Chapter Text
A Single Black Rose
The winter is a never-ending eternity, the stillness of the scenery haunts me, as the snow hits the ground. Frozen in time. Twisting branches scrape across a frosted window, wheels squeaking on the hard floor, bringing the rose covered casket down the empty halls. I watch, as the ring clinks at the bottom of an empty cup. An empty promise. The boy stands over my bed; a bouquet blocks his face from mine. I try to remember what lies behind, yet all I see is a blur of black roses. The scraping of branches twists in my brain, the journey down the dark hallway feels endless when you’re carrying the body of someone dear.
A woman sits upon a chair in a room far away, her hand kissed by a prince. She betrayed her only kin for her own selfishness, leaving him alone to die. Leaving me alone to bury him. The ring on my finger feels frigid. The eternity I promised to find was gone, so many lives sacrificed to a wasteful cause. A hundred men would die tonight. The light from the flames burns my eyes, one corpse in the ground, the rest will follow in ashes. The hallways burn behind, I watch as the woman scolds the boy, the cause of the flames within his grasp. For a moment my mind can only wonder,
“How long ago did this all occur?”
A dim candle drops from his stiff fingers, rotting flesh over disintegrating bone. I remember as her hands dug into my shoulders as my fingers went limp around the metal base of a blazing candelabra. I failed to obtain eternity, that boy succumbed to his illness so very long ago. No longer can I forget the look of hatred on her face, outside the screaming building. How she cried, spitting words in my face that meant nothing. He was dead, and in my own final moments, I brought the rest down with me. A hundred boys died in that fire, and my own life was no exception. Memories twist, burnt away as the flames consume me. A single black rose wilts.
The snow begins to melt, blossoming into spring.