Reflected sorrows

Chapter 21

She turned and gazed placidly at the world around her. Shards of her necklace dug into her neck, daggers in her heart as if it were to a heartbroken lover, waiting at every moment for the blood to trickle away and dry. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. They drowned in memories, and the tears fell from clouds of sorrow – they rained over the long tendrils of the magician's fingers and the man just cackled as he went about his day, tossing a coin up at the gust of wind that whirled through the air like a muffled scream. With tears forming more, every heartbeat a struggle to remain, her footsteps morphed into the beating drums within the dagger it was driven further into her skin, and the lover's wails sank into the wind and were carried away; they drowned in anguish, and it lay in puddles surrounding them, the footsteps leading toward the smiles they had once shared seeming labyrinthine; all the while the daggers dug into her skin, the call of death strong and pulsing. The blade glistened in a dreary moonlight; the lover's eyes were wracked with grief. With fear-tinged woe the tears fell, and the crystal beads simply smiled joyously, the noose around her neck tighter and yet invisible. Her throat could be hoarse and still the lover wept and wept, their tears falling still. And their blades piercing the fog were crimson, parting the clouds of remorse for a moment before they sewed themselves up once again. The puddles still accumulated around her. And the branches never noticed; not the noose around her neck that had tendrils growing like vines from its string. Not the choking feeling she felt in her stomach, as if the anguish was in her, deep-rooted and leeching out and growing more and more until the blood would surely stop pouring from the sky. Her footsteps were the heartbeats of an accused prisoner, still frightful of the remorse that lurked around every corner – and they were slow, dreary, the crimson blood pouring still from the sun, a heart in the sky that threatened to fall.

With a sinister tongue, the puppeteer wailed in the dark, calling her name desperately – she could still feel those strings tightening around her neck; they were pulled tighter and tighter by the tendrils of fog that cackled in the wind as the veil of silence began to lift. And those branches; there was something crooked about them – they were strangely solitary, but uncanny in their smiles, as if they knew she had done something wrong- something unforgivable. They pulled and pushed and looked at her, then glanced away – only for a moment. Then their smiles began to fade as the beads dug further in. Their wavering smiles were cruelly kind – ice on a warm drink; ice on a fire. Coal in the snow, soaked by water that bled from rivers that had been frozen to ice. And the rope dug deep into her soul, choking her of her secrets and pouring from her mouth whispers of things she didn't know. And the branches, in their contorted wisdom, grinned at her with sinister grace, before shaking crimson raindrops from their leaves, the leaves that fell like a prisoner from a rope, the water below them mocking the poor soul with glinting smiles and laughing at the anguish they felt deep within as their last breath whispered through the trees. The noose tightened, and then the body dropped, and the water shook with an intense ripple, before fading into stillness. As the leaf fell, the malice in their smiles reflected for a moment. She looked the branches in their eyes, their cold stare insidious. And they watched as she observed their tendrils of crooked fingers, among the rain, daggers falling upon the ground that she seemed to barely notice. The water was below her. If that necklace were to break it was as if she would fall, and they would watch, smiling with a glee irreplicable by any mirror. Ticking clocks. Raindrops pierced the fog. And she seemed to observe them, before wandering away into the bleak daylight.

Tick tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. There was so little time; though she felt the rope slacken as the shadowed silhouette of the mansion came into view, she knew the magician was not that kind. He threw his own leaves to the ground – tossed them as if they were simply a doll tossed aside by a child. His fingers were crooked and broken; she felt the necklace with frail, shivering hands, and the rope seemed sharp as a dagger, the beads agonising as they pierced the bleak sense of tranquillity. But she supposed her footsteps were just the foreboding tick of a clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick- she paused for a moment, feeling the blood crawl from the sky onto her palm slowly, like the sickness slowly brushing a family. Children. Gone. Flickering apparitions of life. Then the others never heard from again. The blood ceased. She brushed a hand over the beads, now seemingly blunt. Cold. Blunt. She felt her mind racing – it was full of confusion and apprehension, but that shadow of a precarious figure – it always seemed to loom in front of her. Her footsteps ticked on, frustratingly slow and unsteady. Tick. Moments passed in silence, then a wind shuddered through the air; a melody she wished would halt; tock. Tick. Tock. It rang out relentlessly in her mind; as much as she knew it wouldn't stop, she knew deep down that the branches had tendrils over her beating heart, moss growing over its cracked stone. And the entrails dragged her back. Back to where the rope was no longer a noose but a skipping rope; it dragged her through the eerie silence. She'd return. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.