* * * * *
The young girl screamed. Screams that filled the silent night air, screams of anguish and relief. And then, she was no more.
She lies inside a coffin made of wood, atop a hill. Her gravestone bears no words. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she holds a book, beneath her crossed arms, with her smooth hands. On her right wrist, just above a scar, lies a thin black ribbon made of silk. Her dress is pure white, uncontaminated, and her lips are still red, the illusion that not a day has gone by since the night she died. Around her neck, hanging from another black ribbon, is a silver locket, full of secrets, attempting to hide her pain, happiness escaping her. There is neither wind nor breeze. She is perfection. Her name is Hope.
* * * * *
The boy rocked back onto his heels, still clutching the flower, but tighter, the stem bent and torn. Guilt and fear fled through his mind, but he could do nothing. He was there for a reason. It had to be done. He looked straight ahead of him, as if there were nothing there and he could see through it all, and turned his head sharply to look back down at the water once more as she disappeared and another took her place.
He let go of the first flower, and it floated down, weightlessly, onto the grass beside him. He reached for another flower and grasped it lightly, looking at it carefully. This one was different. It had grown to its full size and it was not perhaps as white, or as innocent, but all the same, it was beautiful. Beautiful in the way that its center was a bright orange, like a passionate fire, fragile but never to be blown out.
He pulled on the stem, and it broke off, leaving the flower free in his hands.
* * * * *
She rocked back and forth in her chair, cradling her sleeping child in her arms. She whispered quietly near his ear, with a calm but expectant poise.
“One sheep over the fence. Two sheep over the fence. Three sheep…”
She stopped.
The child awoke in cold hands and looked up. His mother was dead.
He opened his mouth to scream but yet produced no sound as imaginary boundaries threw all he had given back. He shook her arm, his own flailing in his silent hysteric despair.
His mother was dead.
* * * * *
“Over the fence…” He mouthed the words as he watched the woman and her child disappear and the water clear.
The boy stared at his hands holding the flower as the soft petals fell around him. The orange center of the flower had snapped and hung together by only a single strand; broken, twisted. He wanted to get up, to leave, but something was pushing him back down onto the ground. One step back and it would stop. One step back and the pain would cease. But he craved it. He craved the rush of energy and adrenaline, he craved the pain.
He tilted his head slightly as he listened for the muffled breathing he had heard so many times before. It was there.
He gazed down at the pool of water that was clouding once more; a shadow, a blur. Trees, trees exactly like those surrounding the clearing. A little black-haired boy; he was right then. Someone had been watching him, and now, he could see the onlooker. He followed his viewer in the pool of water for several minutes, tracing the black-haired boy’s path with his finger, his breathing even and deep.
He pulled his finger straight out of the water swiftly, leaving behind only perfect rings in the pool, each smaller than the next. He unclenched his hand and leaned forward onto his knees, reaching for the last pure flower. His fist closed around it. He pulled.
It was done.
