Ripples of grief

Chapter 27

She glimpsed glinting flesh among the petals of teeth glimmering in crimson, almost a comfort at the end of a great, winding path of nightmares looming in the crevices left after every dent, every bill unpaid and every meal left to be a dream, a comfort only enjoyed by gods and kings, vipers and serpents that sapped every shred of colour from the sickly complexion of the walls. And yet she almost felt guilty when this jaw of glinting teeth lay before her, silken yet threadbare blankets on a stone-cold mattress; it held a lure, dragged her forward with a light of exhaustion and restless pacing. One step after the other the shame began to envelop her. For this was a comfort once so bright, but the blanket of darkness always followed it – always followed her. Always watched. Saw her trudging forward with a grief. This flickering candle would lure the crows, this warmth of a corpse just murdered and become an apparition may tempt them like a phantom to the tolling bell. There was a kind of grief in that darkness. The shadow cast by hope, blinding her with veils as she stumbled slowly, step by step. Stuttered footsteps as she began to drift away, then a snickering laughter. A cackling cruelty. And she saw as another step was taken the blanket snatched away, threads of warmth in a tapestry vanished, gone to the wind with the fleeting hope of ash. Then from every crevice in the curtain they crawled, murmured and laughed before glaring with an insidious disdain, creeping forward. Further. But perhaps the shadows were what dragged her forward, stitching her path with relentless darkness and shadows of ink. Those shadows were a cold comfort. And the bed of flowers shivered still in the wind as she walked toward it, growing more lassitude-ridden by the seconds ticking by, moments flashing past with the fleeting joy of childhood before running out of reach, bringing shame in that sinister shadow. The grief of storms tempted her onward step by step, cruelly smiling before turning to cold benevolence as the moon rises over a lonesome grave, and the crows seem to sing a monotonous melancholy of sorrows, lamenting in that rasping tongue as the ground began to become a sea, and yet that bed of flowers wasn't washed away. It simply awaited her.

She'd always wondered why crows simply flocked to graves, desperation driving them onward with a mocking fate of finding nothing but a decaying corpse, one that stared with the blank stare of dreams tossed aside for the knowledge that one day the same thing will happen again. To new victims but the same thing every time, with sorrow sprouting first in the sigh, the deep, echoing sigh that the widow whispers in, speaks in, knowing it will do nothing. Then when the woe truly took root perhaps that was when the serpents smelt ink in the air and tasted a sea of sorrow and remorse. With mouths watering, maybe they flew over, then found the grave. Found the flowers. Found every scrap of paper beneath the fog. Tear-stained goodbyes, scraps of stories never to be told to anyone but a reticent fog. And perhaps that was what they fed on. Why they seemed to follow her in her state of overwhelming fatigue to this single grave, a single dream peeled away like skin each time she visited. For she saw the dents in the walls. And she would be the tearful goodbye. Weeping over what wasn't there. Just as the blood halts to flow and a great bell tolls, just as it did when it began to rush forth with a foreboding recklessness that caught the stream on thorns. At every simple comfort there was that acrimonious voice around the corner, however, one that lay among the jaws of silken flowers and roses, wavering but always present in the bed meant for comfort, yet full of thorns – they simply moved aside to reveal venom among the soil of a grave, where an apparition lay. And they wore that crown. That comfort was a light that they knew showed shame. Showed their muted screams as fog trailing through the air in cold breath, life covered in frost and ice. Left them wandering, muted, wearing that crown of thorns the same as those who wandered with a beating pulse, a vile rhythm of time ticking by. And the vile tongue of sleep had almost enveloped her, woebegone cries always murmuring to themselves, unseen, unheard in trenchant cold when she saw that cloaked silhouette, almost drenched in the grief of every feather, yet so light in their step even among the rising undead, hollow eyed as if he were one of those who opened lifeless mouths yet couldn't talk. Cloaked in a dreary veil, glimmering with a melancholy rain of hapless cries of the crow as it flocks among the many, the sea of dread that dropped shadows as it flowed. The ineffable sight of shadows themselves, walking forlorn and light stepped among the fog.