Reflected sorrows

Chapter 28

Her skin was coated in the threads of a life, spirits possessed for moments, reliving every moment and sensing every melancholia to the point of drearily acute dread that loomed at every moment – a doom that was served on a silver platter as the puppet master's strings were dropped and the door was tossed shut with the carelessness of the tears of a lover. She watched as the single lantern, the flame of hope, the light gifted by clouds to grant her a twisted path to death, full of mountains and a narrow sense of joy that burnt out like the wick of a candle turning to ash. It was engulfed by the moth's wing of shadow that towered over the books that were scattered in a rainfall pattern over every surface, flooding the shadows with a lingering regret; it inched closer, the air growing thin as the fur of the tendrils brushed past her hand, cruelly sharp, like shattered glass in her palm, insincere apologies and dreary goodbyes that lead to tears that were never shed, though perhaps they should have been moulded from the withering remains of joy. The shattered glass of the shadows pierced the skin, pooling blood in her hands and making a river of them – tears never shed though the goodbye was so dreadful, almost mournful. Tears that pooled within like water breaking a dam, the cracks in her skin for a moment the stone of the crackling ravines. It was an insincere apology, cast deep within her skin as she gazed at the mournful flame, the needles coming in an army to find their quarry, swords in a ceaseless war of blood and entrails. They cascaded with the gloom, the door so close and yet not clicking shut; it simply refused and yet was pulled. Perhaps by that same hand that held glass enough to cackle as the light that lay still in her grasp was close to being extinguished, dimming the melancholy moonlight that trickled in through the windows; when the moth's wing brushed past, it pierced her feeble veil of pale life, and anguish rose to the surface like unfelt sorrow – the dam shattering agonisingly within. But she looked down, and saw nothing but her pale, yellow-tinted skin gleaming in the shadows of hollow light.

The light was a single sign among a gloom of scattered memories, and she chased after it, her hands outcast like the lover's hand as the wails of lost spirits called out around her. She held in her hand a single light, though it was simply ahead of her, she felt the warmth of the wax in her hand, scorching it with the cold warmth of an unloving mother; it was a rose stem held by a lover, fleeing toward a nonsensical string of thread that tied things together as a puppeteer repairs his puppets. The moth's wing fell over its weary form, but the candle stared into her eyes. A heartbeat. And she gazed upon it a while more; its stem melted, wax pouring down onto her hand and casting its anguish onto her pale skin; and that warmth... It was cold. The lantern was just a dull, inescapable glow in the gloom of the cavernous room. Every glint of unshed tears in the dark as wind blew like a monster's breath through the throat in which she stood let the candle perish, but that same hand relighted the flame as she chased its dim light. It was an unrelenting cycle. And the cold burned her hand, and yet she clutched it like the desperate lover, ignoring the mourning veil of ice that gathered over the petals, staining them with indigo. Ignoring the calls of the whimpering spirits that were muted by the shattered glass and tossing it into the dark. The moth's cruel mist fell down over the candle's light and yet a malice-ridden hand was cast over it, and it lingered beside the scythe of death for a moment before reaching its undead hand toward the surface. She took a step toward the library wall, but nothing could clutch her flesh, parting it from the malady that threatened to awaken it from the cold sleep of death at every moment. A step in the intermittent, inconstant darkness. And the first crack appeared in the dull facade of the rose, now turned blue as a winter's night as rain pours. Before it shattered, the puppet of darkness casting its trenchant, presumptuous hand over the hope she had fostered. The air turned cold as the lantern's glass shattered.

The air crackled with forgotten dreams and unrelenting nightmares that haunt you with acrimonious flames of nostalgia. She watched as a single ember emerged from the perishing flame and floated for a moment through the air; it throbbed as she gazed upon and poured over the books, reading every page as if it held answers; answers she wished she could just hold in her hand as if they were palpable voices calling out in languages phlegmatic to the ticking clock of the world's candle light. And every letter held a story of childhood – a memory you could no longer recall no matter how far you searched, digging through graves of loved ones and those you despised. That ember throbbed still with stale life, taunting and mocking her despair and dread that she bathed among as she pored over every letter and every blank page. It mocked her, its disdain potent and relentless. The books were a saviour and a chain. The words were a remedy and her only malady. They were a hand out of the darkness come to rescue her, and yet simply an apparition among the fog, impenetrable and cruel. That ember. It began to burn bright. Brighter. Then it landed upon the ground, a sea of books lapsing in tendrils to extinguish its dagger. But as her back was turned, it landed upon a page, its flame building slowly. The door clicked now, silent as the night's rugged last breath as the sun rose.

