Reflected sorrows

Chapter 33

Truths lay woven within the ancient threads of the darkness, weaving around her as if screams echoed within her desperate soul, begging her to snatch away their flame of hollow, leaching light, and they leapt aside like the flame, still burning in a dull dance of life that halts for no dissonance – weeps for no perishing souls. A step and the threads had evaded once again her pale face, her complexion vile, and there was a web of tangled stories around her, glistening in every light that did not glow; a mother weeping over a fallen flame as she lies in a bed, smile plastered onto her face as the smoke trails away in a viper, snatching every scale it can to add to a little pile of costumes for a great play, it was as if the flame harboured that dying smoke, letting it weave the seams and make comedy from the little droplet of blood falling. Like the mother's eyes glinted a single gaze at Celeste, that weeping intense in its quivering volume, consuming the web and tearing the fraying ends with rage and seething fury, watching as they fell into a wall piece by piece. And then once more the weeping began to falter and waver with joy stirred into the witch's brew, a vile concoction of intense stench; the corpse that wove in a cruel dance within that mother's gaze was like her own, wavering as she passed it. But the music choked out its last notes just then, cackling laughter of children faltering and stumbling as the child trips. And the hands were torn from the grasp of the dancer, the lady tearing her gaze away for a moment and casting aside the cold, icy compassion that she felt. Only to turn around, like a dove gracefully falling to be incinerated, and smile a dreary smile as it joins the wall of light. The music then halted, but then just as the wind continues though the rain may weep no more from brooding skies, just as the cruel, vile gaze of the mourners disgust the perishing soul as if they were simply hollow skies full of foreboding and stormy gazes; just as all the winds may fall like crows, forgotten, the cackling of that flame that lingers long after continued to ring out in the veil of decaying light. One path lay ahead. One. Simply a wound of hope.

Perhaps that fragmented peace lingered further in the ashes that fell upon the sides, mocking death and straying just too far. Just too close. Just too close to be kind. It was the shattered urn of the delicate webs as they lay down in final prayer, the pieces tossed aside by death into unmarked graves, like the crows that fall with no crown upon their mottled night-coloured feathers, vile in tone. Perhaps those fragments of the scattered stories pierced the fabric of the darkness; she saw the great seam tear, light spilling in leaving the darkness to fester, but not for long, as she wandered further through the corridor of blinding secrets, those stories that when remembered bring anguish and bittersweet pleasure to one's mind for a mere moment, the light began to spill, crimson blood over a wooden battlefield that glimmered with the tears of those begging cultists who look above and cast their eyes down, gazing up in prayer, begging their last words, whispering their last name before the urn shattered, the darkness pierced the deep web of stories that flow beside each other, never touching within the palpable wails of fallen threads of fate, and untouched by the rough flesh of time that weeps. Untouched by the glares of the flame that lingers, perishing no matter what. They flowed, seeming to mould before her into the shape of apparitions. Phantoms. That wall was simply a withered skull, veil tossed over the light only for it to trickle through, the webs of soft, feather-like silk were torn by the seams, but those hands were quick to stitch the corners of the set back together – that grim silk was simply a play performed by those phantoms of life; that cruel laughter left behind by the rain was knitted, thrown carelessly onto the page like ink of memory, fading and ebbing until the only light was the ravenous darkness brought by those ominous gazes, torn shards of a blade slicing open a scar once before sewn by those tendrils of shadow. And the ash spilling like ink onto a page, the veil's scars never healing, so that those truths were left unshielded, and those cackling notes were left within the stories. There only to torment.

It rang out, stinging her ears. That echo of life within mere shadows, within the door handle, within the wood of the blade as it hovered above her neck. Within the glint of her footfalls on the floorboards, ancient among cruel perfection, wailing like the broken-hearted young soul, wishing more words had been said. They screamed and she looked down in shame, watching the walls of darkness crumble, the ash littering the edges be swept away by the scribbled tangle of vipers that struck out at the damp and the cold, scaring it away. And those shadows. She thought the figure was simply in a stitched and vile form, threads writhing within the eyes to sew the grotesque, hollow life she knew. Those eyes were somehow stitched into the shadow. The darkness was that crooked hand once again, putting out the flame it had kept alive. Trembling, yet smiling with those glimmering teeth. It spilled the ashes and led her toward that door, the floorboards silent as she passed them, as if she herself were the phantom of life itself, made to be an ever-wavering flame. That door was the jaws of a mournful mother, and she let the devouring darkness leach its tendrils over her, bearing it like a shawl as she stepped into that dreaded room. Then the vipers emerged. Those viridian beasts. Myths of time. They lurked but never bit, emerging from a single figure at the centre. One she knew. Yet one the sands of ticking clocks had faded the ink of in her mind.

