Ripples of grief

Chapter 2

The door welcomed her with a hand that held etchings of memories of joy in its warm smile that seemed so cold, so empty – a cloak of love peeled away slowly, remaining in shadow and desolate ruin, and yet revealing the nooks of grief and the scratches of anguish against the wall, cruelly glinting in the glare of the moon – the saw the cloak rear its head over a battle trench, holding the shadows as a home in which it thrived and laughed with joy, and leaving the light to be glared upon with disdain – she was trying, but she saw all the scratches and the dust that lay as a reminder that the laughter had only ever been a melody to drown out the threat that loomed incessantly over them, a foreboding cloud of gas that swept through towns, stealing away the people and leaving them to speak empty words. Writhing beasts of shadow that hid those scars that had been worn thin, infected with pus and crimson blood – those vipers that ate their way through rotting apples even as they decayed, remaining through the anguish; for they could claim the page was only in your hand as you read it, but it was in the stitches used to hide the life behind; the torn mask that held captive no one but those who lay their eyes upon it. It haunted you as you slept – it spilled like the crimson oceans of flowers onto a page that, at a glance, shed tears, and at a close distance blinded you. It could stitch a blanket with its fibres and pluck at them with heartless mercy, before watching the threads crumble. The news lay in every moment and every plaster against a wall – a bandage of grief to hide the fact that she knew that those letters were all that stood between her and the yellow pages of a bill needing to be paid, lest the viper's fangs strike deep into your flesh. Lest they glimpse that letter, lovers past slipping away while the sinister gaze of the slithering petals stared at it with an intense detest; they took a few steps over. One moment – then they seemed to climb – they infected the yellowed paper of sweet smiles of love into decay and endless remorse for the one who stood perishing so far away; but something about the nectar of those inky, slithering masses of petals – serpentine guilt lashed out toward a life almost too full of joy – tempted her closer, until she could feel her hands reach for those threads of ink, so elegant, and pluck them from where they stood. Like an instrument a wail rang out across the lake, then silence reigned once more.

Even as she took timid steps toward the apparition of love, the cruel thorns of a rose begging for skin to pierce struck her heart and she crumpled in the knowledge that these words were empty; her mouth was dry, sapped by the leeches that fed on the venom of that viper. Most letters had skin, bones and teeth – the skin was the paper; perhaps the one vessel to bleed and bleed, and yet read still, the petals at the very end inviting them to bite at the temptation of a single praise – a single piece of kindness to smile upon them and paint onto their faces a smile – a grin to pierce even the needles who fought with daggers. But there seemed none – even a jolt of realisation as she glimpsed the strands of skin and felt the daggers at the edge. And yet they folded like paper planes at the edges, carelessly tossed aside. Another step and, in her hand, she grasped a hellhound, one not contained by the constant bones of the petal – they were so cold, obsolete, crackling and shattering into pieces as they were held. And yet they had a sort of phlegmatic grace. They were the lure for the perishing soldiers. There were no petals – no lure of joy lay within the torn skin. Only craters where the paper planes struck and blotted out her sight – through the veil placed as the sight was destroyed. The cadaverous husks of joy fell in the ash as she gazed upon the shadow that love left, scolded in black. It was as if the paper was pierced by thorns; it was not held back by those restraints, and in those wrinkled talons, ancient as time itself, the raven of death plucked the rose, beginning to toss those planes, paper planes, over the frayed skin, thread of condolences. They seemed to fly over battlefields and spread the thorns, piercing holes in cities, in the ditches of discarded corpses. And onto him, as he tossed the rose into his beak and the rapiers tore out his throat; in the acrimonious tears there lay an ominous drop of ink – a letter – written by him; as he perished his last words had left a piercing screech of grief. For the thorns were tossed over every surface. They were incessant. They knew they were the viper – they could never be contained in bars of paper, frayed and cruel. They could not be contained in a far-off thought; they struck your sight, casting the veil over your gaze carelessly, almost mercilessly.

