A salty breeze slithers between the buildings, creeping through cracks and whistling empty echos of sound. The sounds of laughter, of footfalls and chatter, are gone. Windows lie in broken shards, winking like diamonds, littering the sidewalks and dusty floors. The city is empty. The stores still boast frozen people in fashions of years before, their plastic hands outstretched. But trees have stabbed up through the roof and plants thrust the concrete up into buckled gaps. Their churches are empty but for spirits.
The city is the abandoned resort of Varosha, a victim of a battle between the Greek people of Cyprus and the Turks. It was once a brilliant, glittering tourist attraction, tucked in the sandy beaches. It now stands, fenced off from the rest of the world, abandoned and left to gradually decay.
The story is fascinating and sad, definitely worth reading. But my writer's mind wonders beyond the fence. What must it be like? What would it feel like to walk the abandoned streets? To peer through the windshields of cars parked permanently for decades? The city is heavily guarded now, but what if it wasn't? The looted city has been left for so long, but what could live there? What might live there hidden in the dark, creeping in the abandoned rooms, feeding off the overgrown gardens?
Here is another place where even a visit would give you shivers. A haunted past, a violent past, and an unknown future.
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