Ripples of grief

Chapter 36

Its core throbbed and congealed into the wounds of that lover, weeping above while all the world gazes in with stares of disdain, throwing chains of cruel coldness up as a single tear begins to fall upon them, malice burning in the reflection of amber embers of what was once a heaven – that could perhaps be a seed, falling, threads bound by chains. It could even be writhing, the forest wounded and contorted in the pale dawn light with those crooked hands, so kind, as the nails are dug in into the vulnerable flesh of the cascading sorrow, crow's beaks cackling as the image of sorrow distorts and is moulded into a familiar, unnerving face. Before it flickers to the sharp clarity of real life, attempting to hide the flames of oppressive guilt – the terror that only the single teardrop could hold in its feeble reflection of life, laced with venom to fall upon the earth in insidious silence where when the pin drops you hear those sinister tongues – she looked down, gazing away from that drop of but a single river, sprawling and full yet arid, empty of emotion. Those tongues dance in the threads of light around her wrists too; they danced around a single page, a rag of a corpse; a tear glistening just below as the corpse is mocked; that thread of torn light was a sinister turn away from a message. One never delivered as the pigeon, the dove in the dirt and vile skin of the trenches, falls, simply a martyr for the one up above who cackles through the most cold, writhing storms. And she saw His face, lit by a single candle as he tosses down the dull-feathered dove as a warning to those below. They too could hold in their eyes the same eternal terror; held within a ragdoll, stained crimson with frayed strings at the ends. It murmured life yet was a phantom of hope itself – it spoke that vile tongue, yet she saw it now – those strings distorted it in every way; but it spoke truth. A truth that could only be poison threaded into each word as the shred of benevolent, trenchant affection dwindles in flame, read before the traces of it turn to apparitions of ash – glistening cruelty woven with kindness as the crows pick away at that sinister flesh.

There lingered a dread that there were more – she may have burnt them to ash but those letters, laced with poison like the wine of the queen as she perishes, still carry with them an insidious stench. Their threads of hope woven in cut your skin and leave it bleeding; there is but an apparition of hope, she thought. Those leaves were etched with a single word, cackling in her head whenever a single leaf, a single shred of skin lashed and held up despite its hanging head and the chains that held it down – that wind felt corrosive against her shackles of sinister murmurs in the writhing storm; the shreds of hope that lay as an apparition stirred, a false flame of life sparking and sprouting. Only for a moment. She shielded her eyes against the dreary gazes of that light which she had once held with joy, noticing the agony that flashed behind the threads of light. Those branches loomed in a crooked pose, deathly hollow – they seemed to contort. Like ink upon a page. Strands that fled from those shackles yet held in their own prison like the ribcage of a raven the patches of skin, nots left to perish and hang against a cross, martyrs left as a threat. Their blood and coughed up hope that stranded them alone, surrounded by unrelenting seas, fell upon the paper like the ink of a love letter written through bitter tears, contorting into beasts that writhe in anguish before calming – those seas going in and out, held above until they fell in torrents. Crooked torrents of rage and exasperation. And those oppressive eyes of Him. He who watched from above. The brushstrokes dampened by tears that never cease, only halting for moments of calm before the lines once more become jagged; and the ashes begin to fall of a note that was never delivered by the martyrs left hanging from the noose – the noose from which they were born. He had placed them there; only to bow to him with unrelenting pace and strength as he cackled unheard through every storm, tossing aside those who lifted their weary heads from their tormenting task of servitude and constantly reminding witnesses of their own chains; cold and dreary, yet weakening.

They flickered for a moment between acrimonious anguish and dull, relentless solace that ground away at the silence, an eternal merry go round of life and death. The continuous rise and fall of the sun. The embers that relight the candle every time it flickers, choking out its last breath and emptying like a carcass, a shell. A shadow of a lover held by shackles; shackles that rusted slightly, corroding and turning to ash as the sea rolls in, the froth of the rabid beast who writhes at night, haunted by nightmares and dreams that linger, recoiling back into the labyrinth, leaving nothing to hide the Minotaur that lurks within, behind and in front. Lurking in every shadow – every haunting, phlegmatic night when the lover weeps, held upon a falling boat, sail over their throat and chest – tightening – slowly – tightening – writhing but falling... With the sail muting the cackling laugh of the one above. The magician. The puppeteer. The One who glares kindly, speaking in a soft, stern tone that holds daggers. Shattered glass. Bones of the martyr who weeps phantom tears, a note left unread, a warning left unheeded. A malady left trembling.

