Ripples of grief

Chapter 31

With a creak of the door, she felt that embrace reach for her, welcoming her back to a familiar place, one where she'd smiled once, wandered around in innocent joy, laughing when that same looming figure, face obscured and only smile visible, seemed to hold her in that same embrace one of unfamiliar, caring kindness that had no source – only the corpse of its victim lay among surreal shadows in a fog of slumbering haze. And she almost shivered despite the bright eyes above her and the warmth seeming to wrap tendrils of cruel thorns around her arms, dragging her forward unwillingly; into the light that burned her, leaving the face she knew as a pile of ash on the ground, and bones among soil. Closer. Further. Closer. Closer. Nearer. Before she swiftly slowed and began to glance behind tentatively. Almost like the corpse awakens as the moon rises, the crows wail out into the night, and the fires burn – he almost stood there. A shadow stitched onto the tapestry. Gold scattered around that phantom only to vanish when she glanced around. He would never reach her, yet always lurk mere breaths, moments behind. However, he couldn't be here. He was far below the rivers that lay below the golden noose; there was still that mark on her hand. Always lingering. Corpses can't scream. Corpses can't scream. If everyone laughed perhaps it drowned out the cries of the hysteric madman, almost joy – yet always twisted. The light didn't even allow for shadows to linger behind you, haunting every word you said. That was the one thing that was always the same, the darkness she dwelled among while so many couldn't see; because if everyone laughs, it drowns out the cries of hysteria in the shadows. And though there was no shadow looming behind the light, no figure behind her, the doorway almost reflected perfection. But what lay before her was the flame so far out of reach to the frail figure, stumbling along with no light, that it had seemed so close, edging nearer in the chasm of sorrow and paused time. And it seemed only just out of reach before, fingertips brushing its pure agony. The anguish almost made her stumble – because you couldn't reach back through every layer of stitched tapestry. Only fumble to unpick the stitches, hazily stumbling through time and scattered, sporadic moments.

But when there was no mirror, when the door began to segment and shatter the shadows spilling in from outside, the light seeming to coat it in those golden white feathers, almost pure and hopeful, joyous, a smile painted on with a graceless hand in black ink that never once gazed at the sorrow in the eyes of the child as they wept into the shadows while the light gave no warmth, only bittersweet masks. That wrathful smile drawn with black ink had teeth that glimmered, each and every one sinister and stained with scarlet dread; stained with the terror that the victim screamed in – stained in woe and guilt. And it closed with a single mocking laugh, filled with a trenchant disdain that only the apparitions of the perished could wield before them. And yet still that laugh was stale, as if sorrow hid behind the mask of a smile, of bright eyes. The shadows were still there, seething. She knew they were. Because this light was stale as the laugh that echoed, like a comfort so far in the past it almost seemed inches away from her reach; it was that brightness that flickered, dull, fragmented smiles cackling with disdain among the light so blinding it almost seemed dull. Somehow, just as faces are where the memories remain, items merely vessels for the souls to whisper when they can't scream. Corpses can't scream. Corpses belong beneath the soil. Unseen. Unheard. Just as the crow's caw signals woe, that dread lingered within her mind, crawling with questions that murmured into the darkness, never returned with an answer. This was supposed to be perfect – maybe even a home, with an embrace that held no growing thorns, no deadline stretching into the distance; And yet it was simply a web of every word ever regretted – one flinch of the wind as it breathed deeply in and out of great jaws, and it trembled. A single word and the vipers seemed to hiss in seething vitriol, sinister glows in their gazes. This light had thorns, all growing from her. Suppose she was the madman trembling in the corner, face pale and stepping back further and further as his hand raised, and his eyes were dry in terror as his voice cried out; but though he saw a witch, the fires of satanic joy dancing, it is never seen as what it was to that weary, ancient gaze. People only believe much too late, when every moment is spent dreading the flames that emerged and devoured all.