Reflected sorrows

Chapter 25

Her vision swirled – it was the stormy sea, a ship emerging from the depths, choking and spluttering without a sail; its breath was cut in jagged breezes, icy and laced with venom as cold as the gaze of a murderer – as cold as the stench of death. The waves circled in a rhythmic chant of grief, howling in anguish as their white, frothing blood poured up to the surface at the waltzing, grim music; they sent their master's breaths into the air, calling the moon to grasp their weary souls and bring them peace and tranquillity. But they were left with the anguish as the sails sunk lower and lower into their ceaseless depths of tears. And their winds could not penetrate past the gate, which swung on its hinges, letting out cries of sorrow as it wailed into the night, the only response silence. Cold as the tendrils of the sea as it devoured all those lost souls; as more entrails fell like daggers from the sky, piercing the wails of the waves as the boat, torn and frail, breathed rugged breaths; those daggers glinted in the moonlight, glimmering in distrust as they left the poor, weary soul to struggle – to writhe among the whispers of death and drown in foreboding – of course it was all in their head. Of course it must be. Those daggers towered over them as they fled, legs flailing in vain to escape the fate that was lowered before them. The fate chosen by a corrupt hand. A corrupt hand who cackled in the dark, watching as its tendrils grasped them by the neck and choked them with rattling, ancient fingers. That figure lurked everywhere they looked. They held a puppet in their hand. That puppet was the mould on the ship as it withered away, vanishing into the ash of joy burning as they saw its fleeting apparition fade to nothing but specks of desperately fleeing ash in the air. Celeste thought it strange that the ash lay in the rain, imperturbable by the lashing wind that the sea breathed. It escaped the grasp of that crooked hand. Perhaps there was something truthful about her sight, which saw nothing but a bleak wasteland of ocean, writhing like a child before the dagger – wailing in the wind and carrying whispers of feeble desperation and frail hope with it.

She shook her mind from the malady that taunted it, tossing in its cavern bewilderment at the smallest raindrop – hysteric fits of murmuring and screaming madness that cast before her visions of apparitions that devoured her wary soul withing moments of her seeing them. It wailed in protest as she held it in her hand in a tight fist and threw it into the rain of glinting daggers, but despite her frail lassitude it felt light in her hand. It was a shadow of brooding eyes staring from the shadows with whispers of foreboding words, always lurking. She cast her gaze around the bleak, stormy scene that she was surrounded by, glancing at every other thing with disinterest. The swing had always been there, so had the oppressive fog that gathered in a tight tangle of arms reaching for her flesh; but among that stood a single figure; they stood in a strange, unnerving position of life and death – their head was tilted; their hair was stiff, as if of a doll, with eyes of buttons and strings strung onto each arm to contort it into however a twisted puppeteer liked it. It had an uncanny sense of life, as if it were a shadow with eyes that glared at her from the shadows. It was a thought; it was simply a lurking thought that smiled sweetly before grasping her throat and holding it in a grip unshakable, choking out of her truths she could never admit beforehand – truths coughed out in a flurry of desperation and fear; surely it could just be a memory. But it was phlegmatic among the writhing winds that tossed through the air, in torrents of cruel, trenchant words, the screams of the accursed. It stood, with hair flinching before falling still – stale life lingered in a ghost around it, hollow eyes staring with insidious detest into her stone heart. It was just a memory shattered and buried in the ground to rot, but it bled from its eyes ink – the ink used to scrawl a cry for help before a child fell, blood pooling.

Muted screams echoed through the air, confusion haunting her shadow as she took tentative steps into the storm of malady and hysteria that whirled through the air. Ahead lay the gate that could free her, or be her eternal captor – ahead lay the gate that could be the teeth of a conceited fox, chewing her flesh while she still lived and smiling at her begging for mercy – for hiatus from this eternal anguish – or perhaps it could be a kind hand grinning in insatiable benevolence, seeming like the serpent, but perhaps simply smiling like the innocent flower and offering a rope out of this pool of vipers that bit her, pecking like crows as the rope was lowered, just out of her reach. Just out of reach for her weary hands. Just inches from hope, she may fall to the fox, fall to the merciless fangs of the viper. But surely it was just a gate. Fleeing from her paranoia, she glanced behind her. The figure was approaching; perhaps it just seemed closer. Perhaps its familiar face was here to help, despite its eerie sense of stale life. She shivered, the gate opening at her hand. It was odd. Something felt off about its whimpering cry as she tilted its fangs a little. Something felt foreboding about the silence that followed, where the wind was her only companion.

