White Roses, Black Doves

A hunger through time-1

Its cold in this lonely house. I never thought I could get cold, I didn’t know I could feel anything other than emptiness. There was a noise somewhere off in the house, a bang, and then it was like a bucket of ice water splashed over me. I could feel the iciness of the shadows. In the stagnant air, I could see the dust particles floating around in the rays of light that made its way through the stained glass of the windowpane, a rose, beautiful and ethereal. I could smell the years of neglect that had taken over my home, stale and old. What caused this rousing of my soul?

Dead, that’s what I am.

I know I am dead; I am not unaware of that fact. I know I was murdered. It was all I could think about as I lay in my bed and stare at the man that killed me.

I read in a medical study that the brain does not die automatically, that it still has activity after death. No one really knows if this is true or not, seeing as no one has died and then came back to life to tell the tale. But, as I lay there, that medical study was oddly the only thing that I could think about. If I could come back to life, I would have told the doctors all about the man that killed me. I would tell them all about the sister that hid behind the door of my bedroom as it happened, murmuring her spells and gibberish. I would tell them about being able to see him screaming and crying because he couldn't control himself.

As my last breath left my body and his hands left my throat, he crumbled and was no longer the man that i knew that had fierce passion and possession.

That is what I would tell the doctors, I would tell them that they were right, in fact, that the brain does live on to a certain extent and then it just ends. There is nothing more, just black and empty. Almost like you were a candle that was snuffed out. It just…. ends.

I leave the darkness of the corner of my room and I approach the door. I reach out to grab the doorknob but I can’t grasp it. I look at my hands and they are ashen and pale. Almost as if I was a mere splash of grey watercolor on a vibrant canvas of colors.

I pass through the door, I don’t open it, I just simply move through it. I float smoothly and effortlessly, like a branch in the wind. I cascade down the staircase like a fluid movement of water, like the ballets that father would take me to. The staircase made of mahogany polished wood and carved with intricate leaves and designs by father custom ordered, now covered in dust and cobwebs from the neglect of time.

I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look to the right, into the parlor that once entertained so many of my father’s colleagues. It used to be beaming, with silk curtains, mahogany furniture and the glow of candlelight. Men smoking tobacco from pipes and women fanning their faces. That’s where I met my Cornelius for the first time, but the man standing in the parlor is not my Cornelius and the woman looking at wallpaper was also a ghost, a ghost of another life. Looking through me was Lucy, standing in the parlor of our family home. The same home she planned my demise.