A ceaseless melody of clocks ticking by, grinding against the threads of warmth to bring devastation to the joyful living, and tear away the flesh to reveal the bones that dwell within, hidden beneath veils of skin and carcass. The joy lay simply in every layer of skin like paper, shedding light into the moon and letting it reflect those gazes back – like a lover of a serpent, always knowing they could drown out those memories in the fire of those cogs beneath, writhing within the waves of mechanical fire. Cogs of time always tick by under crimson light the silken petals simply a façade for the thorns of a rose to hide beneath as the waters churned, enveloping the light of a glinting smile in the soil of a grave – mechanical flames could spread through that fabric, but they could never look like light – no matter how blinding they were, how relentlessly they shone. They were the intermittent pulse beneath the waves, tearing the silken path into fragmented islands, and watching the memories burn away as they were drowned out by shadows – mere silhouettes. But even the rust upon those cogs that was tossed in rain from the skies of fog could never replicate true bliss of sight – too many veils of dissonance would perpetually rock the cot, and spill blood from the ravines. The relentless melody of harmonic dissonance would never cease – only pause as the seas grew quiet, and the pulse of war slowed, a heartbeat that throbbed without passion or compassionate words, simply murmuring, a dormant ember of that serpentine mass of writhing waves; the cogs tearing at the scarlet petals. The vipers could strike at any moment once more, but for now the ravines were slashed through the soil of light that coated a single smile. For there were cogs within the water, always ticking by with waves lapping at she shore. Even in the wait there was the uncanny call of a friend – it could tick away as a murmur, but the seas were never peaceful for long – at quarter past it could strike with viper's fangs. Dull anticipation. Then it could erupt with that cruel cackling of spilt blood, and that would envelop all but the rust on this clockwork, a false moon rising with that sinister glare of melancholy as all perished.

Along the cogs turned, trundling as if in the daze of lassitude, enveloping blankets and veils of deceit in the dark as the fog ahead obscures the path, but tempts the serpent to peer into the page, vanishing into the horizon to flow in a river full of torrents fighting against each other, throats torn in fury – the tides were exchanging a glare as the sea fizzled and seethed with melancholy anticipation, a false moon sending into the clouds of doubt sparks and dagger shards. And watching them fall with cruel talons toward her single, floating petal. She could've sworn that there was glass in that wave as it crashed over her single wooden haven – protection from the cruel shards of glinting smiles – blinding among the false lights of cogs grinding against teeth and fangs, emerging flames beginning to blaze and dance and flicker. She could've sworn that a single cog broke through, the silk tearing on the horizon as the silhouette wandered away once again, left to flee like a crow from a graveyard. All as the talons of ice sent a great scar across the limp corpse in her hand – she could barely see it in the gloom as its blood spilt. Every true hope had a face, a complexion like a mother's as it looms over your head from the sky, caring but menacing – uncanny yet unfamiliar. They were like memories – embers so easily put out by the very waters that they stirred. She watched it perish in her hands as the trundling pulse of cogs and hesitation to hold in your hand the suspense began to fade, buried by that ineffable light – so blinding, yet in that truth dark, gloomy and dolour-ridden; as if with a malady of fallen souls. She could almost watch as they were choked by tendrils of despair and terror; like gas rolling in, seeking its quarry before it crashes overhead in fatigued carelessness. Then as the chasms of relentless, despairing cries clattered into a cruel chamber of innocence, running forward – unknowingly fleeing – from the crows that sought flesh. Flesh of hers. Flesh of its. Her eyelids began to close and flicker as the blanket still rolled, enveloping her corpse in a warm cold of lassitude, stumbling forth as the false light was hidden. Engulfed in cloud.

Perhaps she dreamed of the spores fleeing to the skies, glowing the colour of dull eyes fading out of the warm blankets of home and into the cold, cold branches of a false light, where they bathe in feathers. But the shadows – they always carry that warmth of heavenly grace as they lower you your corpse into the snow. There are doves in the knowledge that you will never see the entrails the crows and the rats insatiably devour – there are perhaps doves and feathers of dark comfort in not seeing your death play before you in a tragedy of masks. There is comfort in the unknown; whether she slept or not was a mystery of lassitude and delirium that lapped like the waves of tears upon the shore; and welcomed her forth into the disguise of the serpents, the den of fatigued masquerades.

