Reflected sorrows

Chapter 37

She saw them then, needles, they glinted in the hollow horizon and seemed to whisper mad, hysteric tongues of hope and despair, perishing joy and burning sorrow reflected in a mirror; the reflection glares, flickering, and yet you may ignore it; the ignition of a moment. That was all these inky needles could be as they glared upon the empty page, words obscured by an impenetrable fog that could so easily devour the enemies it made, and yet it tossed them down, martyrs to be mocked and stirred as they slept; it could torment her, yet it only threatened to cast down the brooding menace of growling beasts. It only ever threatened, did it not? These needles seemed furious yet mellow and full of solace – something within was repulsed by their flame that burnt the single ember of hope she had; cast it to the hounds of the devil who laughed and mocked her attempt to stray from the path set by a pen and paper. They didn't leave them to suffer but left her tormentor and her parental hand stranded among those arid petals of flame, and one by one those rags of hope began to glisten with cruel malice, blood pouring in incessant ash – ashes over ashes over dust and over suffering. Slowly the hands emerged, grasping and clutching at the silence left by absence of hope; they wound their tendrils around a single point, burning with demoniac passion and leaving smoke behind that was bled from the tears of mortals, cursed with cruel hands digging nails into their flesh – she heard their cries now, yet it was beneath her; she felt the brush of their skin against hers, vipers with scales that had long ago fallen to the earth – they murmured in her ear, shattered bones of ink not erased but simply buried beneath waves of dirt – she heard it now, her malady cruelly etched deep into the scars and smiles in every word; she knew that they held her – that this was an eternal mass of writhing, ineffable vipers. But they were just ink buried beneath the flesh of so many other stories; the ink was there deep within – and she knew that beneath the flesh lay a flame, choking out light from a flame that mocked her.

A mountain of possible threats loomed as but a shadow, lit by a flame or perhaps just exposed by the light – sheets fell to put out the flame with tears of two lovers bound on separate paths, but through the smoke she saw those dainty swings, a pendulum begging her to answer before the answers fled and she never held them. It was scratched onto the horizon; she never once saw anything but the whisper of a reply to a letter never sent; those letters danced before her but of course they were just scratchings that she tried to form in her mind before the embers snatched them and tore away those shadows – the ashes fell before her eyes and her skin, a veil of sorrow eternally embedded into the fabric of fate; all the ink upon the page could not be heard, and all the needles were simply knives behind a curtain of joy, invisible; she grasped at the air, holding it in her hands and fleeing the shadows towards the gate. Those etchings of silhouettes among the shadowed fog were simply bait for a beast, surely, something made to lure forth a rabid beast and laugh and mock its wails as the froth falls from a limp mouth, and His eyes scan the carcass, worthless and stiff as a puppet. Once again, the glint of those needles flashed before the flame grew dim and all the cruelty leaked, leaving hollow, inert eyes. A pulse. A heartbeat! Steady. Steadier! A frantic chase; and then, as if the pot shattered and was tossed over the page, clarity laced with an incessant reminder of the broken glass she trod on – the flesh of a dove, so sacred yet unholy as its blood spills. Once so powerful, the clarity brought those doves He tossed down, a magician with a hand as strong as a needle and thread, skilful and slight in every motion – and yet his hand lay a limp corpse as the clarity turned to ash His sacred doves, turned their beaks to those of crows, and tossed down embers of their own to mock him. The sharp sanity she felt was a dagger to the heart and a hug to the neck, choking from her the poetic unawareness and bliss and replacing it with that pencil, contorting her hand with malice.

They mocked her. Those looming silhouettes, eyes of those above and those lower, looked upon her in disdain and cast down their detest in long tendrils of joy – something in it was a smile, a sign torn down with sinister intent behind every movement – or perhaps she was just deaf to their pleas that she turn back and close the gate; that her mind just demands she leave – that her hands steadies and she see the uncanny, ineffable silhouette of Lucille in the centre. An old friend; perhaps they just wanted to deter her with the graves of smiles that lay within cavernous chambers. Lucille lay here. And her ashes were already spilt. Already out for her eyes to lay their gazes upon.

