Reflected sorrows

Chapter 29

As the needles etched curses and contracts into the stars, their rapiers were plunged deep within her, her stone heart crackling and seething within, yet seeming calm and phlegmatic on the surface, where moss grew and festered, sending off a stench of grief. Their tips brushed past her shoulders and lay their corpses upon them in inscriptions of an anguish-ridden curse, throbbing with heat and yet so cold that the air shook with the incessant dagger of ice plunged into the first layer, the second and the third until the blood emerged, a dull lullaby of a jack in the box ready to strike; and yet when it did, it was painfully nonchalant and cruel. Dull and dreary. A sense of monotony at every moment and a sense of terror looming, and yet never leaping out at her weary flesh. It slithered, for a moment flashing like the fangs of a viper, ready at any moment to strike and sink its teeth. That viper had fangs so cold in the way they gleamed and mocked her – it sank down into her chest, halting when the stone, warm heart pulsed beneath. And the cold was deathly, the hand of death contorting its vile fingers up her neck and into her mind, leaving its remains to fester and rot until it was just too late. Those grotesque images crawled through every part of her repelled them and wished that their flesh was torn, their blood cast upon the ground. But this throbbing cold was not a single arm to be ignored. It was a viper crawling down to her feet. It was a waltz in the dark of what she could not see but could breathe, taste, smell, see, seek in her mind. It was every dream shattered, like a lantern extinguished by ill-intented winds of shadow and aching bone. It was a lullaby threatening to send her back. Back to the darkness of that room. Back to the broken dreams that lingered as the fire spread, seeking the sky more than any joy it could see. It seeked the comfort of a hand. It was tinted at every moment with a sense of dread, wavering and tossing her corpse aside. It lingered even now, as her vision cleared of those wretched scenes, and the sun set, the sky emerging from its hollow shell.

She managed to scrape up her courage and stand, holding the dirt of the ground in crimson hands, intermittently flickering and moulding into sorrow, then into detest that she held like a lantern long ago put out. Fervent malady that throbbed with intense anguish and agony – but it was all in her head. Her dreams were at least forgotten, not shattered like the joy she had once felt. The ashes struck her with their fateful blow, reading the name on that piece of a broken vase; then, looking up and gazing to the stars as she began to stumble in her deathly cold state, she heard it again. It was softer, less jagged than it had once been. It was softer, and yet her ears ached and her skin felt glass and bones on its shallow surface; Forgotten dreams throbbed above her, remembered for moments and yet then forgotten once more, a light put out by cruel hands of darkness. Shattered. Snapped by the hands of death, thin and spindly as a thread that frayed piece by piece. It was cast out across the canvas like a sin that would never be admitted, never depicted by a paintbrush as well as in the mind's eye, uncannily perfect – it was throbbing in every part, and for moments, mere moments, it seemed to glow, all singing a melodic tune in unison, even if it was mournful, wretched and silent; but then the darkness prevailed, and every dream once fixed like a piece of a single urn, glued together by stitches, now was torn and the lights flickered, before they tore another from themselves, venturing with hopes only to have that flame, that towering flame that she saw even now, perish and splutter. They whispered to her; their strength leached out by the hands of death. It mounted, joy rising within, before falling. And cascading. And crashing down until the lantern was shattered on the ground, leaving an impenetrable darkness to linger and suffocate with its oppressive arms. A starless night to oppress and linger forever over her mind. Glass began to rain down, withered remains of that flame, cut off too soon as the branches began to blossom with amber light.

Those flames were a constant reminder of what she'd done. What lay behind her, the remains of ember left to crackle and linger within, lit by an undead flame; they were deluges of incessant, raucous voices that rained agony upon her. The dripping of a tap as it lingered still, incessant and never halting to watch as the tormented soul's sanity is pecked at by crows and ravens. They placed more chains upon her wrists, binding her to the branches above with their blame and those grotesque bones. All the remorse she should feel, and yet she was a blank canvas, erased and burnt and cast away like nothing into an abyss; she was a poor corpse. She felt only sorrow. The despair crawled into her mind and spoke those words into her ears, never halting to think, only glaring into her eyes and tossing daggers into her flesh. She had shattered those lanterns, that rained down now, the ashes of a friend whose death lays unnoticed, the childhood pecked at by crows that devour it piece by piece. She was the crow. Her feathers were vile, and the light that reflected was simply a Celesta echoing in her mind – a lullaby that plays as the jack in the box winds up. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Her heartbeat in the shadows; or was it the bones rattling within the wick of the candle as the deathly remains of the living rot and wither, insatiable beasts crowding around it?