Ripples of grief

Chapter 8

A sickle of dread crackles in the distance, illuminating for a few mere moments the ominous stretch of repeating, slender fingers – before the moment passed, and all that was left was a silence. She saw him. Before he vanished, leaving her to glance around in bewilderment. He was dead. He was... Dead. A scar remained upon her gaze, a great crevice from which a sickle still glinted, and the ominous silence lingered. It unnerved the extending branches of entrails that quivered, shaken, but phlegmatic; they stilled but the scar still lay, echoing sinister voices, somewhat uncannily familiar, into the dark. A shadow lay in the place of the bright, deafening scythe. And she knew those voices. She knew the blood that enrobed her in a black cloak and left the ashes to rain from the trees above – left them to wither as poignantly and gracefully as a rose. She knew those whispers of uncanny memories. A cloak of joy was tied at her throat. She rushed toward the ashes of leaves – they were crumbling ruins, but the veins throbbed with the venom of death's blinding glare. She heard the crevices whisper in her ear those false moments of a smile. A laugh. A day where the clouds loomed overhead like a shadow. They all seemed so artificial, and yet they carried an uncanny sense of comfort. A dull, hollow smile before they crumbled into embers. The bark held grief, her footfalls shaking away its façade of a smile. Ashes wept away from those trunks. Skin away from flesh that could so easily perish and burn. They held a thin veil. But beneath she saw already the muscle that wept; and she yearned to see it and yet quailed as the mask began to shatter. Those talons extending into the sky could claw at the moonlit fog forever. They had tried to hide the crimson flesh beneath. And yet They only found the sinister remains of joy, uncannily sorrowful. Simply delusions of a perishing ember. And a façade was just that – a complexion that could be forgotten so easily. Peeled away by a prying hand. A laugh. A smile. And the moths fluttered away into the melancholy. Leaving her to the beaks of the crows within those hollow stares with every step she dared take, further into her labyrinthine, withering solitary of fog and silhouettes.

If this was a desolate blank page then surely, he should be there. He was everything she had ever tossed upon the ground in a fury intense and bewildered – he was in every eye upon her, bare and glaring as the skin was peeled away. He stared deep into her gaze from every angle and every silhouette of melancholy solitude; just like he used to – before those talons of a vulture had plucked him from that crevice, letting his blood pour into the flesh of joy until it was hollow, along with the puppet left behind after his entrails had been poured into the jaws of the poppy. A stroke of a pen – no – a silhouette among ominous, cruel fog that mocked you with an empty smile. You could not escape the gaze of those slender silhouettes. They knew everything that was a comfort and twisted it into a ravenous beast of talons and putrid feathers. They knew the very silhouette that had lingered as the scar was torn, and he left in the façade of bravery. They knew his eyes. They heard the whispers of grief rippling out into the silence as she cried for help, desperation clouding among the fog, and he was in every one of them as it faded into silence; at the heart of everything was that pulse of a love long forgotten – the echoes of a sinister love. One doomed to fall like the echoes of the desolation she called out into, and the misery her wretched soul bled into the night. Even her footsteps as she wandered along a path, winding and labyrinthine – they all surrounded her in their cold warmth and moulded their slender forms against hers – until they held her gaze and his. Uncanny resemblance to their parting smile. They clawed at her skin and yet she held them close. They had talons – coarse, cruel talons that etched echoes of a silhouetted onto the page – and those talons clawed at her, the claws of a vulture as it preyed upon her weary, wretched shadow, cloaked in misery of only the accursed ones. It held rot that bled from the great tear in the sky – made it crooked. Vile. Incessant. Held within the chambers of her carcass as her shadow wandered into the horizon with fatigue writhing in its gaze.

The figure faded, vanishing into the fog as easily as a false memory of a dream you never had. A silence, and nothing filled it but whispers of ash. The ticking of a clock as it cruelly counted the seconds. Her solitude began to decay, a sinister echo of that ticking clock. The blade that slits throats without a thought, simply coated in ink, shrouded in that veil that she choked herself in.

