Ripples of grief

Chapter 22

Vipers began to whisper, every word they said one with agony dripping from their fangs as they said it, and the pale light glistened off their silently unnerving scales – the darkness only hid their vile, twisted malice, but perhaps if it was torn down the terror would subside. Or perhaps they would peer through the shadows, seeing her cold breaths in the dark, only unveiled when the clouds parted in front of the glaring eye that simply gazed over every speck of darkness. It saw as they witnessed her cold terror, staring at the door, and as their forms were extended and plucked from the shadows, left to slither toward her with a motherly benevolence, then fade behind as they wrapped their crooked silhouettes around her neck – they watched as the terror turned to dread as the light peered through, and they choked her with benevolent malice, the cold embrace of a mother as she comforted a child after a nightmare, but the whispers were all spat through bloodied fangs. There was no cruelty. But no compassion. As the light peered through, she watched them crawl with the innocent face of a child, thorns scraping with a rasping melody of weeping hidden behind a small, feeble, rabbit toy. Every branch began to writhe, to shift. Every veil felt a shudder pass through as the thorns shifted forward. Like Wendel's wavering strength as he had simply grown paler and paler, and those complexions reflected in the glistening thorns were like his – pale yet knowing. There were no shadows, nor silken veils to hide from him the full stop at the end of a sentence. It looked like him. That dread still lingered. In the entrails spilling from the darkness, the scales scratching against her flesh. The blood began to drip from the ceiling as the light remained, undisturbed. But the breaths faded. Then vanished as the eerie blanket descended over her, jaws open as it came toward her neck; and yet grief was graceful, falling when she saw it and enveloping her in an uncanny comfort. Those jaws were wracked with anguish, thorns for gums, and yet it was benevolent and eerie.

The taciturn reflection in the sharp edge of the chains that emerged said every word in a single image – one of a pale, sickly child. One that perhaps saw too much – she supposed he had been blinded, muted by the terror that always loomed so much so that everything was strange, so strange that it was simply that cold clockwork ticking by. In a single page everything could be scrawled through a haze of despair, a continuous silent scream of agony as blood fell across the page, covering every trace of joy with blind shadows. Shadows that, despite all the clouds parting, could never fade, never reveal the sickening, placid mask that covered everything in light, in dreary terror that it would waver. Everything saw the full stop fall as a final drop of blood upon the guilt-soaked page, tears decaying everything that was said – because corpses can't scream. And the paling, sickly complexion was perhaps hollow as it slowly replaced the smile he had worn as the joyful Wendel that had stumbled around and murmured to himself and laughed despite the blood-soaked path ahead, and the steady pulse as it dripped from two serpentine, jagged fangs. Innocence was echoed in those eyes. It knew that taste, the cruel, melodic sound it made as it perished slowly and painfully at intermittent speed; and as they snatched away the one silhouette looming upon the horizon, thorns spreading over the landscape, she saw it in their flecks of lighter brown that she glimpsed among the shadows. Those nightmares had echoed over his mind when the shadows grew too dark, haunted him at every waking moment as innocence was devoured by insatiable jaws that now loomed over her, snickering disdainfully. They would echo like the full stop at the end of every sentence, grief looming with the pulse repeating over and over and over and over and over until it almost stopped. And that twisted, tender embrace emerged among the blanket of shadow.

Perhaps every nightmare ended with a scream. Perhaps everything would blind her, but there would be no shadows anymore. She glanced up, seeing the thorns grow over everything, pulling on her silken flesh like a noose of guilt, tearing away the blanket of not seeing she had held onto. Then the blood-curdling, vile scream of so many veils vanishing tore through the eerie echoes of peace, the silken widow's veils tossed away as a screech protruded through every shred of innocence left behind to be devoured; the cutting of an ink-black thread as the full stop falls away like frayed edges onto the page, and the vipers' fangs drip with malice. The dreary silence fell as the dissonant creak faded into the incessant melody of terror. Echoing dread is the silent scream, she supposed, as it vanished. Because corpses can't scream. Corpses can't speak. Corpses can't whisper. They can't sing a melody of sorrow and mock the perishing smiles. Because corpses can't scream. And an abrupt voice could pierce even the walls of thorns engulfing her, stabbing her with every step she took through the shadows.

"Open the door." And it sounded like her husband had, as if a ring still tied them by the neck until the full stop was placed like a grave.