She felt them eating away, the acid devouring her flesh as the first tear dropped, clearing the great serpentine, labyrinthine hallways of a life; a life only missed in a single mind – a single statistic. A labyrinthine tangle of morals and all that whirled around each other. But the viper had to spread its word – those venomous threads; soon you wept them. Then you held them like that rose – then they fell over the throat of those who you held with those arms that begged too for mercy. And soon their scales flashed before you, choking out of you the comfort in which you had once lived. It wept over everything – your limbs – your heart – it dissolved your eyes until they were covered with a hazy veil of scales and blood and tears wept by workers for something greater. They could form the veil or destroy it, letting you see the desolate melancholy prison you lived within.

Those trailing serpents of ink choked her as they had him, licking her eyes with their sinister venom and cackling and sobbing with intense sympathy; and yet it was paper, a fog placed as conveniently as a set of paper dolls – they wrapped around her neck and eyes, and she stumbled around, fighting for breath. Struggling. Drowning. Her neck was tainted with thorns, luring in those she loved and tossing them into needles and spikes against their will. And hers. And hers. They were on her tongue too, and she saw every seam stretch and tear with a deafening roar like waves across water – her reality – it was tainted clearly – she tasted it in the blood of soldiers that held ripples of grief; or was it water – her eyes were choked with the venom of paper and those words still stung. Her own handwriting had written that. It had written that he was drowned in some distant ocean, a surreal shadow of understanding. And even in the water she drank to steady her steps, perhaps cure her of her rambling shock and dread, tasted of that guilt which glowered upon its victim. She felt then the first wail of the child – the first steps that echoed through every memory. A beating heart. She felt it even within her own stomach as she felt the water crawl down – a slithering viper of malice; a pulse. His breath. A moment. A second. A long, dreary moment of sinister hope. Nerves cast off by incessant wails of destruction cast to wander, trembling and screaming into the dark – then she felt them slithering – something was wrong – something – they tapped the water with the thorns that were scattered over their bloodied tendrils. Then they clutched at the oceans within a vase of flowers – the smiles once shared. Now in shards beneath the ground where so many were buried. The painting of a growing stem, a trembling murmur of paint before everything had turned to a desolate race to put rags against the walls where they fell through upon those who stood below. Before it all had been a rose and a vow – a signature in gold – or a signature in blood to be just that. A rose held by a weary crow's beak. It was so binding. A soul bound to woebegone agony. Agony and pain.

At the top was a rose with petals and with thorns to cast jagged scars through flesh – the nerves seemed to recoil as their remains were tossed from the sky, falling upon the ground as water that drowned more – more and more families starved by those vipers of ink; as it was devoured, they seemed to calm, to halt their dreadful tremors and simply fall underneath a surface. A surface of water that had writhed before her. That had writhed before her as she wept – that she stood before – that she held in her hands and tossed over the bleak earth, where desolate houses stood alone, trembling inbetween intermittent sobs. Drowned in grief. It was in her palms. It was engraved into her soul. It was pouring from her eyes and blurring her vision as the petals cast over the skin of the serpent who hid under the rose pierced her gaze. And at least she did not see the anguish with which the water choked him with bloodied tendrils – all from a tender rose, so sweet and full of love. Its nectar could drown one's heart and drag down one's chains with ease. It drowned you, then watched you burn. All with a beating pulse. Her footsteps as she wandered further – she had no boat to keep her above that looming surface. The door inched closer. And she took steps toward that goal, slowly turning her mind to the door that fell like an autumn leaf – the first whimper of cold wind before the corners strike the ground, and the palms of the grieving widow weep water from the crevices and she desperately tries to hold something in her palms, bloody and crimson. Something. More than a pulse. More than the rose as it fell over her gaze and the paper-like fog crept, a predator sneaking up on and looming behind its victim with a malicious smile across its complexion as if cut by a thorn; as if cast across by a serpent's fang. A sliver of light still lingered behind the door, and she gazed into it, her glimpse fleeting as the sight before love strikes daggers into your heart. And ties you there. Binds you to a curse. It was so brief, and she knew she could enter once more. Take a step into the cruel mind of a smile. But it was a sealing signature – the final bells one heard before the chains drew blood from one's palms.

A final thorn to fall from a shattered vase. The final droplet of water to fall from the rose, now choking on the floor and slowly withering away like wilted petals of joy. The final thorn to fall upon the serpent's curve of the rose's stem before it crumpled and fell.