Tolls of Winter | Teen Ink

Tolls of Winter

December 7, 2016
By Graylan_Reece BRONZE, Scottdale, Pennsylvania
Graylan_Reece BRONZE, Scottdale, Pennsylvania
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Something silent slivers out of the trees with a toll of the bell, whispering with the wind as it beckons a girl to come along. The moon in the night tarnishes in the sky, hiding away the horrors of the scar that remains. It snatches her in. Bony fingers clenched around her wrist, turning her pale and cold. Her blue lips parted in a soft howl.
Hush, it said.
It wrenched her in the shadows, leading her astray until they came across a tarnished box.
What is it?
Open it.
Her pale hands quivered as she reached out for it, breath hitched in her throat, eyes closed as she slowly lifted the latch from the box. She already knows what is within that quaint box. She reached in and picked up a small photograph of a beaming mother and child. She stared at the photograph.
Mom.
It was a small photograph of them together when she was a young girl with downy flakes fluttering all around them.  Smiling. Happy. They both loved the snow when her mother was having her good days. On her bad days, she would harbor away in her room. That was part of her sickness with the ongoing battle of highs and lows and lower lows.
She remembered how the snow blanketed the ground in a pure bed. Trees slouched from the sheets of ice. It felt as if the world was dressed with the sinless snow besides the red clawing around them. There was one daughter. A corpse. Soft whimpers and muffled whines resonated with the faint glint of metal. The young girl grasped onto her mother’s stained shirt. The world sagged from the weight of all of that snow. Her mouth quivered. Laments frozen from the cold that she left behind.
She ripped up the photograph, dispelling the memories of her mother is something she longed for to do She reached into the box to pull out one of a man, faintly tracing the picture. The one she loved for so many years. He stayed with her through her highs and lowest lows. He didn’t view her as a wretched fiend, a pale image of her mother. Embraced her with all he had. She gave him her acquiescence touch, said I love you with incandescent whine. He was everything to her.
She remembered she waited on the platform for him as the lights from the end of the tunnel. The as the arachnids of fear and doubt crawled upon her. They spun and twisted their webs within her capturing her soul in with their silken misery. Each woven pattern ebbing it’s way to her heart and mind with each frozen drop of rain. Paralyzed with each poisonous bite they gave her. She turned as she heard her name over of the bustle of the crowd. The lights of the train drew closer. She was a feather carried by the wind, light and soft, drifting in front of the two lights. The blaring horns. Screams of bystanders. And red. So much red. The only thing etched in her mind was the panic on his face and the words she whispered.
I love you.
She clutched the picture of him against her chest. Soft sobs echoed in the night. Darkness crawling with her sins as the small picture of the train sits within the box.


The author's comments:

Written similarly to the Cormac McCarthy's style 


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