An echo of the scar still emanated and lingered, growing louder. At first it was a moment of contemplation before a fleeting discovery that could lead to misery and despair or an uncertain smile that could mean a future of glinting teeth as the mask is strung on stronger threads. A timid knock. Silence in response. You could see the paper peeled away as the silhouette began to fade into nothing, and the earth beneath her trembled, quivering and mocking her sense of comfort among the cold – there it came again, plucking her from a peace she held in a desperate grasp; it was a moment of dread turned to apprehension. Before the veil fell, and misery once again struck down dread, a blinding flash among pure, inky shadow. A hand seemed to be shaken from through the branches of indistinct fog. Fingers, talons. Hair bringing rain down upon the merry eye of surreal grief. The reality quivered, recoiling fast as shadows; among the great hands of slumbering giants lay graves, slender and tall. And she watched them rise. His name marked. She held a branch in her grasp and felt the shaking intensify. That was all it took to shake away a single veil of indistinct remorse. She watched as the trees began to loom overhead, hand still clutching onto a single, ashen branch, a branch of hope that would always be severed as easily as a limb – she held it by the tip, seeing the veils of shadow flutter into the distance as crows of fabric; she gazed upon the blades that cast blood of hers upon the ground and knew these crooked branches could decay even the strongest of smiles. Teeth could fight with fangs, but everything rotted tomorrow. These branches were sinister, ticking clocks, casting wrinkles into her pale complexion; and as the ashes formed figures, they were indistinct, crumbling away like the cold veils of fog that she felt linger upon her face, and forming apparitions of perishing embers, fading to but a forgotten memory. A breath, the fog of withering memories, all out into the winds in moments and tossed to the branches – for even time accumulated dust, cobwebs. And those crooked vipers held fangs, but they could never fight against it. She knew that cold blankets of remorse and sorrow could be so easily peeled away by a single, insidious flame.

A fog cleared, and then she saw the branch that had peeled her apparition away from the ominous shadows; it was a sickly, vile tendril, so thin and ashen above her head – and she saw how hollow those embers were – with a single breath you could scatter it, but in a pulse of war, rapid and fleeting, you could grasp the embers in the tendrils of breath, extending it out into the silence, where dreams echoed. And flames could break out, blinding you with the sharp clarity. She closed her eyes, but the trees had long ago grasped at her complexion and torn away the smoke and mirrors of a veil that she wore over her gaze – and they had let flames engulf the flesh beneath as they tore away the skin to reveal putrid, grotesque scars. Blood began to pour, and that pulse echoed once more into the silence of burning, seething flames – a melody of a pulse familiar to her withered heart. That dread always outshone by another silence. Hesitation. A moment of unsure footing and stares broken. It lingered like those veils that had blinded her through a simple page; a page that always trembled in her hands, cruelly insidious through the serpents that leached through the curtains of fabric. There was no skin to keep the flesh perfect and free of vile imperfections. Those hands of time had stripped it away with serpentine fangs, carelessly tossing them over the forest floor where his silhouette lay, blindly thrashing against the flames that raged above. The light throbbed – and all paused for a moment – before the raging flames sought the cold solace of the breaths she took, harbouring a blinding blur of lights and colours and lights and colour and ominous pulses. Her breaths. In and out. In and out. Stumbling, she shielded her eyes as she took unstable footing upon the ground and reached for the tendril of ash, watching the embers burn through the muscle, nerves beginning to screech into the night like owls – then the darkness prevailed over the hesitant comfort of a home without those memories of smiles and uncanny eyes peering from the shadows. She felt her skin tremble with dread and quiver endlessly as the anguish tore those ashen branches upon the wall. A sense of dull calm reigned, and shadows prevailed as she blew out the candles of that branch, leaving a great scar upon the thin curtain of warmth.

Darkness at last. There was something comforting about having those shadows once again, to follow a chant familiar and forbidding. Ash remade all that crumbled to mere embers and replaced the veil with a tainted mask of sorrow, one so sensitive to mere mentions of hope, blinded by the flame as it drew closer. Closer. Even the veils of ash could crumble, leaving the flames to reveal every speck of blood, burning it; and it could tear down those mirrors of reflected light. Hope was snatched away along with that branch as she held it in her hands, and she heard the knocking ring out once again. But there was no dread. Only a dull heartbeat as she peered around the door on unstable, stumbling vision. Grace returned along with that feather. And she crumpled and wept. And retreated into the page, serpents a cradle of dread full of unnerving comfort.