The fence was merely a web she tore through as the ashen, pale figure seemed to cock its head like a beast, unfamiliar yet hollow humanity burning within those eyes. A disdainful and uncaring glance tossed over the veil of grief and torn seams that lay upon the gaze of the creature before her; that cackling seemed to echo, then halt for a moment. A stirring of breath. Those creases were in just the wrong places, shadows cast as the seams tore and the eyes burnt their hollow light, the uncanny coldness of their flame so familiar. Perhaps it was just that those eyes reflected her in the putrid mirror, stained with ink – but something about the insidious shadows that bled held a strange hand, mixed in with the threads of reality was a falsehood that no one saw. No one but her; a loop of begging for death in all its cold grasp and slithering gracefully out of its grasp to live another moment; those shadows seemed to hold eyes among those hands, vile and incessantly staring. But this was Lucille. A friend. A friend she had grown ever so close to; Perhaps, however, the light itself was all that was laced with grotesque eyes. Red as the flame of love that resides. As the veil that is etched and weaved like a tapestry, making the figure seem so cruel and mocking yet just a phantom of hysteric grief; tormenting light simply wore down the edges, the ink pouring slower in the false mask of grace and loneliness. But the crows from above simply held it back, holding it in the palms, already so scarred, and letting it infect the seam and the wound in its thread; letting it stain. Letting it bleed. But really the night could reveal truths in its darkness; it held a strange, convoluted plot. A wicked act. Bloody hands. It was not ink but fractured reality hiding blood in vile trails down the page – putrid masks of smiles. A veil cast over for only moments before the tapestry was torn down by furious claws. And the torn seams were revealed, the shadows seemingly unveiled. The eyes unveiled to be cold and empty before the curtain drifts over once again, a cloud of menacing dread that waits until the smoke trails into the night and pierces it.

Behind the mournfully silent figure stood a melody played in perfect harmony and solace, yet with such dissonance and anguish that the notes were etched into your ears, drawing blood from the tears and agony from memories of joy – a murmur of hope – a daunting, foreboding shadow of time – perhaps it merely ticked along to a storm, the swing simply a ship upon the sea as it writhed in anguish and torment; the fog could roll in and out but the rabid, rampaging beast still mocked all order, tossing over the fabric of the great, drowning tapestry and revealing the putrid layers of skin and muscle that rotted beneath the surface, tendrils of decay reaching through the pages; time was inconstant; in life it decays and the ticking clock hand reaches through layers of a storm to make sense of it all, ticking along to the waves by demand; tick; tock. Tick. Tock. And like the conductor of this great orchestra, an ever-rocking cradle, the ship creaked, and the figure made a gesture as if for her to sit. But even as they wandered over to the sinking sails and hands black as ink, the beast seemed to writhe; it was rabid, a froth gathering as it fled and tried so desperately keep the merry go round in its constant rhythm – an incessant and unceasing rhythm of melodic grace; mixed still, however, with dissonance – dissonance within the eyes that stirred as it wailed and begged for another to hold its hand. Dissonance in its continuous tangle of threads that had no needle to mould their forms into full figures once again. But she felt the breath of that beast as she made her way into the circle of scratched stars; it tossed upwards the waves, and they came crashing down in a fog of smoke and mirrors; for the bones clattered, the only thing that had not rotted down to mere ashes within the carcass of phantom light. It had once been so bright and yet it was now hollow. Yet, though simply an ember, it spread an aura of summoned spirits, apparitions to stay phlegmatic against acrimonious winds. It seemed light. And yet it seemed dark. And the fog lay in a thin veil, an afterthought of the tapestry as it fated the future with golden, glistening threads.

Her eyes seemed, however, though they could seem hollow, or innocent and hopeful, they seemed to hold a smile, though the pores spat out ink and cackled, watching as the putrid complexion simply scared away those who claimed to be ready to see such a sight. They seemed mournful as the stone, engraved with trenchant goodbyes, that fell upon a winding road. The rabid beast seemed to halt and quiver and shudder with uncontrollable dread – After the long, winding trail there lay a solace as she sat down, the wind howling as the beast breathed upon grey air. It was a night full of those strings, pecked at by ravens, where the rabid beast halted before Him. And the stranger, a friend she cherished greatly, spoke in a rasping and oppressively brooding tone; as if secrets lay within every letter.
"Celeste. You did this. You know what you did. He knows. The trees whisper your name, Celeste. You must go."