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.

"Perhaps I saw those thorns as they surrounded you, but you did not."
She turned and frantically glanced around as the last of the feathers fell away and that ever familiar cry of a child, smile growing with tendrils of hopelessness, dreams never quite realised to the reaching, hopeful child who lay upon that grave, a hollow reminder of woes mounting higher – higher – higher – rising until that insidious mist devoured it, concealing the reaching, hopeful arms that simply died and fell away as ash. She was back here again. So was he.

"I suppose you see them too, these pillars of shadow, of looming silhouettes embedded with thread and needle. Remember, you were never meant to see him." Then the open jaws of the earth opened, glinting crimson teeth revealed as the cloaked figure raised pale hands, and the corpses of hope it had devoured shuddered. Writhed. And the grotesque limpness of their inert carcasses, blood over their neck and eyes blinded, sent a shiver through her sight, leaving it wavering – quivering as if a chord was played on a cello, sombre and cruel. And so, they rose with jagged, crooked necks twisted. Almost seeming to take steps with precise agony – contorted and twisted and – then that blood flowed, scabs falling away like the blanket of innocence. Hesitant. Tentative. Reticent. Before falling away in a cold, grotesque river of eerie grief.

"This is what you've done."

Every pool of glimmering water will fall still, and she supposed that was all that happened in that moment – a shattering screech – an echoing, sinister cry, and all you knew of what you lost was that among the dark, stumbling, it wasn't there, instead it was replaced by corpses, wandering despite the eerie silence in their minds, and that ivy reaching and unfurling thorny tendrils toward her, as if it still lay there to be found by the tormented widow, wandering through a slumbering haze. And yet when a lake falls still, you know. You know by the empty minds of those still-waking carcasses, their hollow eyes, and the ivy that grew over a stagnant, plaid river. At first a green shoot of glass, pale green and in shards that fell, cascaded in a tumbling mind upon the ground – then they spread over every inch of the corpses' skin, arms falling away. No blood fell, and yet they wandered on, stumbling as if haunted by dreary malady of grief. The melody that spreads over your sight, the shards simply grass upon the ground, remains of viridian tendrils that fell away as they spread further and further over her sight in cruel, ethereal decay. She could feel every thread even if it was just a branch of a tree, looming in its thin entrails across the sky, how the crimson spread as they were torn away – one possibility stretching off into the distance simply torn into the imperturbable, phlegmatic silence; before it was cast before her in a haze of figures murmuring – becoming blinding – strangers turning to family to friends; every possible reality stretching out in threads torn away, paths still joined, paths sure-footed. All cast before her, and yet it was so real as the ivy tore it apart with viridian tendrils of hope fracturing every trace of the nightmarish hope. Nightmares are ash upon the flowing river of childhood, forever choked by a thoughtless action or a step to a different thread. These visions were hopeless, dreary, full of a melancholy that towered far above even the trees that grew from graves of dreams. A river of ivy that held a hope, a web, a pulse – then as she glanced around that same voice cackled – with a thrumming rhythm of footsteps. All could be wrong. But she heard that heartbeat in the writhing tendrils. And almost swam through the veil of clouds. But never quite. Never once. Every time.

The blanket of a dream that ripples almost like innocence, a thin blanket of guilt free silk, so warm that it held the gaze of a mother, yet the shadows never grew dim until it was over, and the viper's fangs struck. Shattering it. Spreading cracks – perhaps the screams were just muted, stumbling among the mist, impenetrable and sinister. Perhaps they will be heard, those screams torn from the depths of waking sleep, of drowning comfort, and those widows will hear. But then who can they tell? Who will hear them? No one. Because corpses can't scream. In a waking nightmare, who will stir you from the horrors of cruel knives, talons, claws? This blanket of innocence had cracks spilling like the light of the moon, ominous oppression in heavy, icy air, and she saw no glimmers of light in those cruel shadows. Not even false light – and even in that there lay hope. Hope that fell into a slumber once the pulse fell silent, and the dream seemed to materialise once again; a melody had been snatched away, she heard its hollow scar, felt blood soaking the veil of childhood – those screams created stories, and the page was empty, no battles, no cruel words of tossing aside the poor. No stories. And no one would hear but widows who glimpsed from time to time that viper that lurked behind every light, before every child drenched in the sacrificial blood of sunrise. They lurked in every corner she passed among childhood ignorance. And with no stories they seemed to peer into the clouded, oppressive fog, as they did everything – they would always linger after the lights were out, red eyes glimmering with dread; it was as if they saw something in the figure now too enveloped in ivy, drenched in terror. And they writhed in unheard agony – they were not here to strangle her so she could not cry out into the silence, unheard. Instead, they seemed to lurk, melancholy in their inert carcasses, withered and quivering. Because something silenced them. That innocence let ignorance prevail for a moment. Because a comfort lies in the shadows, where the monsters thrive, and the ivy could poison you with its serpentine tendrils of a false life, simply inert disease snatching them away as they wander. Among the memories, haunting silhouettes, among the forest of cruelty and malice. And yet they can't see as they're poisoned. I suppose that's the beauty of it, she thought, drifting between slumber and inert dread, where the monsters hide in the cracks.

You can't see the monsters. You can't hear the pain of children as they are cast to the jaws of a great eagle, beak open wide in a grief-stricken cry for the forlorn cascade of cries. Sometimes it's best not to hear everything. To know everything. And the vipers know that so well as they waltz along the pages of every newspaper with a hollow, precise step, planned out second by second, moment by moment down a great winding path of stairways, time passing with each beam connecting the banister like a clock hand – and to her it all whispered: Time is up. Time is up. So, hand over what you owe. Cracks always showed in the facade – no one was happy through every joyous moment, a rung in a ladder that wound in loops, history repeating itself over and over in the coiled form of a viper; and so, she saw as those movements jolted to an open jaw, tearing the tapestry into shreds. And that figure appeared still on the horizon as she fully awoke, peeling away the bed of flowers she had left to consume her, and plucking those tendrils of ivy from her flesh, chains of gold like a noose with threads of glinting sorrow rare as biting winds. And they glimmered like tears that fell in cascading rivers beneath a veil of ash worn by a widow – she hadn't realised she'd been crying, not until she had woken up among damp eyes and blurred sight. And a venomous coil of ivy around her neck in tight, choking hold.