Reflected sorrows

Chapter 31

Those tarot cards laughed ominous, mocking laughter, hearing it echo into the bleak wind, carrying its dreary cackling into the forest; fate loomed within the restraints and chains that lay upon the wood, decayed and weary as an old man on the street waiting, begging – just getting by but waiting impatiently to perish and see those clouds that tower ahead, bathed in glory – until the guillotine falls. The door began to lean on its stray chains, torn off by the wind's fury and tossed aside like a feather, and she took timid steps toward its handle – stairs were so far beneath her, their throw of a dice looming below and forbiddingly cackling with the light that glinted off the jagged edges of those daggers – those blades that inch closer and closer until the blade hits the skin and the gaze perishes, life turning to ash; the door reclined further, seeming to breathe heavily, panting and wheezing like the sickly old man, who wonders when the clouds will engulf him – they carried their mottled tones of laughter and sorrow, evil, sinister, and yet just so weary that the thin fabric of fate was wilting like the love of the young; writhing. It shuddered, and choked, inching closed by moments of needles flashing before her eyes – with a steely gaze, the wind died for a moment. A silence so dreary it almost felt like a hiatus in time; a dreary moment of dread and bleak joy – of solace; solace for the grieving to hear once again the slamming of a door. And the calls of goodbye. She wished in that moment for something, as the wilted leaf of the wood drifted closed, patched by metal that choked out of it the strength it had once had to stay standing; metal that turned on it in the last moment and etched into its throat death in all its vile anguish. It halted. That hiatus once more. The solace of the wind was nothing but a dull melody. Silence. Mournful ravines carved into the ancient door; melodies as old as time. Before the clock ticked once again, and she rushed forth to slip like a single word, unnoticed and unheard, through the mere crack in the door.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

And the guillotine cascaded down, blade piercing the skin of the neck as the leaches of crimson crawled out only to be devoured by crows.

A stench of loneliness lurked within the cold, dank chambers, an eternal light that was forever insatiable, a lurking sense of dread when the barred windows rattled with the unheard screams of children – the unrelenting stench of the bookshelves cowering against the wall, the belt before them and steely, seething eyes before them. Vipers writhed and slithered in the gaze, their hissing carried through the air into their ears, as if the stories were tainted by that piercing tongue, a blade to the heart that penetrates stone – that devours the poor children whole before they know what lies within the poisoned cup. Before the viper bites them, leaving a scar, lingering and cruel, in the hand of the sufferer; a scar that appeared in a fallen book, tossed away into the cavern to cast a mask of perfection upon their complexion for a moment. She shuddered. They flashed in her mind; those images of a wretched face with her eyes; with her pale skin. With her terrified yellow eyes staring for hours at that page. She tossed it aside like the book that cast its ink-filled corpse into the carpets, not plucked by her hand of such dreary shivering – it floated through the room, encircling before funnelling down to its death, the stories and memory evaporating and turning to ash. Ash that choked her. And that tendril reached with a dull thread to undo the perfection that had once been – a circle of endless failure – and put out its dull flame, tearing up the seams and leaving a gaping ravine in the carpet, with a mouth to scream with teeth that told lies. Lies that cut their lip every time and frayed their rotting gums made of thread and needle. Now the ink was just another sickly cry into the shadows; an insignificant mark erased – those teeth erased the screams. Those uptorn threads never saw the light of day. They strangled the wilting flame of amber that burned bright. And it perished with a shallow breath. Tick. Tock. Out. Tick. Tock. In. Then the wavering silence followed, trailing until the ashes fell and the wails were forgotten.