Ripples of grief

Chapter 6

A thorn pierced the skyline, the horizon seeming to recoil as great ravines of blood, rivers contained in a single wound, a threat looming above like a storm and knowing that the crown of dread was there. When the sea was shaken by those powers of thread against thread, tearing away the stitches and snapping. A thorn embedded in flesh of fabric, and all went deathly silent as the crown of dread was placed upon the daring soldiers, waiting for the tear as the tick begins, a pulse of war – you could hold a string above the sea, but it would never listen. The guilt could rage for hours. It could seep in through a thousand cracks and infect, and all would turn to the glistening point of the flower, while the serpent stands beneath, fangs deep in the neck of the fields. They were waiting for it to begin, its grinding pulse as the cruel, scraping talons are cast against the silk webs, turning back the seconds and the hours and the minutes with cruelty and malice in its intent – all took a breath. And another. The hands needn't fight for time, and yet the wounds seemed to seethe. A silence as unsettling as it was compassionate. The clock hands had stopped, so had the pulse of war like a beating drum, skin bruised and left to loosen as if it were a cloth on a corpse. It died and breathed as if it held those talons of infected silk in its grasp; it was only a matter of time before the footprints of time stepped back. Fled from consequence. Glanced behind. It died and breathed. And then the sea came into a life almost human, flesh against bone, bone against flesh as the ticking became rapid, the reckless breaths of death as the carcass perishes – it peered behind before seeing what it had done. And the needle pierced the threads, separating those two sides, waves of an ocean. Regret can infect any fabric. It can pierce the strongest will so that the misery is an oppressive thought, incessant as grief; a constant, slow heartbeat of waves against rock. Water against ocean. It was a strange kind of melodic dissonance that held its grace in the air, crows falling and flailing against the pure rage. The threads were strained as another shot was fired, another caw of a crow, another bell. All was the footsteps of time as it stepped back, slow as grief to overtake.

Crimson wounds were cast deep into the fabric and children sensed the ominous pause before another crash erupted into the cavern of desperation – one moment there was a great tear tossed before the eyes of a rose thorn. And then a dull melancholy where little but that pulse could penetrate the phlegmatic veil of shadow. They knew these wounds were to blame, great gashes in the flesh of the ocean as it danced to the slow, resonant ticking of malice gathering in a residue – there was a peace – there had been such an insidious peace that it was almost uncanny to think that doves could block light and leave shadows only upon hell itself. Stitches of light were spilled over the ocean as it glimmered in the light of the fading moon – it glowed where the beast lay, lurking in the blood of a ravine, so easily spilled into the eyes of those above and yet unmoving. This light was an uncanny beauty of kindness that cast disdain upon those tears, who were spilled over the ground for nothing but another flower's growing. They knew. Like those screaming children. They knew who was to blame – it was the blood spilled from wounds struck upon the ground by those thorns; yet they saw nothing and no one among the desolate canvas. The ocean of shadowed dread seemed to glimmer despite the shadows, and they held a dull light, despite being ruled over by the cruelty of that crown, the infection of remorse that spread through layers of fabric until it glimpsed a corpse. Those lights thrashed, contorting the waves and moulding their forms as they blindly writhed, knowing they would be erased for a greater good. Tears were worth nothing in war. Neither were their perishing corpses, empty husks with no emotion but dread as they glance toward the storm ahead.

A rush of wind passed like the final breath, the final footfall of time – she held in her grasp the petal of a rose, knowing so well that it was but a façade of beauty; that the wounds were inflicted when you could not step to avoid the thorn, when you were blinded by the shadows and the veils. She knew so well that those scratches were just thorns on the hands of time ticking by – a mark on its complexion as it watched time swiftly step forth, and her crimson hands place the boat where it belonged and enter through a door that greeted her in a dreary voice, mournful.

