone became more polite, cleaner, mindful of their microcosm, well-dressed even in their most insignificant outing. Someone’s mild cough made everybody turn around and observe them. Smoking was given up, healthy dieting became a way of life and gyms were multiplied. If the pavement of someone’s house was neglected, their neighbour would be surprised. 
There were no dilemmas. A few moral pseudo-delusions of some minorities. 
A few suicides of loved ones who didn’t want to part with their relatives. 
They were published in the column of minor news in the newspapers so that they would be unnoticed. Also, a revolutionary organisation called ‘’Familia Uber Alles’’ had taken responsibility for bombs on the trains but with no major impact on the established status. 
They lived in an utterly free, careless existence. Furthermore, every time a family boarded an elderly family member on the train, the government gave discounts on new house furniture. 
They changed couches, curtains and swallowed the new situation like a bitter-sweet candy. People lived exceptionally well at the time. 
They got used to the new reality. And it only took eight hundred years for any form of faith to all kinds of gods to disappear. But then there was the countdown. Worrying news came from the Peaceful Land. 
The soil was tired having received the dead from all over the planet. 
During the first few years, vegetation was rich. 
The soil was full of nutrients and organic matter and some had the audacity 
to cultivate fruits which they sold to the undeveloped countries. 
Those who were suspicious checked the products’ labels and if it said “non-peaceful” they were safe for consumption. Strange, right? “Non-peaceful”. However, after eight hundred years the soil couldn’t decompose the bodies. 
It spewed them up or they were washed away by the sea and the workers who lived in the Peaceful Land, despite being well-paid by the global funds, refused to continue living in such conditions. Half of them had got sick from breathing the air. There was a cloud of methane gas in the atmosphere and new strange insects appeared. 
Every speck of land on the island was full of bacteria: a cemetery above the surface. Therefore, the trains stopped travelling there. 
When the World Ruler announced: “The dead will remain to be buried at their home, let’s embrace our people with love”, unprecedented reactions of surprise and anxiety appeared on the planet. Sorrow was something new, compassion was missing from their eyes, they had forgotten what the end was like. 
Seminars were organized by the government but to no use. 
It was as if even their DNA had willingly forgotten. At first, citizens didn’t notify the state about their dead. 
They couldn’t understand if someone was dead or not. 
They gave the dead a nudge so they move. 
They looked at them. 
They talked to them hoping they would wake up. 
On the third, fourth day having lost hope and after the fruitless attempts, having comprehended the inevitable, they dug a two-metre-deep hole in their garden and threw them in, to get rid of the smell. 
And then the sense of futility came back to them. 
The memory in their cells awoke. 
And before everything else, the service 
of the priest was used as a weapon against death. 
The citizen who could make or recall a simple prayer was sought after. 
And after the gods were brought back from oblivion, hope also returned. 
Then poetry and arts flourished, humanity lived the second Renaissance. 
And years after, a philosopher appeared and explained how ridiculous the 
issue of death was, almost as ridiculous as life itself.
*Αναδημοσίευση https://www.literature.gr/peaceful-land-by-dina-sarakinou-a-short-story/


Dina Sarakinou was born in Athens, Greece. 
Her family originates from Corfu. She studied Bioinformatics in Great Britain. 
While studying the mysteries of the human microcosm, she envisioned the infinite universe. She always dreamed of long journeys and so she followed a career that allowed her to travel very often.
Είναι σύμβουλος επιχειρήσεων και διευθύνει το διαδικτυακό λογοτεχνικό περιοδικό Literature.gr.