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darkriddle1 — STORY...Strawberry Fields Forever
Published: 2015-01-12 22:48:21 +0000 UTC; Views: 938; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 6
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By "Dark Riddle": “Hakaryo”: & Model “Zing Ruby”:
Story: Strawberry Fields Forever:
A young woman commits a crime of passion that leads her down an emotive road of guilt and clemency.
Strawberry Fields Forever:
…Reaching…reaching…reaching for mother among the Strawberry Fields.
Silvia stood in that effervescent field of flowers. She was shaking. The blood still dripped from her wrists.
Each drop saturated the ground of thick clovers and flowers. Pink hues and yellow shades of floral bliss were now stained with the dark crimson of her blood.
Perhaps it was not blood that stained this hallowed ground, but guilt – guilt and the thought of something more.
It was cold this Autumn morning.
The Strawberry Field she was standing in was as beautiful as ever.
Still wondrous as it was when her mother took her there for their picnics.
She recalled with vivid clarity, how she and her mother sat under the same tree, heard the whistling wind in the same patch of wild lilacs. Laughed and smiled under the same Autumn sky.
Her mother then was awash in a vibrant aura.
Her wide green eyes filled with sympathy and understanding.
The last time Silvia was here, she thought her mother would be angered with her, at least very disappointed.
The day before their picnic, she took her mother’s credit card and used it to buy new shoes.
It wasn’t something she was prone to do, but Silvia was angry, anxious that her mother hadn’t lent her the money to buy them.
She intended to pay her back, but the card transaction was reported and now she was forced to explain her rash actions to her mother.
But her mother hadn’t called her to their special place to punish her.
Instead, she brought her daughter there to teach her forgiveness. She didn’t say a word about the incident; all she did was pull a smooth stone from her pocket. It was painted a blue green hue and written on the front were the words ,“I Forgive You!”
Silvia wanted to say she was sorry, but without words, the two looked upon one another with endearing eyes. All was forgiven...all was right. Such a wonderful thing to be had from words on a stone.
Still, this tender time was far away in the past; and in the present, Silvia was racked with an enormous guilt.
Her freckled face and wide eyes searched the floral plains for something to hold on to, some sign that her spirit would not fall into rot among the bleak earth, as she thought it should.
What had led her back to this desolate prairie?
What had compelled this sweet, young woman to return to a spot of such personal endearment?
Was it love? Was it desperation? Was it guilt?
Silvia did not know. All she knew was that only three hours ago, she had become a monster – a monster of the worst kind.
This is why she had slit both her wrists.
This is why she stood in the field of lilacs, shaking cold and afraid, awaiting her punishment…perhaps the same punishment that her mother had spared her of a year earlier, in this very same patch of glorious nature.
By now, the loss of blood was getting to her and she stumbled about clumsily, still trying to stand up straight, as if hardening herself for some type of chastising from beyond.
Instead, her legs wobbled wildly and she finally plopped down to the ground.
Her face muffled with colorful flowers and pasture grass.
She weakly opened her eyes, lying flat on the floor, watching the blood escape from her wrists and meander down though the space of clover matts, like tiny red rivers. A second more, then she closed her eyes.
In an instance, she was there again. In that dank, depressing hospital.
The place where she watched her beloved mother wriggle and scream in agony.
Silvia knew the cancer was bad once the doctors gave her the news.
Stage 4 they said, nothing more they could do they told her. Still, her mother was strong; she fought and fought, until she had no strength left in her.
Silvia drifted to her side, looking down and stood there, puzzled and disturbed.
How could her mother look like this? Her once vivacious, wholesome smile and warm tan skin, was now decrepit, sucked in from the inside, as if each cell imploded to make her seem a hundred years older.
Was this writhing, dry, gasping woman the same person who raised her? Who took her to school, made her breakfast, who joked and played and laughed with her?
How could this be?
She saw the doctors come in, giving her mother another pain killer, but it wasn’t enough.
Her mother retched over, stifling a horrific cry that had no sound, for her throat was too crushed to produce a scream, and all that came out was a frightening gasp.
They placed her breather back on and gently laid her down.
Silvia ran to the other side of the room, devastated with sorrow.
She was left alone with her. Just the two of them. Silvia’s heart ached as if it was literary tearing in two. Her mother’s eyes were weak. In fact, her whole being was weak.
