The letter held a power only spirits could conjure, tossing over her bones that rattled with ancient malady a string, mauled by hellhounds that ruled by fire and flames, matches that lit then fell among the pages – it was weak and yet daunting when it danced before her, the crows ravenously staring into the abyssal gaze of the contorting limbs – they brushed her skin and the fingers, simply entrails from a wound, moulded over the keys and left more crows to shiver and flee under swift wings. They made the beginnings of an incessant melody that could stay or leave, and yet always lingered at the end of each day; it was the monotonous dance of those who suffer anguish and despair yet still live – the tongue that seemed a dance of ash and bones. The tongue of the devil who seeks the flames for friends and acquaintances, and yet never quite burns the candle out. That shadow of a string was cruelly slow, a phantom of suffering with those footsteps that linger in your mind, forever pacing frantically despite the typing of keys; a dull rhythm where the uncontrollable dread would forever lie, simply a vile melody that dies away, then pulses beneath the skin of the crow, for the devil's tongue would never run a candle dry with all its burning rage; those words weren't hers but the crows had devoured every scrap of control the strings held, and all she could do was roll forward the boulder that would fall upon her; just watch the time tick away in a vile melody. No more of that smile, no more despair as the letters piled up – for the phantom drifted still on through the dark and the silence, always desperately clutching her skin for clues of the truth. For the silence stole it away – the raven's wing could toss a feather over the silk and the string would simply mock its desperation; it could waver as much as it liked, rocking her in the cradle as if she were a sinner who could not flee the tongue of that insatiable beast. And yet still her hands were contorted, rolling onto their back and twisting into false shapes of life from above, grotesque silhouettes of life from above; and yet still the darkness wavered in her mind like that veil of grief, inconstant and sinister. It flickered with the wing of the crow as it headed toward the carcasses deep in the ground. That pulse beat beneath the skin, a vile rhythm of insatiable malice.

The flame begins more to waver, intermittently glowering insidiously into the dark and then blowing out, but the embers relight, and all falls silent – silent as the night can be dreary when hope is merely choked out of the air and the streams of anguish that lie buried. Her typing slowed and she gazed for the first time upon the keys. They had no letters. Or perhaps she was seeing things through the eyes of an insomniac that lay only in her mind, with joy in every sound. Hope in every whisper. The darkness tired – it slowed until the mere flame pulsed rapidly in the sky, and it seemed to glow and writhe, arms from the graves spotted and speckled with pores and welts that created a vile painting of terror – though the great veil held silence, perhaps the sunrise brought a cascading dagger through the disdain for smiles of human life. And perhaps the crow watched, its feathers glinting with the malice-ridden calls of a dove as it reaches out a heavenly, pure hand toward you. She found her hands trembling, and stumbled back, hearing the intermittent glass shatter and the tendrils of shadow chaining her to the noose fall to the ground in ashes toward the ceiling; she stood up still for a moment, but the world was but a moment, was it not? Every second was but an accessory on a dagger, a smile lasting for a blink before the crow's wing fell and rose and the book was closed – closed before the smile flashed before the shattered ashes over the ground. But within that was a scream as they landed, the darkness leaving no light to hold out its gracious hand and pull out of the ocean of crimson a single thread of hope in the tapestry of intricate feathers. It was the closing of a great book, the feather caught within the pages simply a mark, a trace of how life once lingered as a smile, but now only as a feather in a graveyard – the flame had once only laboured to further pulse, no longer just beneath the skin of a single wing; but a flame only smoulders for so long, doesn't it? Even the flame of the devil, with its hellhound tongue lapping up carcasses of good souls, husks to dry out in the sun as it burned, could not halt the growling as the beast was struck, and the darkness descended over the oppressive light. Ink lay invisible, swirling in a mass of writhing tendrils that formed no tangible word; she felt the broken glass of the dam as it was placed before the water, and the raven halted to rest, the wing placed down for the last time.

But even the beast grew silent, simply a rolling of thunder in the distance as she wandered towards the window. It held an absence that choked the air of its seconds; the tendrils of ink that made a plot wind and cruelly loop back around. Back and forth, forever tormenting her. But the graveyard held those souls that could undo the noose around her neck. Surely, just surely if she held in her hand that earth, the flowers, they would gather in her blood and clot it against the wall of her heart of stone with needles and threads, the blood flowing once more and the pulse beating louder now. Surely, just surely, His grasp needn't claim her, only drain her of life and spirit.

