Ripples of grief

Chapter 11

A chasm of echoing time revealed its veils of silken grief to her gaze of lonesome fear, desperation simply a smile tempting her into the chambers of friendly, glimmering skin and bone; but the colour was drained. She took a step closer and peeled away the layers of light that had hidden so many secrets that light simply obscured – for ink required you to look in the shadows, she held them in her mind, dissolving the light even when it lay as a home, a good friend that heard you murmur truths in a deep slumber, heard every moment play out in your head as if it were its own – until those memories were stripped away, and the chamber of shadow held nothing but flesh to be peeled away by shadow, revealing what the fog of paper hid, and the serpentine ink held in its sight, cold reminders of dread within a chasm of echoing time. The time ticked by in a haunting, foreboding melody of those serpents watching every step she took, every moment seemed to leave the colour and light stripped away, ink dripping as the surfaces trembled, fleeing the viper of shadow that spread its insidious infection over every surface. A sea of ink that spoke ineffable words of the shadows that smiled. Lurking where the lights couldn't see. Just at the edges where you didn't dare look yet knew held nothing but shadow. Forlorn deceit knowing that you could never gaze upon their putrid, vile complexions, seeing their gaze so cruelly twisted. Everything could lurk there, creeping over everything that seemed so warm and kind and twisting its gaze so that it stared into the shadow, engulfed by the inky, brooding darkness as the complexion was peeled away. There were so many smiles held within that single step, the glint of insidious darkness as it glimmered in moonlight – they'd wandered beneath after the noose had been pulled tight around their wrists, thorns piercing their skin even as the wind blew and they shared a moment of knowing that the moment was a brief sketch before the story moved onto other things, and joy sank beneath the ocean of tears. All memories are stale eventually, time being as brief as it is. All ashes are blown away by drafts blowing through the room, leaving simply a residue of dread and cruelty – every book would decay into the ground, torn apart and forgotten.

That figure stood in the corner, a single eye with a pupil seeming to rotate with a rippling drop; perhaps a tear falling through the air – or perhaps just a single pulse of time as its jaws engulf a terror buried beneath a cover and a name. If that book were to be buried all would see it as just that – a name. Once names fall away, dissolving into the sea of terror, all that remains is ash and bone. Time does not care for those who stand beneath, praying for the hand to step back and let a smile emerge for a moment rather than being engulfed by the cruel hands of time as their hold slipped, tossing that moment of thorns binding wrists into a flame that watched them fade away into nothingness. An abyss of silence. It was echoes of a footstep. A crow's wing beating down the fog and revealing a little before the veil of paper and ink emerged once more, for it could never vanish. Dread. A moment where the incessant, dull pulse muttered cruel words into the shadows, the only sound among a sea of serpentine ink forming figures in the corners of one's sight. A pulse not of war or of rage or of love or of terror or of that knowledge that something that looms, towers overhead, tendrils surrounding a beating heart. It was dread. A chord of dissonant beauty that could engulf the world in a black tinted lens, dreary melancholy clutching all in its menacing grasp – she reached to close the door, and it closed with a foreboding cackle, knowing that was all that stopped that shadowed veil from engulfing every smile shared in apathy and sorrow, every memory of a laugh. Her son used to laugh like that, but now he was lost to that cruel hand of time. Every book only survived because its cover remained. The chasms of shadow seemed to tremble still, waiting for the sculptures of ink to be seen and mocked, before looked upon in utter disgust. They all quailed away from him. He was here. Watching. Always watching. Her son had wept like that, sorrow pure and full of that forlorn misery that had crept behind every perishing soul. A tick of that dreary scythe. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. A dull monotonous rhythm. An eerie silence before her eyes fell upon them.

A melancholy brooding held the place in its sinister grasp, clutching it tight in its cruel grasp before falling back as the pulse faded, figures emerging from the shadows with menacing stares. Recitent glares can be unsettling, but with no hate, only hollow ink bleeding from those eyes, necks crackling with life that held nothing but shadow. They were black, glimmering spots of hollow terror. No stars lay within their stares, simply caustic words never spoken. She turned and they were gone, the table lay in the corner, still trembling as the eerie silence descended, full of uncanny affection. Ink covered every trace of a smile there had ever been in such an unsettling place, with a clock against the wall, staring with one unblinking eye.

