The dance of the perishing corpses flickered as she breathed in the cold, hollow air – it echoed like light in a room of mirrors. Trembled with a flame's eternal peril. It swam among the dark and illuminated every crevice – and yet there were none. It was silent. Unnervingly silent as the waves began to lap at some distant shore, where no candle burns but the growing branches of smoke in the air – simply the ashes of every carcass careless tossed under soil. Only for it to slowly peel away, a talon of pale flesh emerging as the crows cock their heads, ravenous flocks stirring from slumbers of restless nights. A constant quivering as another wakes. But here was different. She heard them still but at every step they were further in the facade, and within there the cogs whirred still. In every action the waves were simply strings of silk catching her in a web. Wandering past tugged her back. And the branches of a tree could be burnt so easily. Yet the flame only stripped away the rust as light echoed over every crevice of abyssal silence. Everything seemed so peaceful, despite the pounding of that drum of war – the heartbeat of every soldier in unison as they march toward the sea, unquestioning, and never return. It seemed not to echo in these chambers of that warmth – that that had lapped at the sand now engulfed everything in tendrils of smoke. Serpents of phantom dreams. The looming dread of knowing that it wasn't there to whisper in her ear, that the lights weren't there to blind her to horrors unknown. Even pulsing vipers seemed to grasp at the rust on the cogs, the blood spilt and turned to flowers that flooded the fields with the calm after the storm; even they watched the flames burn away the veils of that desolate hope and ground their decaying fangs to ash to erase every trace of it. To watch the poppies be choked by scales and fangs and rope of a noose. Ink decayed around her as her vision began to expand, the lights turning out and embers falling. Falling. Turning to bitter tears of ash and doleful sobs. Decay began first and she could watch it again and again but as the serpents vanished, she would only ever see their shadow – the smoke of the candle they left behind after all was lost. And a more sinister, bleak image revealed itself to her weary sight. One of rotten ink spreading through an empty abyss of silence.

The abyss began to grow, despite slowly, over her sight, engulfing the corpse of a memory, of a father, of a looming dread and cruel, twisted words. They could've been spoken in a letter, the mind still seeing those vipers flow with the elegance of a river, they seemed like shadows of the serpentine stem's labyrinthine crevices, twisting and morphing into familiar faces – but simply shadows – the memory was something you could only feel around, never see the gaping jaws of woe that it left behind among the gloom to leave the cruel scars engraved in stone; you never grew close to the stem, she supposed with thorns, but those letters were a looming, towering dagger's blade. The waves lapped over the growing roots of an abyss, and she gazed into the fog – she had stumbled into a surreal fog, and there he was still, glaring in vengeance, in remorse, in regret. In terror as the crows fled, and joined his side as their complexions twisted and erased the once poignant image. The waves lapped in a constant reminder – the sound of paper torn – she could so easily pull the thorns from her flesh, and yet to do that would feed the rose with her blood. The water reflected that flame upon which the thorns screamed in anguish – the crows fled with feathers dropping upon the ground, and she heard the flames of water crackle, tempting her further into the abyss, further from the constant pulse of the water. Then she took another step. Through the impenetrable fog. Further and further – and she heard the letters turn to ash – but just as you can feel around the gaping abyss memories leave behind, watch the scar heal and the flesh fester, blood pouring. Watch hands rise from the dead. Just as those talons haunted her still, the vipers remained as a shadow in her mind, along with the strands of the words they had spoken, lingering to infect the wound. Memories couldn't be burnt away like complexions, or a letter of goodbye, of stuttered conversation that led only to the trundling, rusted cog. The jaws could swallow you if you let them, the rotten fangs falling over your decadent, misery-ridden flesh to devour it. A looming ghost that could never be erased like the noose around your neck of the ink upon some paper; it would trundle on and scream endlessly in the flames, rambling in your ear with the madman's cry.

She glanced toward the corpse in her hand, sensing the cruel hesitation in every stroke of the brush and placement of the clockwork, the cold gaze – for there had to be kindness for those cogs to seem sinister, and a smile given one day for the spiteful words to cast wounds into the horizon as the voice fades away into the abyss – there had once been something here, a petal of a rose perhaps – even the flame that cast it all to embers of a hope once so bright. If you peeled away the veils and ropes around your neck, it could reveal this. This carving of an eternal purgatory of eerie warmth; the coldness in a mother's gaze, or the smile she smiled after. Once all words of hope were cast through the bleak, hollow gaze of the viper, somehow all could be snatched away. For the screams were muted – and now perhaps they were laughter. Once she peeled away the light, this was all that was left: a bleak, empty ghost of that kindness, with despair growing where the dolour could put out the flame of lapping waves. The branches stretched out for the hope that had once been. But once you watch the viper peel away the words, burning the letter and enveloping it in ash until it was merely smoke, you perhaps saw what lay behind. And the abyssal ineffability of knowing. Knowing what looms ahead perhaps darkness reveals the smoke and mirrors of everything, and minds see all the putrid monsters that hide in the gloom.

