Ripples of grief

Chapter 9

Flames erupted upon the horizon, engulfing the vipers of night-black shadow that wound around each and every corner of the lake of sorrow among which she drowned – they never drowned, only ever recoiling and leaving the light to tempt them to unfurl as it ducked behind ominous clouds. But they were transparent, apparitions lurking even around your neck, leaving shallow breaths to fester as you choke your way out of the chains of guilt. Only to become once again entangled in the great web of deceit; and drown among the sorrows once more. And the shadows retreat to the dust of ash breathed in through the limp mouth and cold throat – their serpentine forms retreated with elegance but you could see bit by bit their inky forms withering away, into dust of ash as they felt their petals fall to the raging fire, burning to the ground until every speck of joy had drifted away. They were cold. They whispered in her ear as the ashes of shadow began to dance with the wind, knowing the thorns were there – they were upon her skin and all over her vile complexion; she had stepped toward the fading light, but his shadow was all that remained. Her family had been so happy. Full of joy. A son's voice was there. In her ears. At every turn he murmured her name. Her name. At every turn she knew at any moment his eyes were watching through those serpents' glinting eyes – they knew that they were fading, and that those thorns were simply her imagination twisted by grief. They watched as the blood drained from her face and their fangs fiercely struck at her flesh. But they were torn away by the hand of deathly silence that heralded morning, the light of hope that always seemed to reveal hopeless struggles, cruelly Sisyphean as the rose loomed overhead. The very thing that had been their forever companion always seemed to tear down their smiles, sealing their mouths with stitches and hearing the whispering halt. The wind had settled, and all she had to do was watch as the shadows gazed into regret and remorse for all that remained of the hope torn down by flames of despair, disguised by a façade of smiles before the laughter faded. Wind blew through the empty windows.

Even as they recoiled, she felt that sting of remorse enter her flesh, the crime she had committed was too cruel even to be scrawled upon the fog of paper that mourned no one and only obscured the cruelty behind the façade, blurring truth and fiction. She wavered upon her every footfall, glancing around as if unsure, only to stand among the eerie silence once more with nothing but the insidious darkness and decay among the light. She saw poppies spread across her trembling skin, a shade of dread that leads to nothing but a winding path as the fangs were driven further and further into her delicate, silken flesh – covered in a pale sheet, so easily torn by those thorns to reveal the ground underneath, littered with the petals of roses in a veil of hope across it, lain over with a hand untrained, simply covering the flesh with no delicate, elegant thought. A veil tossed over to cover the trail of poppies. There had already been stitches, poorly healed wounds that glared in crimson at the slightest brush – wind whistling as he would as he played, slowly with less and less joy as the pulse dropped and another joined. That of another warning. Before the flood of grief; flowers seemed to flow in rivers of graceful tears, pulsing waves of petals as the blanket of a veil slipped and revealed the corpse beneath, a wound once before opened as easily as a swallow traverses wind, or a river flows through the ground – a trail of glimmering scarlet tempting her with the sting of thorns and the spillage of her own blood upon the ground, remorse throbbing in her gaze as the whispers of shadow are drowned out by light, joy ancient choked by dust that simply gathers over wounds, a great scar gathering over the silken façade of a smile. She opened the door and took a single step toward the flowing river. For a moment she thought she saw that one crow toss feathers upon the ground, a trail gathering as if it decayed slowly. But her husband was dead. So were the laughter filled moments before her son's breaths had faded. She wandered down past the petals, the grass crushed with no thought – but it almost felt sinful to step on them. A melancholy, dull pain. That water held rabid machines, but it held his fallen corpse. His eyes were full of rage. He was planting those seeds of death and bleak desolation with a hollow glow in his eyes. He watched as they withered. So did she.

She sat before the unrelenting back and forth of time – it had been so long since she heard their cries, those images of joy and innocence – she'd almost forgotten the sound of those cruel, cackling faces as they played, planes through the sky, mocking the corpses down below as they choked out vile air, serpentine and cruel as it whispered death. He had lain there, but warmth was none – love was none. Joy had perished along with that slow pulse of peace.

