Within a flood, sinking

The Sernox

Emmi’s body lay bloodied and broken on the forest floor. The iron of her life—a thick crimson that wept from her skull—seeped into the earth. Around me, the trees exhaled through needled limbs, the air brutal with the scent of death. The wind had left, the birds had fled. In the obsidian of night, there was only the lapping of the soil as it accepted, without hesitation, its nitid gift.

I stood, looking down as though what happened hadn’t actually occurred, the great beast of hope, with all its faint futility, giving way to the horror of recognition. Emmi, I realised, was gone. The conjuration of biology that brought forth her life, that majesty of biochemistry allowing her being to exist, forming each curve and subtle glance, the rise of chest and shape of palm, the viridian expanse behind each limpid eye… it had been quenched. It would be no more. We would sit no longer by the lake, toes entwined to ply the water's edge. We would never again name the cryptic shapes kept hidden by the clouds, or speak the words carried secret in each gust of wind. The stars, in all their myriad constellations, would fall now to others, to be traced and tracked and looked upon in awe, their infinite worlds forever concealed from my view. And there, on her body, in the naked patch above her ribs, no needle would prick flesh to imprint its design; instead, there flowered the unskilled tapestry of bruise, the artwork of burst capillaries that, in death, laid claim upon her skin.

It—finally it—had come, emerging as dawn refused the land, the sun’s feeble rise unable to slice through the trees and banish what lurked within.

I remember that atrocious moment with purest recollection, yet, even here, I cannot say a name, even on this page where tears blot the ink, where moonlight—framed through the pillars of my demise—casts its silver glint, where words have nothing to impart but the choking fire of guilt. The burden of my eyes, charnel and dark, cauterize the deception of memory, etch their unwelcome truth inside the fractured dome of my mind. I cling hapless to time, am dredged unending by its cruel wake, the fabric of reality, sewn with countless lies, peeled back, revealing nothing but a crueller history beneath.

I knew what it was. I knew what creature came forth, recognising its terrible form as the desolate shackles of dream could not be shed.

Emmi was right. Emmi was wrong.

But by then it was too late. It could not be stopped.

Credit: Substack image generator.

---

Yeah, so that was Part 6 of The Sernox. (You can find the others here: Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7.) I find it hard to believe there are now six of these, emerging unknown onto the page.

This forms the penultimate part. There is, for good or bad, only one piece left. There was some part of me that was uncertain to begin this one the way it does, especially without any preamble to lead a reader in. But, I realise now that I have no say in this story’s unravelling. I merely watch.

My plan is to do a short decompression stop when I begin to resurface from all of this, to spend a bit of time expelling the nitrous words before they bend my brain. (Which is to say I’d like to stop and reflect on my time spent writing The Sernox. I hope you’ll join me, to float beneath the waves.)

As always, I adore your comments and thoughts, whatever they may be. I guess some of those comments may now be, err, unhappy given Emmi’s demise and the implications. Sorry. I loved her too.