Ripples of grief

Chapter 28

Those pale arms of the soil began to peel away as her mind emerged from a sea of those wretched, vile tendrils, those hollow eyes hidden among a cloak and the corpses all simply melted away – they left some trace. She knew as soon as the single drop of water cascaded onto her shallow grave, the flowers growing – growing with arms extended to reach towards that towering, cruelly ineffable hope. But the glass it grew among pierced the roots. And there was nothing to stitch back together what never existed. What never was there to give even the phantom of a gift. So, as it grew, revealing to her the rose-tinted view of a hazy veil of wakefulness, she seemed to stumble – it showed her what had lain over her corpse as she slept, yet hid everything – even the shards of glass littering the ground that pained her as she wandered through a sea of cold warmth – a mother's icy glare as her child weeps. A lover's passing words before the drift away on the thread of that tapestry; but even that gave a comfort, compared to this dread of knowing that something can lie there among the dark, that the vipers still lurk after you forget. At that thought she shuddered. Perhaps at the anguish that reigned over an echoing dread that blood kept you breathing, not inert and hollow. And yet so much of it lay in a sea over the ground, like a rolling wave of deaths, planting seeds and leaving that sorrow to be forgotten, drowned in golden threads, another kind of darkness, one of blind greed. There was a trickle of it leading the charge, with a single glint of light in its expanding sea of dread; the glint in the eye of a heartbroken lover, the darkness that illuminates so much in the aftermath, the peace that lies in a death, a suffering ended as if as a surprise. She walked among the rose petals of agony, cruelly echoed as another glinting shard of venom emerged to pierce them with their own jagged blades, their own words knives. But even after a long slumber her restless mind ticked away. And formed this labyrinth before her, where the monsters lay in the crevices, lingering in the corridor ahead; for agony is inevitable, it lurks around every corner, under every complexion filled with joy. At every path there was anguish. And at every path there are screams and wails and cries – and with a jolt she seemed to tremble in fear. For corpses can't scream.

Darkness engulfs everything it touches, devouring it in a jaw full of tiny, acrimonious teeth that could summon a crow at any moment – one that would pause. Glance around, then flee from the cold warmth of that melancholy veil, not knowing doesn't mean you can't realise something's there, something you're unaware of but everyone else around her saw – but some things only gazed at her, maybe glared at times when the warning flashed in their eyes – the regret before she knew what she would have to feel remorse for at every step, before the first blood spilt. It covered every surface, and yet more was to come. Eternally stretching out into the distance. That darkness hid something, however; she only felt dread's trenchant glare on her back, and the prickle of poison in her throat, scratches from the thorns it hid. Even as she trailed her hand along the wall, feeling cracks in the stone, and the facade seeming to quiver like the bottom lip of a child as they weep, their tears falling from the roof onto her head as the veil was ripped away for a moment. There lay a track laid out for her echoing, sorrowful footsteps, tentative and deliberate, through the corridor, and it was scrawled over the walls in black ink tendrils. But to child dread is a melody, and Romey heard it whisper. That false innocence put before you figures, she supposed, silhouettes in the dark. And you felt that they were there. But beyond that they were apparitions, phantoms. There lay a melody in that feeling of ineffable, uncanny melodies no one else could hear – it was almost as if others walked among a soundless world – there lay a kind of peace in walking through the loud, eerie silences, hearing stares of warning. But after all it was a warning. One cruel. One sinister. One incessant and crawling as if it were a candle, revealing vipers that had once been so light, but then the false innocence was torn away. And at the end there seemed to lie that candle, dark and sinister in its simplicity, luring her closer by a crow's wing like a pied piper. You grieved for the choice you didn't have. Then the warning died. The trembling lip perished as the shock set in. A dread-filled promise that had been fulfilled. And this next corridor stretched relentlessly before her, seemingly with a final thorn at the very end of the long, serpentine path. And yet still darkness reigned.