Blue Roses

Liberty from the darkness
Liberty of the soul
Liberty of the mind
Devouring me whole

She was dying. It was a strange sensation, like something bubbling at the bottom of her stomach—a noxious soup of decay. Juliet Rhodes felt her heart slow, dreamily, then stop. Her lungs, contracted, then expanded, painfully. She stared up into the eyes of her murderer.
         “Your cause is lost. I die the death of a martyr, to be remembered and cherished by the world’s folklore. I shall live on in legend to be the heroine I should have been, have been.”
         “The days of you and your kind are numbered. The end of a long and miserable era is at hand. I only wish, dear sir, malicious though it may seem, nothing but peace and happiness in your final hours.”
         “I have not lived in vain…”
         Then she knelt down for a final time amid the soft, lush grass. She felt despair to spite her brave words and bold demeanor. Her killer reached down as if to save her. She was dying.
         She spat out her death rattle, disgusted at the sound. She could hear shouts—the murderer’s remorse, the crime uncovered. That didn’t matter now. All she wanted was rest, even if it be eternal. She was dying.
         A bouquet of blue roses carpeted her head, just visible over the clouds that covered her eyes. The world shrank to a single bloom, a final burst of light, happiness, and of life itself. She was dying.
         Gently, her hazel eyes shut, and the mournful garden was filled with a deafening silence. Christopher Moldov looked down at the child fallen at his feet. He stood looking at her, shocked at himself, feeling remorse for the world.
         “She is dead,” he whispered, and ran.


Sorrow, sorrow, bleak tomorrow
Fading away to dusk
Sorrow, sorrow, ever so hollow
Pray for the living you must

A long line of despair-stricken mourners trudged into the cemetery to attend the funeral. The day had started off bright and balmy, with amber sunlight trickling through the leaves, but the world—sensing the great loss it had suffered—had grown damp and dismal, with clouds the color of midnight wishes crowding the sky, and fat droplets falling through the canopies set over this realm of the dead. The casket—ivory white with interlocking loops, swirls, and spirals—stood at the edge of the cemetery, and there the people congregated.
         The girl resting inside had been a hero, but an anonymous one. She had spoken out, changed the world, and paid the high price. Ergo, she died incredibly, horrifically young—she had not lived to reach her eleventh birthday. However, few knew the cause of her death as they were told that she had died from a particularly bad case of influenza.
         The corpse was angelic—pristine and untouched by decay. Juliet’s nutmeg hair fanned out over her face, shrouding her now and forevermore sightless eyes in a dusky haze. Her traditional white robe was of finest silk, glistening in what sunlight pierced the ominous clouds. Despite her beauty, you could see the scars of malnutrition and death corrupting her body.
         When dusk fell dramatically upon the land, fertile with the decomposition of the dead, the ceremony began. A few words were spoken of Juliet’s life, though few knew much, and the coffin was closed, locked with a golden key, and lowered into the earth, far from hallowed ground.
         Her murderer knelt at the grave weeping bitterly, decently. He laid down his final gift to his victim, a bouquet of blue roses, and joined his allies back in the night.


One must wait on summer nights
And the moonlight roses’ care
Within the calliope’s music
To remind us why life is there

Far under the earth, in the realm of the dead, there was a chamber of unparalleled majesty and glory. It is carpeted in the finest rugs of gold and burgundy designs that have reminded many of the Far East. The walls are inlaid with the finest quality gems, mosaiced into swirls and spirals, like the Inferno of what we know as Hell. Pipes of brightest copper roam through the walls twisting and burrowing, surfacing and twining through the plaster and wood. These pipes are inlaid with all manner of purple jewels, and sparkle most valiantly under the light of a thousand candles mounted on the ceiling. The chamber, although fine, was nearly void of furnishings—it contained only a single massive calliope, inlaid with citrine and rubies, ivory and darkest ebony. It played on its own –the woeful pentatonic cries! but the keys glistened invitingly, daring the visitor to play, calling, “Hither! This is the passage into the netherworld.”
         Naturally, this mighty chamber is where Juliet Rhodes found herself, alone and exhausted, hanging on to the thin fibers of the world she had left behind. She had traveled through the dark, poisoned corridors, through the demented and divine crawlways of the human perception of death, and—finally—she was here in the musical, inviting chamber that promised-- if not life—then eternity in song. She sat down lightly on the marble bench, fingers brushing delicately against the gilded keys. Closing her eyes, taking a breath, Juliet began to play a sad, mournful tune, lamenting who she had been, what she had lost. This went on for a time, but gradually, ever so gradually the tone began to change into a mellow chasing of butterflies, of summer dreams on an enclosed lake, of a candle within an attic of treasures.
         The notes formed a flurry of light, and it whirled around the chamber, leaving it bold and merry in countenance.
Juliet, too, was enraptured in this song and she blithely joined light, with a dancing, jovial melody clinging to her conscious, bearing her into the worlds beyond.