All The Lonely People

This little piece is inspired by a writing prompt on Substack called The Theatre of Decay. I hope you all enjoy it.

Ah, look at all the lonely people…

Death comes for them all. A finality that exists only when life ceases to breathe.

But decay? Decay is everywhere. It overreaches, it conquers, it vines through life—a twirl of ivy climbing the sashes until it swallows the light whole.

There is no escaping carbon falling into disarray. The garden overgrown with weeds, the curtain speckled with mold, velvets gnawed at by the damp.

And old things, I was told, hoard decay like a sailor holds his gin. Not as an inevitability—although it is inevitable—but as history, as proof that time came as a guest and never quite left.

There was this theatre. A place where dreams went to die on the planks. Once, it was lively with many things. Hundreds of feet on lacquered wood, now all buried in deep soil. Bottles of scent that lingered on the vanity, now stolen by the wind. Tears that caught in the wings, drying like ropes.

It had this reputation. A sticky thing that never fully shed. Dream-eater, it was called. For it had seen many a glow to extinction. Tired actresses and fallen playwrights. Directors that knew applause only through soliloquy. Dramatists that wrote early elegies like an obituary would epitaphs.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

They came from all walks of life. Like moths to the glare, tapping at the glass for something more than the smallness they peddled in their luggage. An injured acrobat. A voiceless singer. A mouthless ventriloquist.

The broken ones—the ones whose story matters.

Dream-eater swallowed them all. A voracious fever of applause like the bagpipe that lowers the dead into the earth. One last performance, once last creak of the plank, one last bow, and—

Decay took over.

All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Together, of course. For there is only one thing decay doesn’t touch—

The collective will to transcend it.

There was this theatre. A place where dreams went to die. Once, it was lively with many things. Hundreds of feet that stood together. Bottles of scent that knew the warmth of a pulse. Laughter that swelled in the wings like sails.

Ah, look at all the lonely people…

How loved they all are when they stand together.

Author Notes

I was heavily inspired by the song I’ve been listening to on repeat for the past two days. One of my favorite Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby. This was a fun exercise.

© 2026 C.C. Harlow. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission of the author.