Reflected sorrows

Chapter 24

A needle clattered rhythmically to the ground as the beast sighed, sorrows lurking in every stitch that only got undone, fraying the carpets and making tears in the bookshelves, bitten by mould, or perhaps the constant, unrelenting needles stitching reality piece by piece. Piece by piece; melancholy stitches were a constant lullaby of sanity – a rocking boat. A ticking clock – they still adjusted every moment as the door crept open, haunted by a dark, dull light that lay within the murky depths of the world beyond. It was as if the crooked cackling of the magician echoed still in these blue, gloomy halls. Smoke swam as the candles on the windowsill flickered. Flickered and were blown out – flickered. And were gone in a ticking of that relentless clock. And it was carried in waves of melancholic grace, simply froth on an ocean. And relentlessly the calls of the crooked, jagged fingers of the puppet master rang out. It was a melody of childhood; a light among the gloomy forest of dark shadows and lurking threat that flickered like the candles. Wavering. Then perishing with a rugged breath. She heard her palpitations among the silence thrumming like a sewn lullaby in a dull waltz with death. They echoed along with the calls of the branches that plucked her from her senses and dragged her here. They echoed still. That melody again, and she halted, hearing its rough grace, its slow, slow pace that felt all so fast – a moment gone. And yet the needles making sound from strings of spider's silk, so delicate and yet strong, gazing down upon her and playing before her. The glint of the breeze whirling into those notes. It was unrelenting, as if those cruel, benevolent hands contorted puppets – contorted the noose tangled with her hair that hung around her neck, whispering those putrid melodies into her mind and laughing, mocking the dolls as they pranced in a circle. Aring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down – and she heard screams among the lullaby as the poor little puppets fell, their wretched cries short as a heartbeat; short as the fleeting candle that flickers, intermittently joyous that collapsing into a trail of smoke that leads nowhere but a dank sorrow; dank sorrow coughing and spluttering into anguish that relentlessly sails a boat off course. And the screams mixed in were beyond wretched – anguish echoed in their cries as the dagger was plunged into their fabric, piercing the threads with which they saw and leaving the cries hollow as their eyes melted down like a candle, their face simply withering under the flame.

Murmurs of malady echoed still, the torn sails that fell through the ocean, suffocating this place, making their seams remain unstitched by the hand that fixed everything – the hand that pierced its own creation before watching as it wailed. With a little breeze, many threads trailed through the air; she peered around the corner, the door simply a veil of black, wavering fabric that felt cold as the bars of a prisoner who ate their last meal; it was bleak; a single sheet of pure darkness that seemed a light – a false, cruel light that smiled upon the child that approached it, its grin almost sinister, yet hollow of emotion. Perhaps it was the candle, its smoke still smouldering as the stitches and threads withered, but the blood poured into deaf poppies; poppies that heard nothing but tears of widows as they grieved. It was the melted eyes as they gazed upon the world, dully lit but eerie. A paralysed sleep. A chain around a poor beggar's throat that choked them. It felt like a cold, dripping ceiling of a place one should call home - a place one should yearn for. It was still ringing out with that simple melody; uncannily familiar. Laughter laced with screams and wails, cut short by a voice cooing them to sleep that had a harsh, benevolent tone, cruel and rasping as the knife was plunged into their throats and their entrails spilled into the poppies. It echoed through the haze of warm, bleak cold that enveloped this strange world, accompanying the wails and cackling, the murmurs of grief that lingered in every thread as it was torn by the seams, bleeding the blood of cruel twigs. As she turned, holding in her hand for mere moments a stray thread, she heard something else from behind the bars that caged flickering candles. A familiar voice. Harsh. Fatal; something that the tone of a mother would warn her against. Tears seemed to manifest into threads as she glanced to investigate closer. Closer. Closer. A dreary sense of grief enveloped her, but also dread. Dread as cold as stones.