It was on her hands – the reminders of those loves once blooming, now devoured by the beast that writhed before her, devouring its prey with mercy that is held by the sinister kind of love – a mass devolving into those mindless beasts. They cackled in unison with some left behind, leaving a poor, defenceless front to be torn down, the souls devoured by the silence and lack of agony searing through their veins – the silence killed them, and yet the chants continued, less mechanical as they splashed against small rocks, blood dripping from those relentless jaws, simply wine for the viper who seethed and seethed with insidious tongues. Now more human – uncanny. Those chants. And the drums – no longer the relentless rolling of vipers and serpents bellowing toward innocent souls, crushing the land owned by no one and holding before them a bait; a bait of human flesh. They were rabid. Those human faces. The froth was a thing. No. No no no no no no no. It was faces. It was him. It had been him. But no longer. The froth of the sea glistened with sweat – faces chanted no more in unison but in insidious clamours slowly approaching. Wild eyes. Guns in hand. Sweat dripping down like blood. A foreboding tint of crimson before they charged, and their cackling became raucous. The waves crashed against each other, and they screamed, their fury boiling beneath the surface upon the horizon; their pupils flashed with a buzz – an electric hum of melodic anguish. A sort of nothingness – a kind of comforting. The froth was mixed with calm breaths of metalic water rushing forth from a deep shadow. But among it all was a peace; a friendliness to those uncanny faces; a friend within the enemy. Surely the petal still remained, withered and broken, crumpled and stashed away, a storm seething within a skin too small. She turned for a moment from the glinting, ominous moonlight, knowing it was true. Those soldiers with the glint of ill-intent in their gaze. But that fire was an evil, no holy act; bewilderment sank into her clattering bones, memories of a man so kind now twisted and contorted like those guns and faces. Just guns and faces. Drums and cackling. The rose stem was torn but there was still a wooden petal.

She rose, the serpent clutching at her shoulder ready to pull her in until she shrugged it away. It was as if she was climbing a torn stem with needles to place her feet one in front of the other; he would care – he had spent so many hours and hours upon it, keeping it afloat. And now he had sunk beneath the waves. Falling still. She clutched at her sanity with a grip certain and never false or wavering – she took the two steps and gazed into the wooden chamber of saving graces and sorrows left to fester like a sprout of mould, vile but invisible. Within it lay the answers she craved and yet there was the petal, almost incessantly putrid in its stench of memories from that false face. And yet it held her in a loving, motherly grasp, guiding her palms over its edges and skin, paint in a thin layer that had chipped away – and yet the motherly smile still lingered, a throbbing reminder. It guided her hand toward the top and dragged it over to the water. It held her in its palm. Kind yet malicious – and cold. So cold. As if she were simply another toy tossed into a concoction of blood and bones of roses – thorns tossed in and clashed against the others as her corpse was writhing along the serpentine twists of the labyrinthine maze; clashing walls. She was just another toy; another speck to gaze upon in pity but without care. It knew her. And it knew she wouldn't dare hold in her hands the one thing that could place before her an uncanny image of a lover – love sapped from eyes with a crooked smile as they speak of the enemy and hold in their empty hands a gun. But then perhaps it would be better than a cold carcass under the ocean, inert and empty of life. Empty of the tender care. Trembling. So she let it trail into the lake, from the paper-like fog plucking a cruel incantation. A careless murder. It lay before her, and all she could do was watch as the ink was sprawled over the page and horrid images flew before her. Yet she could not look away. And she could only glimpse a foreboding picture through a sinister lens. It held something unfamiliar. Like from a serpent's mind upon the paper. And yet something so friendly. It whispered. She tossed it back in, disgusted.

This was what she would save, a rotten heart full of a pulse only from the echo of gunshots, the ocean enveloping every trace of life before; it glimmered. And yet something within it was simply a dull face, a mask to hide a scar from her thorns – she had sent him into the jaws of a beast – it was a hollow smile the heart wore; empty of the flesh it had once held in its putrid chasms of unnerving similarity. The ocean enveloped those fangs, the mindless beasts rolling over the many letters that should have reached those who cared – it burned them. Fuelling a fire. The devil's tongue wiping remorse from the bloodied hand or tossing shattered glass.

