Ripples of grief

Chapter 19

The dance of the perishing corpses flickered as she breathed in the cold, hollow air – it echoed like light in a room of mirrors. Trembled with a flame's eternal peril. It swam among the dark and illuminated every crevice – and yet there were none. It was silent. Unnervingly silent as the waves began to lap at some distant shore, where no candle burns but the growing branches of smoke in the air – simply the ashes of every carcass careless tossed under soil. Only for it to slowly peel away, a talon of pale flesh emerging as the crows cock their heads, ravenous flocks stirring from slumbers of restless nights. A constant quivering as another wakes. But here was different. She heard them still but at every step they were further in the facade, and within there the cogs whirred still. In every action the waves were simply strings of silk catching her in a web. Wandering past tugged her back. And the branches of a tree could be burnt so easily. Yet the flame only stripped away the rust as light echoed over every crevice of abyssal silence. Everything seemed so peaceful, despite the pounding of that drum of war – the heartbeat of every soldier in unison as they march toward the sea, unquestioning, and never return. It seemed not to echo in these chambers of that warmth – that that had lapped at the sand now engulfed everything in tendrils of smoke. Serpents of phantom dreams. The looming dread of knowing that it wasn't there to whisper in her ear, that the lights weren't there to blind her to horrors unknown. Even pulsing vipers seemed to grasp at the rust on the cogs, the blood spilt and turned to flowers that flooded the fields with the calm after the storm; even they watched the flames burn away the veils of that desolate hope and ground their decaying fangs to ash to erase every trace of it. To watch the poppies be choked by scales and fangs and rope of a noose. Ink decayed around her as her vision began to expand, the lights turning out and embers falling. Falling. Turning to bitter tears of ash and doleful sobs. Decay began first and she could watch it again and again but as the serpents vanished, she would only ever see their shadow – the smoke of the candle they left behind after all was lost. And a more sinister, bleak image revealed itself to her weary sight. One of rotten ink spreading through an empty abyss of silence.

The abyss began to grow, despite slowly, over her sight, engulfing the corpse of a memory, of a father, of a looming dread and cruel, twisted words. They could've been spoken in a letter, the mind still seeing those vipers flow with the elegance of a river, they seemed like shadows of the serpentine stem's labyrinthine crevices, twisting and morphing into familiar faces – but simply shadows – the memory was something you could only feel around, never see the gaping jaws of woe that it left behind among the gloom to leave the cruel scars engraved in stone; you never grew close to the stem, she supposed with thorns, but those letters were a looming, towering dagger's blade. The waves lapped over the growing roots of an abyss, and she gazed into the fog – she had stumbled into a surreal fog, and there he was still, glaring in vengeance, in remorse, in regret. In terror as the crows fled, and joined his side as their complexions twisted and erased the once poignant image. The waves lapped in a constant reminder – the sound of paper torn – she could so easily pull the thorns from her flesh, and yet to do that would feed the rose with her blood. The water reflected that flame upon which the thorns screamed in anguish – the crows fled with feathers dropping upon the ground, and she heard the flames of water crackle, tempting her further into the abyss, further from the constant pulse of the water. Then she took another step. Through the impenetrable fog. Further and further – and she heard the letters turn to ash – but just as you can feel around the gaping abyss memories leave behind, watch the scar heal and the flesh fester, blood pouring. Watch hands rise from the dead. Just as those talons haunted her still, the vipers remained as a shadow in her mind, along with the strands of the words they had spoken, lingering to infect the wound. Memories couldn't be burnt away like complexions, or a letter of goodbye, of stuttered conversation that led only to the trundling, rusted cog. The jaws could swallow you if you let them, the rotten fangs falling over your decadent, misery-ridden flesh to devour it. A looming ghost that could never be erased like the noose around your neck of the ink upon some paper; it would trundle on and scream endlessly in the flames, rambling in your ear with the madman's cry.