ｂｅｈｉｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｒｉｍｓｏｎ　ｄｏｏｒ

Covered the carcass of time with flowers

To send the scent of blame to the grave

Set the darkest thoughts on fire

And watched the ashes climb to Heaven's gates

 

 

picture and writing below inspired by my roleplay character.

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Time transcends, and the soles of her slender feet pad through the hallway with each moving step. The world around her remains silent; the distant sound of echoing church bells being the only audible break in the endless arguing of her thought process. The grip on fresh cut roses is knuckle white, the thorns digging in to palms purposefully - they are keeping her teetering on the brink of reality.

 

No matter the distance that her legs carry her, the hallway continues. The disorienting view of checkered tile for miles, her eye rolling in her skull until it seems to settle on her footsteps. Whether head should turn left or right, the woman will find herself met with endless rows of doors.

 

She knows this path, having walked it so many times before. The weathered book of her journal holds the history of each visit to this hallway - the doors she has slipped behind, the memories that remain there. If she could be so lucky, the church bells remain quiet at times when entering one of the rooms, and the revelation of forgotten days of the past will be pleasant instead. They will be warm rays of sunshine kissing her shoulders, the lips of a lover that never fades in to a mirage.

 

But these doors are so volatile.

 

Some of the doors prove to be passageways to memories she can not yet encounter. Those forbidden entrances remind her that she is merely a visitor here, a damaged mind no longer proving to be a home.

 

The journey carries on and though she was convinced that she was moving away from the sound, the bells grow louder until they are at deafening volumes. The mouth of a gutted church was opening wide and ready to swallow her whole, encouraging her to pick up the pace and to seek shelter in doors with keys that she seems to be avoiding.

 

The slow winded stride of bare feet against tile no longer feels cool and sleek, instead like heated coals. A burning sensation sparks and trickles up her ankles, over her thighs and guns for the core of her chest like an untamed forest fire. Somewhere along the way, these things she holds dear to ground her have slipped, long since left behind.

 

Before she can stop it, the sky is raining crimson petals and they are all ablaze. No amount of calling to her will grant the ability to drown out those bells, and while in such a trance she will listen to inner dialog that no longer belongs to her - dialog that tells her she must do what it takes to survive being trapped in a room full of smoke.

 

Starved for oxygen while encountering rooms of the past, in the present she has no ability to see how she paints new ones red. She is a prisoner until it cracks open again, spitting her out and slamming behind like nothing ever happened.

 

The tile floor returns with reality, and no one else seems to have any evidence of the fire she was trapped in. But she wakes, each and every time, mouth full of soot.

Done