A flood began to engulf her as the thorns and vipers recoiled, a petal emerging through the fog of despair and dread; the slender shapes in the back of her mind seemed so oddly crooked, full of a dreary melody that sang to hear even when the darkness and the gloom engulfed them in a wicked tongue of malice that devoured every flower that might just linger for a moment to relish the light glimmering with hope and safety, arms of a mother. But serpents are ravenous at every moment, even as budding, reaching innocence dripped in vile torrents from their mouths. All was engulfed in that cruel, mocking shadow by the wave of sorrow that cast away all joy, even that from a wound bleeding into the soil and a grave placed to mourn, or a mother's smile as a tear falls, and the woe is watered. She grasped at each thread of darkness, the fraying edges of the scratches on a wall clung onto like a scared child – but even with the threads of a blanket that had been cast away to the wind, ice could claim you bit by bit. Those veils were a sense of comfort; despite the agony that was brought in torrents and torrents, she still flinched as the door opened further, arms of malicious benevolence reaching for hope but only falling further into a sea of woes – that widow's veil of gloom was simply there to hide something. Something she'd always been too blind to gaze at with a smile lurking around the corner. Those fangs pierced through but surely, they were thorns, and the veils were just the scarlet blood that came with that. And those gaping jaws had gums that were- no. No. No. A haze began descending once more. But it was too late – what she'd seen was ineffable, yet vile and insufferable, blinding her with terror. And when the froth spat from the waves was tossed toward her, she leapt back – for she knew with a melancholy sense of dread that something lurked in the light that was twisted, something grotesque. And then briefly she saw it glow crimson – something snapped in that moment and made her begin to flee. This dreary monologue of reality was laced with venom; venom from the scars that wept false shadows.

And the jaws opened as they devoured the shore, rolling forward with odd, mechanical grace, cogs whirring and whispering cruel words - a crooked tone always lurked in the cold stare of a sea that held simply apathy. Then as she fled past, the flowers simply sighed in impatience, or perhaps just in shame as they stared at her bedraggled, grief-stricken appearance, with a gaunt complexion full of terror, yet full of despairing woe that cared little for anything; and then, after a deep sigh, the jaws closed, scars still lingering as it recoiled, and the flowers turned away in shame, disdaining every morsel of sympathy they might have felt. For what could it give them but the same malady she could never escape the cold clutches of. The same malady of despair. They never once glanced at it, though; not at the decaying wood, worn down by the sea of tears that rolled forever onward, ticking with an eternal dread. The dread of seeing the thorns end, knowing that life was like a match, burning away every path as flame spread across it, and the end lay ahead as splinters were cast into flames behind you. Perhaps, even if the wood withered away and perished with the swift, crashing death of cold daggers cast into weary flesh, she could float above the sea of tears, escape the malady that plagued her every waking step, and every slumbering blink; where she saw truth, perhaps the tendrils fed off the terror it struck – the reality of what loomed above. Then sorrow began to grow into the water, root it in her mind; she could float above the turmoil perhaps for a moment. The fishing net lay still in the boat, ready to be used when he returned, even though he wouldn't. Then the whispers began to grow louder, echoing in her mind as more and more glares of mockery glanced toward her, then sighed in shame for her as she wandered past, and the crows themselves cried out, cawing into the night air. Oh, the cold night air. Even the ravens fled from the graves, calling out in terror. As she plucked the petal from the ground, and it simply lay limp.

It had a shadow beneath, yet it seemed to cover the paper scattered across the ground, hiding it in a blanket of remorse – everything had a fault, and perhaps knowing that let her know that the end would always loom. Every sentence ended with a silent, unspoken scream of anguish as you sail off upon waves and waves of terror and joy, terror and smiles, benevolence scattered as the wave retreated and the petal was set afloat once more. The flowers sighed mournfully with the promise of a tear wept to know that the candle could be put out swiftly as that, with a tear wept by a moon that watched over with a scarlet glare, one of crimson blood. Bled by a smile from a memory of rings worn by light of shadows, and hearses carried as they slept among shadow. Even that candle seemed to flicker and contort, wind wavering its course and contorting a shadow. Just as the door slammed behind her. The petal's stem growing soundlessly carried the hearse, a grave disguised to grow as each thorn pierced the veils once more.