She glimpsed a vile complexion in the slow ticking away of peace. Lives tossed upon a canvas of pure, blinding white only to stain it with crimson lies. Faces cast away for new ones, uncanny – but perhaps true; they could never be real. Not to the love that silhouette had left behind in favour of the glimmering mallet above their head – they were a stranger. This was her. But it was twisted by every moment that passed; once it was twisted to a vile, melted face that seemed so like her, it always changed back to him. He had a noose around his neck that she had placed; she had torn away the hood and gazed into the lifeless corpse – and the cruelly trenchant figure could only attempt a breath before the ink devoured the carcass of dwindling joy. Her gaze was full of fallen white feathers as she gazed into the lake, watching them fall – then the ink would perpetually devour every morsel of order held within, insatiably covering it in a curtain of guilt. The rose had been dropped. Tossed upon the land between only for the crimson ink to spread, tearing apart those memories that could've been. Her pupils were a lake of crimson tendrils enveloping every joy in glinting ink – did no one else see? She saw. The lake's cruel pulse was showing her blood and limbs, past loves lingering to engulf the dull gaze in fog, erasing it. Then tides would fill once more, petals glimmering through the surface as they were uncovered once more, fog revealing them as it obscured all else. Slowly they began to writhe before her, the pulse louder in her ears, almost deafening as it raged and roared beside her, distorting the bloodbath to petals of poppies, all writhing as one breathing muscle, an undead, melancholy dance. Then the acrimonious, cruel waves began to wither like those seeds of death, always perishing as they were planted by a single bullet across the desolate land – battles recede into the darkness, ink obscuring every moment of sight held within a promise, a pact of death. Those serpents were twisted, and yet she could watch the mirror recoil like a mass of scales that danced in pulsing waves of anguish. They slithered away into the seething fog, not once glancing behind to see the shadow of misery.

Doves within could tell bitter lies, twisting her complexion to be vile and full of sinister intent, and yet they were simply a great veil of doves retreating into the horizon and kindly casting their wing over the dripping scarlet from the sky, concealing the remorse. Yet she realised then perhaps it was revealed, peeled away. Cleaned of the crimson ink that coated those vipers of reflection. Within their scales were pictures of joy now fragmented and left to the page of ink after faces were torn apart, simply casting a veil of white over the crimson and viridian embers of those seeds as they burned in the hollow gaze of the sun. There were insidious smiles in every picture painted, but deceit was in every shred of uncanny familiarity that was within those complexions – it would always follow the fog that was a newspaper – the dread that the water had twisted it, and crows lay below those doves, screaming into the abyssal silence of night, with rats crawling over their corpses as they uttered a last wail. All just fog and a recoiling viper of ink. No. A lake full of glistening, furious waves of serpentine tears. Insidious smiles were painted in the waves, simply an image of joy withering away until it could only crawl behind the curtain of dove's wings, melancholy looming over all as the tide began to recede, leaving a scar of night-black cruelty as she began to turn, the crows seeming to fade away into waves of water that rocked back and forth in a cruel pulse. A rhythmic heartbeat of that figure looming behind her – her head turned, but she immediately cast it back towards the water that recoiled, yearning the simplicity of that pulse. It loomed over her, that shadow. She glimpsed a figure's face towering high above. Dread is a match. Dread is a flame. Dread is an ash. Dread is a single drop of water watching from the shadows, lurking in the corners of your mind. Ink dripping down your back as the tears fall. There was a shadow. It saw her. It seemed to watch from the shadows and engulf them in a fear she had not felt shift from its sheet in so long. The figure lay a hand on her shoulder. Almost softly, as if a mother were talking to a child softly and sweetly. Ink dripped from their hands. Tendrils of deceit. She turned, fleeing the shadows, before turning toward the single petal.

Melancholy steps were toward that boat once more, a petal wept from bleary eyes to shield one from a dreary sea. One of writhing feathers – plucked by the beak that tossed aside a rose into the shadows.