And the breath blew wildly lapping flames into the checkered floor, the books set alight with the tongue of a hell hound released from cold, dark chains – they consumed the ground, flooding it with unfelt remorse – she heard the waves smash against the walls and roar insatiably, its amber ocean lapping in seething languages, tongues ancient and for many years unspoken. It was rained from the ceilings, that sound of the flames lapping like hell-hounds haunting her thoughts; it was a beach as the sun set – the walls were a bay calling out to her before it devoured her bit by bit, and the gates lay, locked by a merciless hand. Those flames lapped with the slick, somewhat graceful tongue of evil. It spoke in sinister tongues, its eyes wild and ravenous for something. Something. Something; it searched around but the answers were a set, placed in paper and constructed by cruel hands mocking her helpless flailing, holding the strings loosely and then tightening them till the smoke's tendrils, the rapidly wandering eyes of the blind demon, curled like a flaming, seething viper around her throat. They reached her waist now, and she scrambled. The paper was flimsy and fell like the dull haze of childhood – and the answers were gone even as she snatched it away from the hellhound. It was simply the ice melting to put out the furiously writhing flames, fuelling the hissing and spluttering whispers. They bubbled and toiled like cultists hoping something lay beyond the candles they lit and the lives they sent toward nothingness and abyss; it splashed over the clothes of poor soldiers on the waves, filling her with remorse she could not hold for a moment. Those lifeless rivers were thriving with stale rivers of hollow eyes, watching her and tearing at her stone heart. They thrashed against the carvings of malady and despair, simply mocking her as the disdainful droplets of water shattered into the writhing mass of regret that mounted, drowning her in its relentless waves of sorrow. Her limbs were weak and heavy, and her breath scratched cruel and mocking etchings into her throat, never to be seen by anyone but her.

A brooding storm of malady lingered above, rushing to speak with her before simply floating past, too late to halt the war begun by the demons that dropped crimson-soaked corpses from the ceilings. They scorched her with a stinging pain like a bee sting, an insult that lingers. And they lay heavy around her throat, choking from her the life she needed to drag her nails against the ground, the checkered floor that spoke in a sinister tongue as it was burnt through and scorched. She reached through the ocean, but it burnt her throat, lapping at her soul with the speed of a fleeting apparition that devoured the air but never seemed to linger for long. It scorched her throat like the noose, with its rope fraying and unfurling, a decaying plant unfurling its true colours until the shattered glass pooled in her hands, the storm clouds brooding; they cackled and crackled with intense anguish, the corpses falling with entrails clinging on to the flimsy and feeble skin. And every dagger glinting felt like a sword plunged into her back as the murderer walked away. But she crawled, a demon burning up through a shattered lens, obscured by a veil of smoke that murmured in mournful tones above. Celeste. Wake up... Those floors were swept by the cruel tongue of the devil – they screamed but misfortune muted their calls, and she shuddered. It was just her fingernails scraping against the ground. Scratching at her skull, etching a storm of malady into her tormented mind. Scraping. Incessant calls of sirens. Unfelt remorse. Those voices cooed in her mind, but they glared down at her flailing desperation with little joy. Little but a hollow stench of lifeless forms shifting in the darkness. Those screams of hollow dread lingered in those blank eyes, and still she heard the lapping of the flames parting ever so slightly to crawl up her skin. Another crooked movement, like the branches of a flimsy paper trees shattering under the glance of the foreboding crackle of war. The crimson fluid drooled from the ceilings with entrails whirled within. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. She heard that clock still. The leaves scattered. And the window lay before her as seemingly the night alone remained to tilt only slightly.

The cold night air struck the lapping tongues of the demons who lurked among the fallen pages, tossing them aside as they curved around the rapier of wind; perhaps it was just a needle, she heard them think. Perhaps the seams were a little torn, the rugged stitches floating in the air. They blinked for a moment as she crawled to her feet, her skin a patchwork of red and yellow like parchment splattered with scarlet blood, raining from a war begun by a glance, and began to furiously reach for her torn flesh, pulled by ravenous flames, bloodhounds lapping at her hands and feet with a burning cold. A hollow cold. Such a cold, stale colour. And their chains held her, the puppeteer's strings fighting against them with vigour and grace, freeing her. Merciless monsters. They were not that. She saw them pierce the night with their daggers. The grace was matched with crooked cards drawn by the magician. The flames retreated like reluctant troops. But determined they continued; the queen drawn as the flames lapped now at the smoke of their own creation, winding in a perfect storm. A lullaby of uncanny gazes. They saw her. The man saw as she climbed through the window and collapsed onto the grass. Lifeless yet living.