The threads tore and screamed in anguish as she stepped outside, trembling and wavering in perpetual agony – she felt their screams echoing like ripples through water, tempting forth predators that flew above, torn away from the sun toward which they aimed as they glimpsed the horrors of what lay below – and they were tempted forth, doves called toward the crows whom they despised, yet admired. Her hair whipped around, a tangle of woven threads within a malady-ridden tapestry; she observed the scene with placid indifference; the doves fought against those winds, seeing the seams hold eyes that begged for the mercy of a smile – they begged in the winds of hate for a mere moment. But the amber edges of the blades refused, casting forth their scavenging eyes over the corpses in the ground and beginning to flock toward the perishing threads and cling on to the carcasses of life as it trailed away. They screamed for help, but the clouds veiled the hope from them; out into the growling beast trailed something – she watched. She listened; and she felt it in her unrelenting mind, always whispering of tilted reality; the veil had festered for so long – and then it struck, a viper sinking insidious teeth into the feeble prey and watching the malady spread, infecting the ground above and swirling into hopeless, fumbling terror; it seemed above and yet it was cruel, buried in cloud until it sank down – the tilted gaze began to twist further, the roots now deep in stirred earth; or perhaps it was stone; yes, that stone that trembles yet lives; quavers yet halts at a staccato and echoes. Those teeth flashed upon the horizon, the branches growing sickly as they flickered between ground and sky; a staccato of a threat that lingered in one's mind as it grew into wavering paths – many whirling and twisting into cruel concoctions of clarity that drifted like mist over false earth. It throbbed; she took a step, feeling death's scythe glint ahead with that cloak that blinds the hands of the magician and casts them out of His control. In every step it growled and struck, perhaps a claw across the sky in a great war – simply a lifeless cog that throbbed in the light, frail and thin to the scythe upon paper. A pulsing heartbeat of war and life fighting – she felt it in the air once again, a mindless dance of life. An ethereal seam.

Those hands, detached from the strings that held them captive, trembled, stirring to their feet before falling – stirring before falling again. The thunder cawed in the distance, ravens cackling in the rain that fell fast, striking within the raindrops as the wind strengthened and rumbled within with cruel echoes of dread that had once been; the fraying ends that trembled in trills of a dark melody, full of malice and seething tongues of smoke, unstable and wavering; the wick could stay phlegmatic to these acrimonious, stinging winds, but the cruel swords could bite the branches at any moment, could they not? They were unstable and yet they seemed to be constant, an unrelenting reminder that His hand was free of those strings, timid and wavering – perhaps those strings were simply the wick as it clawed for life, begging for the viper's deadly scythe to slash at the air and turn to the wind, and the rain like the thorns of roses; But that was the thing in the cold, throbbing dance of war, that smoke was incessant, an eternal ticking of a clock until the pin would drop, the tension as the graveyard loomed ahead – it was a cruel wait for that single raindrop to fall or that blood to spill. Or that tree to fall. Or that book to close and the glinting needle of trailing seams to coil and perish, suffocated in the oppressive blades of a sea of ink – all the dread crackled in the ribcage of a beast, breathing with winds that trembled but only ever once and once only – and at that moment the hand of above quailed in the glares of fangs, a single drop of water glinting as it fell. A trembling breath was choked from the branches like the trailing of smoke. They seemed to rot like an ember in the dark, held by oppressive hands; by the glares of life as it ticked away. Tick tock. And the moments seemed to linger before recoiling. Tick. Tock. And the hours passed as she stepped toward the gate, and a raven cawed. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The roots in the fog recoiled, or seemed to, as the broken seams were revealed, cracked and quaking as she laid eyes upon them, seeming to be laced with dread like the wine that the queen drank as she was held in the eternal eyes of an artist's brush.

The trail she followed now seemed to end, never seeming to pulse now but stretch and pull and fold and seal and cackle. But then tear, for every thread will always end like that – an abrupt choking of a child as they try to grasp at life from below – but simply holding in their hands ink that wandered away like the thoughts of a madman, rambling and murmuring before yelling at friends and whispering apologies that no one would ever hear – they grasped at the ink, like the doves had the branches only seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, moments before. But the book always would close, with a needle of whispered apology in a single note upon the ground. She sat on the graveyard entrails as the scene played out. Perhaps this was but a moment. A second before darkness reigned oppressively over and left even dust to perish – she scrawled a note then, a simple goodbye. Perhaps it would be enough as the strings took their choking hold, pulling up trees from their graves and tearing away the roots from the sky, the web torn; so, she was free, if only for moments. Free as the paper as it blew in the wind. Free. If only for a moment.