Perhaps those flowers heard it too. Heard her footsteps as she stumbled onto the dry land of woe of gloom that even dull anticipation would never cut through; their eyes watched her as she trundled forth and saw the relentless dance of time in every movement she made. Just as they held a noose around their necks as if it were a blanket over a child, a shivering, weary soul who stands in false light and sees just smiles. Just as they held that dread of the eternal clock – cogs whirred by and when the moment passed, a new step was taken – they saw as she was held within the viper's clutches. It lured her with peace as its salty, vile tendrils sought their prey and lay out embers upon the ground. Carcasses rotted beneath this ground. These flowers glimmered with blood, feathers of a raven echoing that sorrow of dreary melancholy – where the seas are eerily still and anticipation looms over. She felt the moments pass with every lap of the tongue of the hellhound. The dull screams of a clock as the hands grow slowly apart in twisted misery, echoes of joy opening the flickering wounds of ash - they slowly twisted into a shadow of that pulse, quivering before the seam seemed to close; and the stitches formed a figure as the silhouetted light began to waver in familiarity – it seemed to share her mind – she heard its thoughts in the wind as the phantom swept through every speck of light from a net of vipers, and put out every single one with a breath as if it were simply a candle. And ash scattered in that silhouette. She had let him wander away to be devoured by a crow as it looms over the soil. And the leaves bled from the great scar in the knotted tendrils of a blanket. A flickering flame emerged on the horizon. Simply an ember. A flame so weary a breath left it to perish in agony. That melancholy pulse always lapped at the edge of her mind – a dread relentless even as she glanced at the bloody corpse in her hands and listened to its sighs of a machine – clockwork becoming a sea of rust that stirred then fell still. Before it began to slow. Even the melancholy heartbeat of gloom could flail again against the viper's fangs. But she was a cog contorted by the glinting strings of hopelessness, and that silhouette flickered. Before it vanished. And emerged once more.

The flesh rippled with agony unfelt and seemed to echo the anguish of cold carcass splitting, seams tearing and blood pouring over the once so warm blanket of gloom and shadow – it stuttered but rained over the darkness, tinting it another shade of fear. One more sinister perhaps; the one of crows had fled along with them as they glanced once more at the carcass and reformed like starlings, painting every word, every battle, every tormenting malady looming above your head as the seconds tick by and they're far away in some long-forgotten grave, the rose still in their crooked, bloodied talons. The flesh peeling away from skin with blood pooling in the cracks where they once lay, trembling as the shovels of the gravediggers peered over the top. And there they tossed the thorns upon the ground. Letting it grow as they planted more and more. And left their silhouette as a branded scar of blood upon the horizon as the leaves parted with scarlet saliva of the ravens dripping from those fangs; the saliva snatched from the perishing corpse. And though it was a comfort that was relentless in its constant devouring of a frown or a tear, she saw the flood that gloom held back – a single breath and the wind would peel away the skin, revealing it to be simply petals upon tendrils of thorn – something about that warmth felt as unsettling as the cry of a mother over a child's grave. A somewhat familiar melody of misery rambling on and on and on. The blood still poured from that wound of tears, a growing stem that grew into the leaves above as the y met once more. As the skin fled the anguish and clutched onto the hope of healing these scars. In those tears of a mother, however, lay among the fields of truth – through the whispers of rasping, cruel melodies the blood lay before her eyes. It was more of a truth. Every song had a pulse – that of grief, that of loss, that of misery beyond even despair. Simply yearning for a single flicker of hope. And every flicker of hope was a beating pulse as the waves lapped at land. They took another tooth from the jaws of this great clock, and something changed even in her movements – eyes locked to the path as it trembled. Because that serpent lay still within the chambers of dread and gloom; they choked the petals of this sinister path of wavering hope, and the cruel depictions of choice crumbled beneath her. They flailed but never fled. Something always watched them die and smiled. Under the embers of that serpent the glow seemed eerie as the scarlet turned grey as ash. And something was wrong. The air was thin, rambling until every hiss of the viper was drowned out in the agony – for the embers of a serpent could see the delicate, flammable flower. What else was it to do but burn away the facade of lies and decay, watching it writhe and recoil? She stumbled on into the scar, but something lingered. Something rotten. A thorn in the flesh of the sufferer.

The air began to choke her, the shadows unveiling the true, dreary horrors that had been concealed in fog of lassitude – there they were. The numb fangs, dully glimmering gums of blood and flesh that decayed even as she gazed upon it – the eyes up ahead that glared down with malice. Yet is meandered – the branches murmured secrets in her ear, yet the roof was here even still. In bleary-eyed bewilderment the sinister shadows of fatigue simply loomed ahead as the serpents dragged her toward the jaws of the looming viper. Their gums seemed to bleed ink – truths scattered in murmurs of the wind, whispers of great anguish as that figure of the false moon arose like embers of a rapid torrent of flames and fire with benevolence in every growing branch. Like that petal as its embers fall. It mocked her as the ashes fell, disdain raining from the skies of dolour and melancholy. And that dull, flickering shadow of a silhouette was there still, even without the false moonlight to see by, she still heard whispers of remorse. And they were relentless, an eternal grave of soil tossed over a corpse. Soil stirred and so did the crows – not even they would devour decayed carcasses of those who fell to nails in a dark, damp coffin of cogs and thorns and blood. Not even in the bleary-eyed, fatigue laced energy of grief. These halls were labyrinthine, but they still fled from her like the crows, and the paths of a flower. It mocked her with embers, the crumbling remnants of towering flames.