Sometimes, there is nowhere left. He sought silence, black and heavy.
The need to be weighted by it and to be led by it pulled him towards it, and he plunged into the chasm. He could hear nothing but the blood in his ears. He could see nothing but the engulfing darkness. He became nothing but another memory swallowed in time.
Edward's ink spilled, all the words he had been intending to write washed away in an indigo tide. On its brittle black neck, the flame threw back its head and laughed, skewed candlelight bouncing on the drowning story. The lit paper blackened and curled; he opened the skylight.
It was as though each star was suspended in black gel, and I was hanging amongst them by a fine silver thread. I almost felt calm, padded by the thick silence. But I shuddered, and the car creaked as the front wheels teetered then slowly, slowly tipped over the edge...
With every note, the light leaked from the horizon, and the life seeped from her.
Propped against the rock, the warmth spread across her face in a spill of orange as he played the sonata.
'One more time?' she whispered, sinking into the music before the new day had even begun.
#sacrifice
As Tim and her dad piled the struts on the lawn, it resembled a pyre for a sacrifice. They reassembled the bed then carried out Lila, barely a husk. Lit candles in jars flickered around her in a halo as she paled under the stars. By morning, she was sheened by diamonds.
#sword
Clutching the guide book, they reached The Great Hall next.
Bright eyed, George stopped at a suit of armour, his arm rising.
'It says PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH -' Ethel's voice hung as an echo as the knight's sword swiped, cutting George clean in two.
He never listened.
#slaughter and #pass
Slaughter & Son was such an apt name for the new butcher's. I couldn't pass by without popping in on opening day. The white aprons of both men were already smeared with blood, and it was embedded beneath their fingernails.
There was no sign of Mrs Slaughter.
#sing and #poison
'Sing to me,' she'd rasp as I swung in the creaking cage.
Then one day she sprinkled rat poison instead of salt into her broth...
The rats have stripped the bones of the old crone clean. They are thin now, hungry, as am I.
Their nails scratch up the pole.
They scuttle and clamber, dangling bones clicking and wedging as they surge.
As the pulley whirrs, they grin and gape, every socket filled with night.
The lift doors open, blowing ash.
Their jaws clack in an excited staccato chatter as they welcome another one to Hell.
#seaside and #decay
Rory loved the seaside. He ran, his red bucket bobbing.
'Look what I found!'
'A dead fish!' said his mum, wrinkling her nose. 'Stinks of decay.'
He thought back to the skull, wedged with beach debris.
'There was a pebble I wanted, too, but it was stuck.'
#solace
When Annie was dying, Greg took solace in the arms of her best friend, Beth.
Greg and Beth find it hard to sleep nowadays, not through guilt, but because the bedroom is icy cold.
Annie stands in the corner, glaring at them.
#shoe
THIS was his parking space when he had a car, when he had a job, when he had money to pay the mortgage, when he had a house, a happy family. Before the pandemic.
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THIS is the space where he lost his soleless shoe, and just kept walking...
#Scotland
Visiting the vaulted city below the streets of Edinburgh was a must while we were in Scotland. The dark hovels still echoed with the cries of the poor, the sick, the depraved.
As the guide led the group away by torchlight, I was pinned.
Something was holding my coat.