Those martyrs were lost; they held out their hands but alone they wandered, reaching out their ancient, cracked skin toward gods that would never answer; but they could so easily lean into the path, the web contorting; they held in their palms offerings of such golden sand, and yet something within was forever repulsed by a labyrinth of flesh woven with ravines of wrinkled, vile rivers that flowed, never truly stopping; they held out apparitions of what had once been, what was supposed to be – what loomed before everyone else but her. It wavered yet to others it was clear, unhindered by the distorted song of a joy now buried beneath sands of ashen life. It had once been stoic, held before an eye that blinked. But a blinking eye soon falls beneath waves and waves of silence, veils suffocating the wakeful smile held on by a mask – one so feeble. One that could so easily trip and fall; one that could crumble into a heap of tangled webs, torn down by hearts of stone to reinforce the cold eyes that glowed within as the mourner tosses flowers into the web, her skin calling out into the dark as the light began ever so slowly to be devoured by the grief of the martyr, standing over a shattered grave; their mouths were sewn phlegmatically shut, a door locking, the rain falling in vain to save a soul already destined for hell. And yet every time a stitch fell loose, it was a wound upon the skin of the grieving rag, torn and familiar. Every time the grave they tossed flowers upon fell, a carcass with burning light that blew out almost immediately as hope in a dreary place, a truth could so easily be tossed out with burning intensity, full of truth and control. And their eyes could never be doused – they, just like her, were simply prey caught in those thin fibres with flesh that was so easily mouldable by ancient branches, unable to escape the grasp, and flee the walls that kept her held within a cage, watching from afar as the world sped forward; they travelled swiftly, moulding and twisting into a reflection of the thin, innocent fibres. A twisted image of cruelty that held over the mind those crooked fingers of bark and tooth.

The great web began to whisper, the other prey wishing they could rip themselves free of this curse and this blessing, this cruel hand and this step toward a home – a place they could go. Then even the martyrs trembled in terror as a seam was torn clean, leaving a vile grotesque scar in the shadows; the beast writhed, the forest trembling as the chains fell, rags that were cast down to those who had nothing else so that something held them in place; the beak struck down below and a crackling scar was left below, careless, as if an accident, yet agonising, the flames bleeding from martyrs in leaves that now were left in a dull, solace-less silence at the stirring winds and the wails still caught in the tangled web of a story, placed upon a page with mere ambition. As if the merry go round simply went round once more and the peace was temporary, yet secure, not intermittent but certain and unwavering – scattered ash seemed to fall upon the great wound like a veil of grief as the tears of the mourning fall upon the cruel earth, so full of corrupted flesh. The leaves could dance their grim dance, choking from the branches all they had and all they had ever held in their two hands. A breeze disturbed the peace and solace and the ash seemed to stir like a great beast, the winding strings tried to choke out of her the memory of that single movement; the tides of a great beast as it breathes; and once again a crow struck the web that lay, intricately scattered above in patterns of exhausted prayers never answered and offerings never taken by the gods that had once listened. In woven seams of sinister needles. They rose and fell, the air flowing like the merry go round that never once halts to think or speak or breathe; never halting, never ceasing their incessant, eternal nightmare. It ticked on – the webs began to fall like the sun sets or the flame is blown out and left to perish slowly and sweetly. And that clock hand held within it a string – a single puppet down below. Limp. Lifeless. Yet wandering. Yet ever-living. Yet leaping forth without. Rage coursed through – they contorted around the puppet every wail that the martyrs let out, and every cry of the fallen doves; then their eyes turned to the vile complexion, and they were repulsed. This was what that controlled. Such a piteous soul.

That nightmarish hair brushed against her skin, and she shuddered, the sails of that ship, held by the lover in two desperate hands, bowed to the tangle of silk threads above, lain down by a crooked hand that mocked her desperation for a single gaze to fall upon her. To laugh with her. To smile with her. And yet no one came to offer such a thing as a smile; such thing as a string plucked and picked at by crows. No one offered to free her of this blessing and this curse as the Minotaur lurked behind, glaring upon her with eyes as sharp as steel blades that pierced veils of impenetrable silk to cut into that flesh, so grey and dull. She saw a park now, a hill rising. An exit, a clock hand torn from its clock as a hand to offer a smile, a hand to offer a hollow grin of decaying teeth; but all was unimportant if her malady lay, a murmur beneath the surface. A whisper of those sinister tongues.