The open earth tempted her forth, the hands of death welcoming and kind – the nuances hidden in the cracks and the cruel ravines in every notch of wood – they held a story, one of death and love. One of a grave littered with no flowers to decorate its terror with grief and melancholy dread. A dread that stalks. No corpse, no empty flame to burn within, eternally lingering to murmur in the wind. Simply an open mouth, gaping jaws ready to say something, the moment before something happens. When the pin drops it's already too late. When the pin drops you can only breathe. And wait. Because time will continue eventually. Time always does; it had a strange trick – that dirt slowly poured into her veins, thin patches of earth sewn into the ground in a patchwork of flimsy candlelight. Those leaves were patchwork of what they had once been, simply a martyr to help along the growth and devouring dread; and from that grew trees within her skin – no – under it – beneath the patchwork of scattered life and pale yellow; they took root like the flowers on a grave, and at once as she gazed upon her skin she saw their roots spread in the very statue of phlegmatic dread that good the very test of winds of death, torrents of earth raining down. The world was... Heavy. That earth ate away, tendrils of death sprouted from life, but the roots were imperturbable, held in the chambers of her face, her eyes. Throbbing and growing by mere minutes into a hideous, cruel glare; that flower grew into putrid stalks within her as her dread mounted, a pulse of monotonous melodies of daily life. A prayer. But a prayer never answered. No evil answers to a flower. Instead as the wind blows dirt, simply a shovel, it cuts off the trees that come from the thin wavers signed and the hours devoted, carried from that sinister hand in the same stream of light, but like vipers they always grow. That grave, empty of the flowers. Perhaps the stalk, the blade, the dagger was never placed into the dirt. Perhaps that wind never blew. But the earth lay ingrained still, cursed by uncontrollable fate, spiralling into horror and dread. The empty soil below the grave.

But she had set foot within, her skin now a patchwork and her breaths rugged as those of the perishing soul.

And reflected in the mirrors, lakes of confessions never told and love never returned; a glare of sorrows never felt as the echo was ever present in her heart. A ticking clock on the mantle piece as she took a step. A single step. Just a moment stitched within the chamber, slow and monotonous as the glint of a needle that begs; Her pulse flowed through, familiar as the whisper of the wind – that dread that lingers long before was there again, the dirt beginning to pile over the long pathways, trails of smoke that halt and splutter as the wind blows, before smouldering like the remainders of life. That grave, she saw the stone of it for a moment, before it was just the door, and the ravines cast deep within with dull flowing life. Those lingering shadows swept away the dirt and left her buried. She turned, leaving the silence to fester. One tick of the dreary clock. Then time seemed to speed up, raking leaves of time and expanding them, trying to hold the rabid best in. Heartbeat. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. That life flowed through her. That pulse, at every step, was a constant, incessant river that choked and flailed, before running smoothly as the trail of thoughts as panic arises and the flower stems into a festering pustule, swelling at the palms. She reached for the door, the river moulding and shaping around the morphing earth of her flesh, the shards of bone glinting on her chest. It choked for a moment up the hill as the door pushed against the dirt. But the winds had fallen silent, and the storm whirled outside the veil of cold earth. That grave had held out its hand, begged her with the promise of nothing; she felt it once again, that throbbing river; its flame wavered but never died – its incessant flow trembled and quivered and shook, like a flame so close to burning out but never falling still – an innocence falling and rising but never recovering so much. And just like that innocence it fell. And the grave shook the last time before a veil of silence fell over the room. And the mirrors were now the ones to shake. Their flowers grew, the single rose tossed onto the dirt by a passer-by.

Phantoms of compassion whirled within that cruel lake of reflection. A few steps closer. Another rasping pulse before it fell still. Now the dread itself was but an apparition, that leaf falling upon the uncaring ground as the sun shatters it and turns it to ash; ash that cascades over the graves; over the soil. The seed within the patch of earth that sows a storm of malady, unrelenting and glaring. That dread lingered yet gazed upon her from clouds of light; she watched it tremble but thought nothing of the horrors within. The phantoms of compassion that burn, then falter, then flinch away. The cruel cackling of the child's innocence as the dust settles over the dirt, the flower decaying, unfurling and growing to become putrid. And there it peered out. Two eyes at first, and though they were just eyes paranoia began to quake within her, corpses rising from the dead. They blinked, almost too slow, almost too fast. Before their faces emerged, and their putrid cores were revealed, peeled away from the mask. Their eyes were hollow as they stared, never once blinking.