She could see the spores flicker then die, like embers of a long-gone fire, incessantly whimpering and beginning to smile, before recoiling, swiftly fleeing toward the ground where they turned to ash, whirling around her – she hadn't been gone long, but she could taste the grief beginning to set in, a deathly disease that spread brooding silence through a place once so full of life, yet now so hollow, rotted away by the glimmering spores of coughs that linger like a stinging insult, tossed toward a face full of kind intent. And they drifted, seeming to brush past with sympathy at the wrinkles appearing upon her face before she even took a step inside the potent shadow, vipers of the dark crawling up her arm; they came from those rotten memories, sinister and made grotesque by the grim pulse of war. Until their faces were blackened, no longer a face recognisable. The thorns growing from the dark corners of the house had cast a deep ocean of betrayal into the joy, twisting its smiling face. There were those conversations held in silence upon the threadbare chairs, stitching torn out by crows to reveal faces so unfamiliar, and a silence so still it was almost foreshadowing. Breaths came in and out, glances cast away to the ground, or the window; perhaps they knew it had lurked there. Shadows held an insidious tongue, but winds could lift ravens from their perches toward the trees, full of so much flesh of memory; they could morph into shadowed tendrils and choke the silent conversations of their colour. All could be bled out in a deep ravine of crimson to reveal how it had really been. How the thorns had been plucking already at the life that had once inhabited walls, even the one shadow no one could be bothered to remove. How the spores had been spun like silk from those trails of labyrinthine, withered roots, and even those had been plucked to reveal paths of impossible possibility – even those had come from a great, looming shadow, a silhouette of darkness. Grief came from knowing that person lay beneath the façade of a soldier. And it had been peeled away by crows who saw the corpse, she knew it. Those roots led to a threat of fangs coming closer – those silent conversations had been out of pensive, anxious relief. Relief that had been false.

There lay a serpentine stem above those, not visible but there, among the suffocating flood of viridian leaves, a blanket of green – it held thorns, and petals above it all that wept upon the house and cast a mournful shadow over every inch of life it had held – all was cold, and dank, and held a stench of misery and wretched melancholy. He would come back. And all would be fixed. That seed held a dull pulse, the shadowing petals of amber and crimson silk perhaps a smile among a silent house, no longer a home but a ravenous beast, ready to devour and rot those times of hope. It glowed for moments, then grew another branch, another vein of desire for melancholy to drown all. But the shadow almost felt a blessing among so many curses. There lay vipers in the shadow; it leeched out for a moment before recoiling as the infection died to a breath that choked joy out of another – but light reveals the dark in which you once lived. And as the roots found a place to settle and linger, letting their glow lure out the serpents. They could make a room so comforting seem to tremble in a foreboding dread – they could let their silence devour the room and all its comfort, leaving cold shivers down your neck as you hear the breaths of silent conversation, full of pensive dread. It was an infection of cruel minds making them glare at those innocent places, turning every smile to a drop of scarlet to feed the great, towering rose. They leeched out of the corners, the room becoming full of an existential dread that those fangs loomed close. Too close. But they were simply shadows. And there are so many emotions hidden in crevices, there are some forgotten. Once roses perish, they wander, being tossed upon the ground as a crow leaves with feathers sleeked with rain – their roots dry, leaving cracks for grief and mournful dread to seep into, spreading a poison of vipers to spread throughout the cold light. The venom lives ceaselessly, a pulse of gunshots growling in the distance like a constant melody of hope. But the roots perish, leaving behind the caws of crows, a venom that would linger in those spores in the air until the smiles unfurl and choke the cold light. That melody she would always remember. That of a graveyard.

The only proof that they were once two young smiles, two faces so beautiful, was a rose in the corner, left as the crows plucked at the house and corrupted the memories with a string that sung sombre melodies. You could hear silence singing that mournful melody through every face forgotten through crimson stains. Every place where the walls wore through to reveal another room. There was a known monster dwelling in the shadows. One of cold corruption. One that knew she would never miss the colours of joy. One that knew a blank canvas was a comfort when all had been lost.