At least that gate fell slowly into an abyss of fog, like night obscuring a web carved deep into the daylight, mistrusting and cruel. All the threads were thin as needles as they were inserted into the flesh of the unwilling martyrs – the screams echoed in the wind, and she felt their arms brush past her; they were a complex, putrid scramble of silk, arms reaching into the sky and glancing toward her. She walked past their mistrusting gazes and looked at the ground, insidious eyes still not hidden from sight, obscured by the fog of her misery and wretched despair; they cackled and brushed past her, laughing in the winds as their whispers of cruel daggers made her shiver, glancing around only to find that the eyes were nothing but twigs shaking. They held her hand, whispering into her ear with the voice of a child, crowding around her in flitting frames and laughing with her – and yet it unnerved her, and the insidious eyes remained as their crooked arms moved away into the distance, never wondering why a trail of blood lay in a crimson viper across the ground; never wondering why their sight saw only her. Her. Her. Her. They watched from the sides, their tendrils fading into ash among the choking, all-consuming fog that cackled as it choked its victims. Perhaps the branches were not so putrid, perhaps they were just the children who wailed in the nights where cobwebs coated their vision and blinded them to the light, spiders abandoning their webs to crawl through their frail, paper-like little minds – so easily torn, so easily stretched – so easily snapped into tiny little pieces that glimmered in the fading cobwebs, glinting to the wanderers who admired the looming, ominous beauty – or perhaps they simply wished they could wield a dagger to pluck the strings apart; or perhaps they wished they could tear down the blanket of viridian that choked the screams and cast them into the wind, tossing them as if they were worthless dreams. Worthless dreams of children who slept, spots crawling over their minds and spreading venom in every footstep, poisoning the pure, angelic flesh that was coated in a veil of clouds, rays of prayer from hopeful mothers and fathers.

There lay an oppressive curtain of fog like the smoke of a candle as it trails up through the night, filling lungs with putrid ashes as if it were simply a stone urn, preserving the extinguished, intermittently glimmering light that had once burnt, so joyous and fleeting – but simply an apparition in a thin, grotesque bed, coated in pustules that bled secrets; secrets that were choked out in a moment. Too late to save any poor soul from their shame. Lies were choked up, brought out like the last etchings of a flame in the thread as life reaches a dull, purgatory twilight – a stale day with age scratched into the walls and dust coating every wall, every fence – a day where clouds of ash mark the sky like a grave. A grave with flowers littering the ground, cries for return, cries for forgiveness, cries for mercy, cries for beseeching eyes that choke out words through entrails of tears that bleed and bleed and bleed and never halt their river of sorrows. Never even when the piles of colour among a black and white world flicker between vipers' heads. Even when the roses are a cry for the snake to trail further, murmuring by the grieving mother's ear and whispering acrimonious lies. In the wind she heard the voices. They called her name. Celeste... Cel- es- te- They were caught by the tendrils of colour that crept in the shadows, their trenchant voices rasping and scraping the back of her throat with their intense, sinister smile. And she knew it couldn't be there. She knew only moments before there had been but skeletal threads of trees that stood, phlegmatic among all the wretched winds that cast the world into an abyss of eternal destruction, leaves daggers and knives. She knew that the blue couldn't be there, lurking at the edges of her vision like an insidious reminder of dread that haunted her. But like the waves of ash darkening in the sky they rolled in, thunder growling at every wave, menacing and furious; seething and kind; it was a brooding voice, and a hand slitting her throat.

Blood boiled in droplets, fizzling and perishing like the spark of life that bloomed in crimson flames; in violet; in roses passed by a love struck hand; in the colours of joy; in the colours of sorrow. And in the colour of grey hairs falling into an ocean of regret. In the colours of flickering consciousness and the colours of wakeful dread; and in the colours of pleasure overwhelmed with a sense of lurking apprehension. That fear haunted you with grey, dreary tendrils that snuck you away into darkness where the colour was muted. And at last, it smouldered, but never died, stale life burning away with no gate, no escape, no spindly arms of an exit among the ocean of blue flowers. It was there. She knew it. It was there. She was there. With a sense of dread, she fled into the sea of flowers, the water gathering around her and clamouring to hear her secrets, but then seeing the moon, leaping towards it and crawling upwards in a dreary race, forming serpentine tendrils of deathly emerald hue, fading to nothing but ash-tainted violet as it breathed the smoke that gathered in a white veil of shattered bones, leaves wilting and shivering in the whispers of grief in the wind, realising with childish woe that the ground was so, so far below; as above, so below. As above so below.