Ripples of grief

Chapter 15

She glanced toward the looming, outstretched shadow of home, the hollow silhouette against the harsh, abrasive glare of moonlight that struck the ground with a shadow of dread. Real dread felt like fear pulsing through your veins, with the crows letting it flee to the outside air and into the crevices where comfort could have once resided. Real terror was a beating heart offered to the dark corners of your mind. But this was simply the twisted caw of a ravenous, sinister stare – one enrobed in feathers black as the night itself. A dull glimmer of grief before the flame died to an ember of ash. This terror was a false, stale fear that was merely a rasp of that wailing scream terror would utter – within the looming shadow of that house, pathways unfamiliar and uncanny in an ineffable way that she wished she could explain. But that shadow was drenched in the feathers of a crow, the knowledge he was gone. Never to come back and laugh. Weep a patriotic tear. Smile a parting smile. The shadow of him was hollow as she entered the house, close behind her mother in that quivering dread that he lurked in the lake of dreary grief. The door wept and wailed as they stepped within the chamber of flames licking at their dread; the dread that those eyes would watch him wander away again – illusioned or enlightened to blades and beating hearts of lead. Illusioned or enlightened to drown in the last melancholy step into the crimson sea of claws and teeth and fangs that bit and tore and shredded up those letters, leaving all to perish, and those thousands to sink into the depths of hollow, bleak, melancholy; they were the familiar claws of enlightening glints of horror that enrobed a corpse in blood, stealing away innocent love to a dropped, wilting rose upon the strands of carpet that had once been a field of flowers, yet now was mottled nostalgia and grief. Perhaps, she thought as her mind was brought to false growth, those bayonets and claws that tore with decaying fangs were the needles. The needles that fell as the rose was tossed to the ground. The needles that stitched flames into comfort, turmoil to peace, and that hung smiles to dry like memories before they were set to flames by wretched tongues.

"Oh! Let me just pick that flower up –" She glanced around the room, seemingly nervous. Perhaps she felt it too. That dread. "Sorry for the mess, I didn't expect you to visit so... Suddenly. I thought you looked a bit lost,"

Her voice seemed a screech of desperation, an owl's call as it stood among the tendrils, fighting and writhing in the clutches of shadows, yet sounding so sure, wings casting a comforting shadow upon the harsh glow of the tree. There was a joy she hadn't heard for so long within that petty tone, perhaps like the poppy a soldier wakes to among a sea of crimson rivers, all pulsing with a joyous façade when the true dread lay beneath, once the shadows wilted, the petals falling away; decay spread to leaves, spread over a sea of so many growing branches, flammable yet strong, fiercely fleeing like a coward yet fighting, writhing against the flames of wilting, furling decay. These leaves were so flammable. The tree could so easily burn to the ground, the façade barely even a breath of time before thorns were revealed – and yet the tone was always almost perfect, just like that of an owl that casts anguish through its beak, yet stays silent as it is choked, taking shallow breaths. This was the face that had been the first image, imprinted in her mind as the image of comfort, of familiarity; perhaps these memories were an ancient text, a branch of a tree so easily burnt to ash leaving not a single ember to linger for a while before it perished. But those eyes were drenched in a veil of gloom that could never be lifted, never be prised from that corpse of a smile, dried by the fire like old clothes, revealing the complexion of one much younger, the marks of a glimmering hope still present even in hollow death. They seemed to glint in the firelight, perhaps a little too much, and the gloom was contrasted by the vivid daylight of a fake, hollow hope that one day a smile could return to the faces of those who suffered unheard – it was but a protruding façade of light that could remain, linger, lurk for a while as his gaze watched from the shadows. But moonlight could never illuminate the lamenting dolefulness within those sorrowful, sleepless eyes. The tone seemed tired as it echoed around the empty room, furniture sold or forgotten, and threadbare of memory and fabric. Shadows illuminate more than any flame, no matter how bright it burned or how tall its threads leapt and landed upon the tendrils of growth from coarse, frozen ground; every crevice could be revealed in the wrinkles on her face, every story within once erased by light revealed in every thread. This was the familiar face of her mother, yet gloom had befallen them both – perhaps it had forever tainted the shadows black like the deceitful ink of serpents.