Moonlight Serenade

The door was locked.  Whoever was screaming was now beyond Emma’s help.  She beat the door until her wrists ran crimson, her arms ached and tears streamed from her eyes.  She yelled and cried but the screaming never ceased, it rang in her ears only getting louder with each passing cry.  Emma beat her head against the door and fell against it exhausted.  The screaming continued and all Emma did was cry in to her hands.  What else could she do?

She woke. Her eyes stung and throat ached.  Her voice was gone.  Emma couldn’t hear the screaming. The silence didn’t calm her any though, all she could think about was that noise, the visceral penetration; she could hear it, like tinnitus, ever lingering, never leaving.  She shook violently and tried to stand but her knees buckled under her.  She might have cried had she the tears left to produce.  She needed to know what happened but the quiet little girl that lay before the girl had not the strength nor will to twist the handle and push in to the chaos.  So she crawled away. . .

The curtain’s break allowed the moonlight to serenade the broken young girl.  She shivered and convulsed in a pile on the enveloping mahogany floor, consumed by the night.  She might still weep.

Hours later the sun gently caressed Emma’s face.  The bids outside seemed to be singing Barber’s strings.  The door handle turned and Emma twitched, her breath heaved and she sighed, still asleep.  The warmth teased open her eyes.  She lay holding on to something.  She couldn’t know what it was, soft, comfortable. A pillow.

The door opened and Emma walked in.  All emotion washed away from her face.  The sun fell over two figures both lying on their backs in the bed, on the bed side table were medicine.  The woman’s medicine.  Emma’s mothers medicine, she thought.  Her father’s eyes were open but he couldn’t greet her that morning.  Her mother rested peacefully more so than she had been in years.  The bed sheets didn’t moved.  Only when Emma leant against them.  Emma kissed her mother’s blue lips.  She held her father’s cold hands.

Three days later they found her there.  In between her two most treasured loved ones.  The sunlight still warming her stone skin.