Romey stared out into empty, hollow eyes, the fish that evaded her gaze as her hands were ever more soaked in blood of that silhouette, mocking her tears; she had been foolish, perhaps, to think that their gazes would ever dare gaze into hers. She was a wandering rose as the thorns pricked the thin paper of those letters – and it tore, the heads seeming to regrow with deep crimson. She was the rose handed to a young lover, danced with as the ink soaked her skin, her mind – it formed the withered silhouette of the husband she saw before her, ink choked out from a crow's feather; and as she watched she knew that the ink felt a little odd, like vipers of pus and putrid stenches of gas crawling from the etched nooks of infection and corrupted flesh – perhaps she even knew she'd only ever see a shadow.
The trailing from the ink that murmured cruel words into her ear, contorting her hand as she waved goodbye – she supposed she was that thorn on the rose, her naive hope of peace by the time that sinister red cloak arrived upon her doorstep to erase the scars that bled pus and putrid death full of anguish – her naive hope that every murmur was false; those words held true. The vipers were just vines of black mould upon the newspaper, the speckles upon an otherwise gleaming promise. But she'd never been told of a trustworthy tendril of dread, only those that bit with fangs of inescapable anguish. And those that spoke a wicked tongue.
Once again, she reminded herself, it would be done when the green, merriful cloak of a smile dropped a single gift beneath the branches, dry of their viridian solace – they tossed down a torrent of solace in moments, and yet it was dry kindling to burn the fires that raged within one's heart. To relight the flame of hope that lay so bright before the leaches had sunk their teeth into the amber flesh as it quavered. Beneath the torrents of hollow winds could be placed a single breath of solace. But she knew that was, deep down, a veil she held over her gaze. A blinking smile of corrupted hope. Come the green leaf all would be kind. Or would it be a tear bled from the wound inflicted by oneself, the thorns of the love once held by a living soul – the dread held her in a claw, a looming fang. And yet the leaches had not yet come.
It was a shadow that would return as the mould was brought back with damp summer months, she knew; it was a hand she'd hold again, quivering. The ink trailed so swiftly and delicately from one elegant, tranquil breath to another – who could ever expect the fangs of the speckled viper to bite?
YOU ARE READING
Ripples of grief
Historical FictionA story about a young widow in WW1, watching as the German village is emptied of people. Then she finds it - a world all to herself.