From decay rose the smoke of a candle, a corpse as its flesh was burnt or devoured by ground and water – the earth did not care. The ground would never care. From decay rose a life that lingered long after those futile breaths lapped at the air and tossed those desperate pleas into flames; at any point it could be the final letter to be burnt, the final morsel of food to be timidly eaten as the future wails ahead. At any point that same smoke, green, sapphire, life flowing through every cough and all the silence that seemed to follow; the soldiers lived on in those waves. Their entrails. A face wizened by those blades and left horrific, muting or cruelly casting upon their complexions putrid accusations; it was a growing stem, mocking laughter slicing through old smiles. Even through the malice some could see a person. But they knew it was hollow. Those who saw it held stitches over their mouths and necks, and they could scream within a cold grave. But the leaves were rotten in this vile flower. Rotten and grotesque. Tears could not quench the plant's ravenous thirst for a life, and it seemed yellowed, rain soaked and yet still wailing; it was like the thin petals of roses, laced with a dagger and a hollow remorse that was kept at bay. But those flames could spread as easily as a single cough. The stems grew still, roots dug deep in the ground and phlegmatic to the winds that tossed those innocent faces against the wall in blood and gore; a heat bore down despite the rain over the vicious storm of water and sky – perhaps she was just feeling that fever; neighbours had had it long ago. They were gone. There should be no trace – they were simply kindling, however, kindling for a raging flame that glowed with cruelty. A spark of moonlight within the froth of a writhing sea; a veil of faint paper, where fates could be sealed or plucked from bleak disaster. It could be a message or a curse to set fire to. She felt the edges in her palms. She saw them in the lengths of moonlight that beamed upon her as the ink began to spark and light. The smoke began to rise from a purgatory flower upon a grave. And that stone saw cracks. It was as if a wound was struck by the acrimonious chants of a sergeant. A crow upon the graves of millions with nothing to feast upon but rats. It pecked at the soil. The rocks began to crack, bleeding tears.

As the grey vines climbed higher and higher, the empty gazes seemed to recoil from the petals of a raging flame, a small spark. The flowers seemed to dry and burst, spreading wounds. Their decay was a disease and did not care for the crows that plucked at tendons of the perishing; it was the froth of the sea and yet it felt as if it were more – more and more and more – an endless abyss of those faces. It shattered their images against the wall then knew they could be cast aside. So, they were swallowed; no trace of a captor to hold their clothes and wish that within that skin was one like they used to know. But this disease fed on forgetfulness – it watched the minds of those poor victims turn to a labyrinth of starving eyes and exhaustion, and it knew that water could do nothing to quench the fire. It knew the beasts of the sea were insatiable, and those faces would fade, never known or cared for, beneath the waves. All was cascading in tangled and swift torrents toward the sea, and amid was a glow – it seemed traced, bricks cast deep into a brooding, foreboding placidity that she had never seen in human eyes. They seemed to crumple, and that did not. In fact it lay still, perhaps thinking. Thinking. Of the ravens that whispered names of mourners, cackling in unnerving unison behind that ominous glow of light that should have been a comfort. A hand to heal the wooden petal she cowered within. And yet the ravens seemed ravenous; always hollow. They could devour carcasses of the forgotten in moments, and yet they did it piece by piece by tiny, insignificant piece, watching as the agony became an intense scream – and yet, through it all, they did nothing. They just cackled, watching the vipers grin through the thin crevice to whisper those insidious words in her ears. She shook the mad ravings from her mind, leaving only the flower cherished by those who glanced, disdained by the gazes of those who looked upon it and knew the truth; pitied by those who were kind enough to care. Those apparitions who may see the once perfect and trusted face. Apparitions seeing phantoms within the putrid hearts. Seeing a serpent's scales glimmer across the light as she approached it, the sea calming suddenly, like cruel faces backing away from the blame.

It festered, water tainted yellow dripping from the cracks, as the trailing serpents cast a veil over her throat, and all was left to rot. Forgotten. Then the sea stirred. And rose into a sickly beast, rabid and snarling. Gunshots. Or was it thunder. A flash of ominous light. Or was it just a storm left to brew as the vipers and the serpents glared to the hounds, daggers in hand to place upon the minds of those who dared to question and to never halt their footsteps. She backed away, casting her fishing rope aside with the care of an innocent child, almost delicately – she clung to the sides and felt lassitude overcome her. The petal floated away into the oblivion. The eye of a storm. That fog rolled in, somehow more presumptuous and foreboding; it held tendrils of fatigue. An unsettling kind of calm.