"Why did you leave?" She heard it say, before the uncanny voice vanished and she was left among her dull melancholy.

Just before the final veil was peeled away, light simply a shadow that tempted out the serpents for the flesh they longed to devour and left the corpse to be buried. She looked up to see nails protruding from the ceiling like fangs, doleful gloom enveloping the crevices within from which water dripped, cracks revealing thunder crashing in the distance, heralding the grey. The dark, shadowed grey that accompanied the dull waltz of peace – the knowledge that war could always lurk, and the only reason you saw was if a corpse fell from the storm cloud in a single raindrop. Dirt. The rain was dirt pouring into the grave in which she lay, wondering why the walls felt so cold and threadbare, memories buried deep within that she would never uncover. She would try to flee but the dirt always poured in, a blanket of warmth that tempted her in. Where she writhed but the cruel melody of solace always tempted her beneath the soil of shadow. Above they cruelly mocked her, always cackling among the tears in the sky, that laughter uncannily sinister as they disdained her suffering mind with potent grief, roses and poppies tossed over the soil by ravens. She felt the roots dig deeper into the cruel fog of a home without smiles, without sound – the knowledge that war could always lurk in the shadows – beneath the bed of roses with thorns that dug into your heart and knew every sound that could stir the sorrow that lingered beneath the petals of smiles, tender, sweet smelling joy. Dirt still piled upon the grave, choking her with the fog of sorrow until the darkness was a reminder of the spirits that fought to escape – their carcasses of haunting grace never once caught, and their eyes glared through windows. And yet they fought to escape – fought against every shred of will they had. Hysteric paranoia began to bury the darkness, lighting it with ominous terror that never seemed to be rewarded with a scream, nor a shadow lurking. Nor a corpse bleeding with no way to stop the river flowing and flowing and flowing until the light left their eyes. Just the steady trickle of soil trapping her within the rose bed of insidious gloom. Just the knowledge that all could fall beneath, forgotten, leaving the house a hollow shell.

Thunderous shudders echoed through the house, and she gazed up to the ceiling in dread, knowing that the intensity would fluctuate with the river of soil that was thrown into the air every time the spirits writhed to flee the bed of thorns they lay upon. That pulse once again, just in a different form and throbbing with a strange rhythm. The thorns were thrown up too, the tender petals piercing the soil and leaving cracks in the glass. She turned, the robe of darkness enshrouding and engulfing her view. Another shudder through the ground. And the carcass seemed to still, but there was a trembling tension in the air as she watched the glass shatter upon the ground – tears of a heartbreak shed upon the wooden floors as yet more pictures fell upon the ground, from the edges you didn't notice emerging trails of blood. There was an ominous gloom about that moment. That knowledge that a single shattered window and ringing pulse could start a flurry of gunshots – a storm of perished memories as they became stale and died. The knowledge that a single path could lead to so many. A crack led to a hand. She leapt back, knowing it was a taunting hallucination of hysteria that would vanish in a moment. But it didn't, shadow writhing around it as if the serpents had been tamed, forever chasing its cruel gaze and vile talons that seemed to extend into the soil and fight against the bed of roses and thorns. There was a place where the apparition seemed to glint with smiles long gone. A ring lay around the finger of that vile hand, chaining her in the thorns that she held the spirits in, chains of blood and bone. It chained her with the thorns of that love that binds you to hate and wretched dolour, and her mind clutched it to her heart as the chains drew cold, caustic blood out of her pale skin.

It had vile talons, white as the teeth of a child as they emerge as one so unfamiliar and wise. They held decaying joy in a sinister smile that mocked her with the ripples of grief as carelessness rots, and in those blood wells up. It had the calluses of a workman, bruises and tear smudged memories; but it held vile traces of crimson within the crevices of age, and trembled as it led her away, an apparition as it vanished into the silhouetted graves, with viridian flowers blooming from branches upon which ravens watched from the shadows.