Each breath was begging for dire mercy.
Silvia knew it was the hospital’s protocol to keep her suffering this way until her last breath. But in this instance, she felt robbed, felt as if the powers that be had stolen her mother’s right to die with dignity.
She thought – no…she KNEW her mother deserved to be free of pain, to be free of this unholy transformation into the sick, moaning monster she had become.
As if controlled by some arcane, mysterious force, Silvia suddenly leapt over her mother, as she lay on the hospital bed.
She pulled off her breathing tube, and threw the mask to the side.
Silvia’s eyes were wild and as wide as they could be. Her pupils were dilated with a madding manic panic, as she held her hands over her mother’s mouth.
Her mother’s eyes widened as well, filled with both confusion, horror and sympathy; the last look was of the same sympathy she gave her in the Strawberry Fields they would picnic at, and Silvia let out a involuntary scream, as she watched the life fade from her mother’s eyes.
The nurses rushed in, noting her mother was no longer breathing.
Both tried CPR and another doctor rushed her to another room, where they tried in vain to revive her.
After about twenty minutes, an older doctor came to Silvia with the bad news.
“I’m sorry, young lady, but your mother had… expired.”
He said solemnly. “There is nothing we could do.
It seems her lungs collapsed – it’s not uncommon from someone so sick with lung cancer.”
As he walked away, Silvia’s heart beat faster.
She realized they had no idea of what she had done – her savage act of selfish murder.
Silvia realized they would never know… and she was surprised how simple it all was.
But no – it wasn’t simple, she knew what she did. Silvia couldn’t hide the truth from herself – couldn’t hide her pain and guilt.
“Why?” She mumbled. “Mom, why did I do that!?” She screamed.
A nurse turned toward her.
“Are you all-rite, miss?”
Silvia just looked at her with those wide, manic eyes. She said nothing.
As fast as she could, she ran. She ran and ran and ran; outside the hospital, across the park, and far into the suburban shrubbery, until she found herself in that pink and purple field of flowers, that calm patch of nature where her and her mother so often talked and connected.
And it was here that she cut herself, determined to punish herself and give her mom the justice she so clearly deserved.
And then she was back in the present again, more in pain from her anguishing guilt, rather than her loss of blood, or the pulsating pain in her wrists.
Another few seconds – she saw the wind blowing the tall grass and flowers to and fro and then she woke up, and she was not pleased.
An EMT medic was leaning over. She found herself tied and strapped down in an ambulance. Where was she? How did she get here?
Those questions were soon answered when the tall paramedic finally opened his mouth.
“You’re real lucky that nurse followed you. She said she tracked you down for a full half-mile.” He said somewhat chiding her. “We stitched up your wrists, but we’ll need to keep pressure on them.”
Silvia realized she had failed and without the nerve to try it again, she would have to live with her guilt and pain – guilt over mother’s murder, over her selfish unwarranted mercy killing. She yelled in rebellion.
“Why did you get me?” She barked. “I wanted to die – you hear me! I deserve to die!”
But just then, she thought she heard her mother’s voice. Was it real?
Or was it just from hysteria, or the meds they pumped into her? Whatever the case, she wiggled in the medi-cart until the paramedic came back.
He reached his hand over and placed something in her palm.
“While you were squirming around, you dropped something from your pocket.”
Silvia was surprised; she wasn’t carrying anything in her pocket.
She looked in her hand, and there it was. That blue and green stone. It felt warm in her palm.
She turned her strapped body to the side as much as she could to peer down at it. She read the letters her mother painted on it so long ago.
“I forgive you!” That’s what the stone read, or said, or meant…it was all the same. Silvia let her anger go and cried. She wept like she had never wept before.
For she knew that somewhere, no matter how well she lived in the future, no matter how far she might get in life, no matter how old she may live; that a part of her would always be in that magnificent patch of flowers.
Still staring aimlessly beyond the wispy lilacs, with her wide eyes, in the cold Autumn air.
…Reaching…reaching…reaching for mother among the Strawberry Fields.
Story by Dark Riddle/Jesus Morales
Photo by “Hakaryo”: Model is “Zing Ruby”: Story inspired by the photo- image “The Flower” by Hakaryo:
Original Photo at the link below
hakaryo.deviantart.com/art/The…
My huge thanks to the photographer and model who produced such a great image to work from!
