S t o r m Cloud

T w e n t y F i v e

A shaky sigh leaving my lips as I left my medium length hair in a array of messy waves, fingers pulling through stumbling upon tangled and knots.

My face practically the embodiment of mourning. My eyes reddened with puffiness of salt water tears. My lips their natural pink, eyebrows barely groomed to their normal perfection, my long thick eyelashes curled upwards adding to the implied innocence that I was portraying to everyone.

I was no longer innocent.
That was stolen,
Snatched away,
By him.
Them.

The salt lake river poured from my eyes as I stood upon the little masses of people offering me my condolences.

The Hernandez's stood beside me, Jen clutching my hand tightly as the tears spilled, the words of those around me meant nothing.

My chest heaving up and down as I choked on my own sobs, struggling to hold back tears and aching in my heart any longer.

I stumbled forward holding the small bouquet of snowdrops and blossoms, shakily placing them in her hands in her coffin.

She lay peaceful, stuck in an everlasting slumber. I would do anything to wake her. Poppy bruises still remained in her skin. The yellowing and purple swirls coating the lower parts of her body, hidden to the common eye igniting a internal pain inside me. The faint outline of where his blade glided across her throat lay sloppily hidden by a string of pearls.

She looked so peaceful, dangerously silent.

"They'll get what's coming to them—." I uttered to her " I promise you that." I choked as I felt a pair of hands try guide me away. "I'll make sure they suffer." I yelped as my arm was forcefully yanked pulling me from her coffin.

"Miss Quinzel, we will begin the burial shortly."
The priest informed me before offering me more pitiful condolences.

"I'm so sorry for your loss."
" it's a tragedy, she took her life so young—."
"May  she finally be at peace."

The masses words angering me.

They didn't know the truth.
The cold dirty truth of it all.

That's when I saw them. Both of them.
There at the back of the room. Stood as if they belonged, hidden in plain sight.

" There here."

"Scarlett are you alright? What did you say?" Jake asked clutching a hold of my forearm, concern in his forest green eyes.

"Nothing." I said bitterly pulling my arm from his grasp. "None of your concern."
Mrs Hernandez watching from a distance at our interaction, a solemn sadness gracing her features.

"If everyone would like to make their way outside, the burial will begin shortly."

Everyone began to shuffle out the grand room, myself trailing behind the shuffling crowd hobbling along in their black penguin suits.

All we needed was snow.

A pitiful laugh escaped my lips as I watched everyone wander up the gravel path, towards her newly established grave, right upon the hillside, beside the old oak, where my grandmother grave lay, where she lay in humble sleep, blanketed by the soil of the earth.

The priest stood once again sharing his words of condolences and welcoming her into the realm of the light, may she rest in heaven.

As I stood clutching a hold of a bouquet of red roses, thorns digging into the very flesh of my palm, not caring as the blood droplets trickled from my palm down my wrist ever so agonisingly slow.