Last chapter - and it's soo cliched! *groans* I need help.
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10 – Swallow
‘Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia
And therefore I forbid my tears, but yet.’
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It was cold. The icy chill crept across her skin and shocked her into semi-consciousness as she drifted in and out of forgotten dreams. Everything seemed to be glazed over in a veneer, abducting reality; which seemed hopelessly far away and out of reach.
Freezing water as she falls in with a soft splash; making nought but the tiniest whirlpool. So quivering circles erupt on the river’s glassy surface, like somebody was skipping black coins.
But simply sinking slowly into dark depths, not spluttering or resisting the river’s supernatural grip on her. Just sinking. Frost-garbed winter blossoms droop across her body from the trees overhanging the river. The cold water sings sweetly in her ears.
Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.
A harsh, sallow light spilled over her; illuminating her ashen cheeks and casting yellow pools in the black intensity of her eyes. The lids flickered with a slight acknowledgement, but did not open.
And then a hand. A hand cruelly wrenching her out of the melodious rest and pulling her upwards towards the choking air with its bitter stench of reality. Pulled back onto the stone; which by the second becomes patterned with the drops staggering off her soaked clothes and hair.
In her mind’s eye she somehow sees the murky waters seeping through the cracks in the white walls as she lies on the crisp bed sheets. Then, she wakes.
The siren wails, bathing everything in an ominous red glow. They speed off, clouds of petrol and irony drifting behind, lingering in the sepia streetlights.
She lies there in the stillness. The window-sill’s shadow is like glass bars as in her mind she stares, as if peering over a tall wall, into a set land of reality she would never see. The morning breeze carried snatches of forgotten dreams to her. The crunch of leaves under running feet as a girl sits sobbing in a lonely forest, the small book shredded into paper petals wilting in a pocket, the snow with no footsteps to the grave.
The room is uninviting. A hard iron bed underneath her; a monochrome moonglow hitting the glass in the window of the cell-like room. An old wooden chair sitting redundantly in the corner, filled with a shape. A shape – its border undefined – with world-weary eyes and a tangled mess of grey-blonde hair spattered around the face painfully creviced with sorrowful wrinkles.
A mother.
She stands there with neither flowers nor chocolate but a smile. A smile – a moistened reflection of the clouds, spun and admitted on her lips like pink silk, its creases dry. A clumsy, beautiful smile. She opens her mouth to speak, but no sound comes out apart from, “Sarah.”
An old, listless word caught on the tip of a dandelion shell. Like whispers in the wind, boundless secrets, stories of the weary. Sarah.
A diamond spun from the snow, a mirror of white sunlight. The grey skies spill like liquor onto the stone panels to cast a soft line of shadow onto Sarah's face. Her tired eyes open, slowly.
Outside the hospital building, a stone’s throw away, a tiny dark-feathered swallow staggers through the night-coated sky. It sings softly, happily. Drawn in by the golden light colouring the window pane, it hovers a while on the snow-encrusted sill. Watching.
Sarah stretches out a frail arm, and touches her mother’s hand, squeezing it feebly. Something flickers in both of their eyes, something lingering in the air for a long time. Her mother returns the gesture with a swiftness that can only be interpreted as desperate. Imaginary music comes in through the frosted glass, unheard but felt. Their fingers weave together, clasping each other so tightly that the tips turn pearl-white.
Outside, the small black swallow with its broken wings flits away in the untouched night, unseen.
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THE END
Sources Used: excerpts from Hamlet - William Shakespeare.
I would just like to say a huge thankyou to all my reviewers - those who followed it all the way through equally to those who popped in to review a chapter of "Broken"
Those who deserve a special mention - Sapphire, MerryHaven, Demeter, lost_in_dreamland, Alainna, JCObsessed. You've been so wonderful, following my story through with your helpful, encouraging comments - I genuinely could not have written this novella without you. Thankyou so very much.
- but I...I just can't thank you enough. Words can't explain it, so I'll just leave it with - Thank You.
