Ripples of grief

Chapter 24

When she glanced behind her, she wished she could see more than shreds of despair scattered in an ocean of melancholy sighs breathed by the woebegone mother, a deep breath in where silence haunted the gap in thought, the ominous ring and echo of the soundless whimper always perpetuated no matter what, and she fled it. Perhaps a glance behind her was a mistake, enshrouded in a veil of darkness that would never be lifted as long as that figure was always embroidered on the horizon – as long as the echoing ripples of grief still lingered on the lake, that figure, with frayed threads now straying, would always lurk, never once wavering. But even if it was, those chains of gloom held comfort, a joy among a sea that drowned out even traces of smiles, the shadow of a house once so warm and comforting now ominous as complexions were torn away in favour of a cruelly slow emptying of the page, all ink erased. Somehow the writhing columns of smoke held comfort. Or at least enough to flee to it, net in hand with the corpses quivering. In times of desperation, she supposed light grew dim, perhaps it was simply that single path that fell away behind you, leaving a phantom of hope to see by and a trail to follow. A trail of her gaze as she slowly glanced down, almost hesitantly, as if she knew that something terrible lay beneath her trembling, weary hands with skeletal figure – as if she could see the soulless gazes without even looking down, knowing they were there. Knowing that putrid stench was for nothing, and that the eyes of those vipers were golden thread. And knowing they would swirl before her in the haze of desperation, remorse itself seeming wavering and unclear. But no matter how unclear it was, she was sure she could feel the chains with their cold weight, like a hollow, soulless corpse before a figure clutching a gun; the deathly silence seemed itself to echo in the cold winds of breath over a desert of snow. Despite there being no pale, dead carcass before her, she still felt the warm blood trickling from every pore, every scratch beyond that doorway, with vipers grinning among the silence as their bodies bathed in the night-black sea of crimson that the thorns laid out, golden threads glinting in their eyes.

The fabric she held in sweating, trembling palms, too. But it couldn't be. It had a stain of crimson guilt over every silken hole with a threadbare patch placed over – she felt weight behind every moment she reached for the cruelly torn fabric; perhaps nothing lay inside, but in a hollow grey eye was nothing but dread for what was to come – or what had happened to cause every scratch, every ashen rim in the tree as it reached. In nothing: a tree tossed aside leaving a life cut short by an axe that cut through the thorns and the path; there was a weight of dread as she clutched it like that rifle. The gun held by the madman before a river of scarlet, of petals that rippled in the wind. Growing as a river of thorns before her as she trembled in fear as she saw every flower's sigh across the remorseless river. Blood of so many, and in it lay serpents, with golden threads for eyes. Her footsteps sent ripples across the ocean, stirring the dead before the fell once again to the ground, limp and hollow unlike what they had once been. How could this be just a hysteric delusion, a trace of her malady, when the ripples rang out across it, steady and not intermittent, but fearful. Fearful of the vipers among the currents. It quivered, trembling as if scared – trembling as her hand quivered with the unspoken scream of a corpse who found its ghost, but could not move. Perhaps that was just the tear of a hapless soldier, she thought, as her body stepped back with the cold, jagged movements of a corpse, and she heard a pulse of gunshots in the distance, yet so close. She sometimes heard them weep among the shadows of entrails spilt over a battlefield. The flowers of a grave spoke their hapless weeping. But corpses can't scream. And yet it seemed to ripple with grief and sorrow, so perhaps she was simply mad. Those mocking, disdainful words lurked in every drop that she fled, slowly and coldly placing the carcasses inside the threadbare bag before bolting away with regret lingering – the blood seemed to follow her, however. The trail of dripping claret behind her. It was there – on her palms as she scratched at them to escape the acrimonious words. There was blood on her hands. There was blood on her hands. There was blood on her hands. And she saw that silhouette still, threads frayed on the lurking shadow of him as the thorns pierced her skin and the veils before her gaze.