So many breaths littered the landscape of a melancholy forest – there had once been so many dreams that wandered, followed and following – those breaths of hope, those breaths of despair, those breaths of childish joy and innocence, looming fangs to snatch away those traces of a smile and leave the eyes hollow – hollow and cadaverous as if decay had left it uncared for and unfed. Come to think of it everything here was rugged, tangled, tied together in untidy knots and weaved in the sorrowful scattering of a tapestry. You heard the scattered, anxious whispers of that web coming together as the branches of the trees up ahead knitted together – they fought and fought but always halted. For surreal whispers are carried from a carcass's rasping voice – the voice of a dream long forgotten that refuses to perish under the soil. The tapestry of a complexion still lay beneath if the cold winds peeled away the soil. Not just a hand but a woven blanket of threads, and hollow, blind eyes that feel around in the soil finding nothing. Cold winds swept over this bleak graveyard of vipers in sighs; those kinds of sigh that a mother breathes at any moment as they watch the light leave of child's so joyful eyes, knowing that those gazes could've been lifetimes. Or knowing that they could only speak in that cursed tongue of suffering and despair – wretched screams of agony. But these cold winds of thorns and cogs could ripple through the harshest veil of compassion and benevolent smiles with glinting teeth – fangs of kindness. That cold breath haunts every house, every smile, every step, every moment – every ticking away of the seconds as time drains to ash and bones – embers of a letter once so precious. The tapestry of thorns loomed still up ahead, quivering – It was coated with fog, but it never crawled through like a serpent, body slender and graceful with scales of mist that wavered in truth. Even from afar the veil had shielded her from its towering dread, engulfing the world in hollow greys and colours of woe. Any dread had vanished. But now, among the graves, it emerged once more, and its complexion was veiled.

A pulse of a metronome as a blink erases the ink upon the page for a mere moment – as the hum of a workman's suffering no longer fades into the melody of anguish that drowns out those shallow breaths so full of anticipation to the fog. And yet it never comes, only the fog. The hum of shadows that drowns it out in blood. The ink upon the canvas in a letter sent in moments of desperation – moments where that hum becomes an orchestra – one of melancholy cries all in tune. Playing distantly to drown out that ink. The melody drowned out agony, yet only veiled black ink with a flame. Upon the empty canvas she stared and blinked. Hollow screams lay in the crevices as the bleak curtain of melancholy trundled and stumbled toward the ink of crooked branches; Her attention snapped away as the ink rippled and perished, and the bleak horizon lured her closer with that hum of a dissonant melody. This forest was almost a graveyard of all the promises kept and broken, with shattered branches of hope simply the cascading smile turning to tears as despair held out its cold had to drag you down – the branches of ink themselves wavered. As did the curtain of dreary, cold gloom like the corpse of a hope buried beneath the ground. Even as they wavered, however, they saw the corpses and their hungry eyes became ravenous, then insatiable. The fangs glinted and the crows cocked their heads to reach out for the corpse, searching for the icy cold, lifeless flesh, all memories removed, drowned out by death's weary fog. And they clutched it with their serpentine carcasses, engulfing the bleak veil of unclear melancholy – their branches were fragmented with despair, but could always be repaired with agony. These branches only grew from twisted anguish turned to an uncanny image, and dreams could have been everything, and yet they were nothing. Cast aside among the soil. One lingering promise seemed to remain, and she gazed out into the cruel daggers of earth, veins of blood spreading through the great, corpse-like fog; all led to a single point, with the wavering, incessant veil of dissonance pulling her. Winds tossed seeds of hope aside, only for them to grow into vipers that struck with decaying fangs; everything here was intermittent, wavering in truth. But those winds were cold breaths. So these vipers simply spoke for them. Corpses couldn't scream. Corpses can't scream. Corpses can't scream. Beneath the soil, all is buried. Corpses can't scream. They dug their fangs into her shoulder and pushed and pulled her toward the single reminder. She almost heard the hiss of engines as the cogs turned, pulling her forth with the hopes rotting with turns of levers behind. There was no resistance against the teeth and fangs of a cold metal grave.

Thorns began to stretch out into the far, far distance, the tangled webs of every intricate spider tying around a single lever, one forged of the dull metals of dreams themselves, the apparitions of rusted cogs breathing heavily, thorns of cold carried in bleak, melancholy sighs. The tendrils swam among a sea of looming dread and a fate that never revealed its twisted, menacing complexion. If there was a single shred of hope, it was ash upon an urn as it shattered, carried in the wind forevermore in an eternal labyrinth toward that single goal – a mechanical clunking as the paths shuddered; she felt the ripples of that quivering dread. In every murmur in the wind there was a sigh of despair. And there were thorns that choked you. For you had no choice but to follow the whispers of the flowers that were as grey as the bones and ash in a casket beneath the ground. And find that wavering writing. Come, follow the cogs of that twisted, sinister serpent – purest black in every graceless movement. Come, follow the shred of hope – the staggering cogs lure you closer by their fangs. Come, and don't be afraid of the shelter of thorns above your head. For perhaps there was no petal at all. Perhaps the woe deceives you. Come follow dear child. Follow. Follow, whispered the uncanny voice, rasped its tongue of deceit.