The Flower in the Flame

A Flower in the Flames

She closed her eyes, tilting her head to the heavens and rattling a dead-man’s laugh through her tears, her sobs chopping the already coarse laughter into waves of madness.

Slowly - so slowly - she sunk to her knees and clutched the sides of her skull, not even caring about the blood that now stained her once-white gown, climbing up the fabric like macabre bits of ivy.

She saw it! Again she saw it - that horrid bracelet upon her wrist, imprisoning her and driving her to the darkest corner of existence. Damn it all! How she longs to tear it from her body – no, take off the whole arm! Cleanse herself of anything that damned piece of plastic touched.

And oh the fog! It was here, it was coming! Draping itself over her with its seductive hands of sleep! Dragging her down, down, down, down…

Down…

A tightening around her stomach, wrists and ankles. She opened her eyes for the first real time seeing nothing but the whiteness of hell’s lights glaring down at her.

“You gave use quite the scare…” Whispered one of the demons, his voice dripping in false concern. “But don’t worry.”

“You’ll feel better soon…”

The slightest prick pinched her arm, the feeling of surreal giddiness coming with it. She looked down at herself with heavy eyes, where the snake of sin wrapped around her body, pressing her down against an ice-cold table. Heaving a shuddering sigh she allowed the hands of sleep to carry her back into the darkness…

--

“Shut it down…”

The doctor looked down at his watch, “Time of death, 3:13 A.M.”   He shook his head and gently closed the woman’s eyes.

“Her family?” Asked one of the nurses.

“She doesn’t have any.”  He muttered, pulling the sheet over her head, “She didn’t have anyone.”

The nurse sighed and leaned against the wall, “And she had just started to recover…”

“You sometimes see that here.” The doctor said, “Sometimes they just… give up. Her condition is a tiring one – sometimes they can’t fight anymore and just succumb to the disease.”

“And when a disease affects the mind, death isn’t a very steep drop from insanity.”

© Julia Rose