Rest In Peace: Christine Elizabeth, the shadow in bloom ♥

The night was bitter as I walked silently through the streets of darkness and through the cold snow and biting ice. Dressed in all black with roses in my hand, approaching the land of the dead. I look at the roses and my heart fills with a horrid envy. I envy these roses for their soft and tender petals, the silk skin that protects the insides. In envy them for their pircing thorns, the defencive knives that pirce the first malice injected victim that attemts to harm them. I envy these roses for their lack to expirence the emotional trauma that is enclosed around them. I can not be angry at the roses that seem to flaunt their perfection. They know nothing of the envy that I feel around their perfict beauty. They just mimic me in a graceful way. Being pulled from their home, with special tools that will restrain them from defending themselves, and being placed in a cold and permanent enviroment where they will spend eternity withering and dying. These flawless roses shake matching every twitch and shudder perfectly with my body. 1

I pass through the cold iron gates, which moan in protest as I slide through them. Through the cherry blossom trees, and past the weeping willows, that seem to be weeping along with my heart, matching every tear thats shed, I make my way through thousands of graves. Thousands of loved ones that will never again see those they knew and loved, eyes that will never see again but will decay as maggots make their way through the carcus. Hearts that will never again love and beat but will slowly dissapear as quickly as its outside surroundings. Mouths that can never again speak the bittersweet words of emotions unleashed, but will make a nice home for the parasites that feed off the dead. For me, being close to so many lost souls and fallen courpses, it brings a touch of sadness to my masked face. For years I have learned to take the beatings and to mask the pain, but the lost lives around me, the lost hope, the lost love, it breaks the mask that I wear and brings the tears to my eyes. I know what they are feeling, to be locked in a coffin, and burried with the maggots, never again to see the light of day and thinking that they are eternally forgotten. Memories of their spirits will always live on, like a part of the living heart that refuses to die and fights off anything that threatens to snatch the memories away. 2

My tender steps hardly dent the snow beneath me, not a sound is made as I weave my way around the countless tombstones, mourning each one as if I knew the person burried there. I as I come to my final destination, I feel my stomach falling like a stone, as tears of loss and mourning brim my eyes. I touch the stone set to mark the grave. Its cold as I slide my fingertips slowly across the marble stone, feeling the carefully enscribed letters that spell out her name. I lay the breathtaking rose arangement softly in the snow, huddled close to the cold marble that bears her name.3

I study the sight for a moment before the tears fall onto the grave below. I remember the fatal night that she was torn from me, like a re-occuring nightmare that never ceases to rest. 4

I remember walking with her hand in hand, strolling through the park and resting momentarily under the shade of the comforting willow. I remember how she lay against me, the soft breeze caressing us, our hearts beating as one. I remember the way we looked into eachothers eyes, only a memory now. 5

I remember our walk home, the breeze turned to a blood-freezing wind. I wrapped my cloak around her and proceeded to escort her home. As we walked in step together, I remember the snow that fell heavily around us and the ice that began to consume the road and the sidewalk. I remember as we walked across the bridge that oversaw the lake, she was hesitant, her eyes uncertain. I remember her saying that it didnt feel safe to walk the bridge. I remember chuckling softly and assuring her that she is safe here beside me, and that it is a quicker way to her home where she can be safe inside. She placed her trust in me, she took the steps with me, neither her nor I saw the weak spot that the frost wedging had created in the bridge. 6

As quickly as a flash of lightening, we walked across it and the stone crumbled as we fell into the freezing water that had just begun to ice over. My eyes began to sting as I painfully recall pulling both her and I out of the water on to a more sturdy piece of ice. I held her close, I felt a strange warm liquid comming from her torso. I let my hand fall down her body to the source of the warmth. I pulled my hand away and a dark red substance remained on my fingertips. Blood. I lifted her shirt and found that there was a splice that split her flesh. She landed just right to be pirced by the ice in such a manor that her soft skin crumpled under the sharp blade of the ice. I picked her up and carried her across the ice and through the woods, she had lost too much blood by the time I had crossed the ice. We both knew she had but seconds to live. I sat in the frozen woods and wrapped her in my cloak, laying her across my lap. Her hand brushed my cheek, as the engagement ring sparkled softly in the dim moonlight. 7

I kissed her frozen lips as she uttered my name. I whispered to her, that I loved her now and always, but it was too late. As graceful and breathtaking as she came, she left my life. The only wonderful thing that came about in my life was gone in the night. I remember the funeral, I remember the pain, I remember the loss.8

As I touch her tombstone, I softly weep. My love is now burried below me, where she will spend the rest of her days. I feel the sting of rage and guilt. I should have taken her the other way. We never should have crossed that bridge. Who was I to underestamate mother nature and her possibilities? Together her and I shared the world, now I am cursed to live alone, for I will never forget her and her beauty. 9

I think of her to this day, all that could have been. I wear the ring she gave me, I hold the cloak she wore, I sit in the rocking chair and weep the sad story of a love struck fool who was blind and it cost him his love, his life, his fiancee. I whisper her name into her cloak. 10

"Christine Elizabeth"11

my heart eternally weeps for her, my body sees nothing outside of morn, I see nothing but her soft expression of love for me as she died in my arms. As night draws closer, I retired to bed for the evening. As I lay in the cold bed, wondering what it would be like if she were laying beside me rather than 6 feet under, I see a blue figure. The breathtaking ghost sits at the foot of my bed, with expressionless posture but love and sorrow in her eyes. 12

Can it be? My Christine Elizabeth come to say goodbye? 13

Her cold hand lays on my cheek, the ring on her finger and love in her eyes. A soft kiss and she once more dissapears. 14

As I awake the next morning, not sure of what happend, a black rose lay on the pillow beside me. My Christine Elizabeth came to me in dream and left me a rose, a symbol that we are still connected in mind and soul. A connection that I will never again break by my risky behavior that I exibited the night she died. I will always ponder about what could have been, about what happend the night she came. However I will never doubt that I loved her and that the night she came, it was to say goodbye. 15

My flashback ends and I am where I started out, looking at her tombstone, in wonder of the magestic spirit of my Christine Elizabeth.