Days later.
I had written so little between Raven’s suicide and the days following. During the daytime, I would sit quietly in front of my laptop staring at a blank screen. Then I would naturally become frustrated and restless, unproductively pacing about my home. The kitchen, the den, and my reading room were the rooms I visited most often.
I had to get in touch with both my therapist and my psychiatrist, informing them of how the nightmares had been since her suicide growing in intensity and discomfort. I swore to them both that the burning woman in my nightmare was the same person I saw leap off the cliff into the sea. And then, just beginning that horrible week, I had a new nightmare accompanying the other…
Same young woman, I was sure of it! But what did it mean, I pondered. The more I thought about it, the more it drove me mad! In this narrative, it is relevant to include that new nightmare of Raven…
It opened with my front door easing inwards and from there I could see Ravens’ far-off silhouette standing at the edge of the cliff with a backdrop of a hellish sunset. Hues of a blood-red sky and the sun, not blinding however bearable to look at. Ravens’ arms spread out and I cried out… but my effort was soundless and futile.
There were thunder clouds, however, they were the colors of hell. And down in the backdrop struck black lightning bolts, thunderous cries from a woman followed.
I drifted off my front porch onto the yard approaching the cliffs, at first slowly then speedily. Ravens’ arms remain outstretched as Jesus Christ. No gusts and no rain. Yet her hair swayed and she turned her head where I could make out the outline of her face.
Closer I sped to her until I was at a snail’s pace. And time itself slowed. Then we connected hands. I could make out every detail of her yet she was not drenched in tears and rain. Such a beautiful smile came over her face as she gazed admiringly at me. And then her delicate hold onto me stiffened. Her smile grew. Then grasping my hand, I still did not want to let go of her. I felt happy, complete, and secure. And then, her hold stiffened until my knuckles began to crack. I shook my hand in hers to let up the grasp. And as another black bolt of lightning cracked the blood-red sky, her once delicate hold turned into a vice grip as the pain I felt in this nightmare was traumatic. I could sense the fracturing of my bones. Still, she smiled, then mouthed “I love you.“
Then there was no pain, and I peered over the edge into the terrible rocks below being swallowed by the sea, and then receding to reveal how our death was going to be.
Without a pause more… we leapt… holding each other… no wind as we fell and then… darkness.
What did it all mean, I thought every day that first week. Impossible to guess, I understood. By the end of that week, the stormy weather had passed. And like the nightmare of Raven, the dusky sky returned to hues of hellfire.
Weeks later.
I had written very little and had become antisocial with friends and family. Not answering or returning calls. Emails unresponded. I could not let go of that poor young woman as I should have. But another thing was for certain, she was still listed as a Jane Doe at the county morgue. I knew this from the townsfolk. I didn’t want her in an unmarked grave or cremated. It’s because I made a discovery…
Weeks before when I heard Ravens’ footsteps from the basement, I had realized then that she was in my reading room and it dawned on me weeks later that she could have left something like her book stuffed somewhere on the bookshelves. When I thought of this, I immediately went to that room and began scanning the shelves. As I had suspected, LADY OF SORROW BY RAVEN, was at eye level on the shelf.
I hesitated before I reached for the brown leather book bound in ebony lace. I unbound the lace and opened the cover, the backside of which had a note scribbled which read:
Danny,
Even in death, I will always recall the countless hours I spent reading your work in life. How I will enjoy the memories in the afterlife! Reading this you know I am dead. Allow my life’s work to be published!
Love,
Raven
As I read through her suicide note, the room seemed to whirl around me. What does it all mean, I shouted in my mind. But I felt the sudden urge to read on before I contacted the detective. I turned the first pages into what appeared to be an epic poem. In this narrative, I will include the first pages below:
The lady of sorrow
does not possess a name.
For the sake of this poem,
I will call her: Lady Sorrow.
There’s another time
in another place,
where she sat deep
between the slopes of a ravine.
It was overcast,
and so was the spirit in her eyes.
Where a storm brewed
following her lover’s death.
And brews still,
every morning
when memory dawns
on her waking mind.
Then she wails in bed,
her hands in a praying posture,
looking up to the ceiling,
begging, “Please, Lord!”
She chokes, and pleads,
“Give me my sanity!”
All her prayers she felt
were unanswered,
“Vanity it is to pray!
To you! To end this sorrow!”
Then there comes a point
where she gazes
out her bedside window,
where a terrible precipice
falls into the wild waves
of the green-blue sea.
“My precipice of hope
and my sea of sorrow.”
A tear glides down her cheek,
so many, they dot the pillow.
Again she stares
up into the ceiling
to a God she knows
doesn’t exist.
“The light of prayer
is now dark vanity!”
Still, Lady Sorrow
will make the arduous walk
to the edge, peer over,
and knew with courage
she could end all sorrow.
No matter the netherworld!
Before she ventures to the cliff,
she has the habit of staring
at her reflection in her body mirror.
Dolling herself up for her lost love.
She whispered into the mirror,
“Maybe he can see me
down from the heavens,
or look up from hell.”
She continued, with a glassy stare,
“If he wears angelic wings above,
I will also grow wings and fly to him
and let him sweep me off my feet again!”
And she declared, with desperation,
“If my love burns in hell,
I will grasp his hand in the flames
and burn with him! Forever burn!”
Putting the finishing touches on her face,
Looking gorgeous, she picked a photo
out from beneath her damp pillow
of her and him, cuddling.
“I could relive any moment with you.
I could, fly up to you in death,
I could burn with you in Hell,
whatever the fate will be!
Their cat, Doodles, perched
on the windowsill, she noticed
as she was walking to the door.
Stopping to give him one last kiss.
She picked up her little furball,
petting his scalp, a lengthy meow,
and Lady Sorrow knew to bring
him along, down the precipice.
“Mr. Doodles we’re going to see daddy again, and very soon. It’ll be a long fall,
however, short-lived.”
She carried Doodles down to the field.
And barefoot across the patchy,
rock-studded field to the fall.
Once there, both peered over,
and with one last look at the photo,
and one last tear,
and one last kiss,
with a gasp,
Lady Sorrow leaped.
Perishing,
within the strange mystery
that is below the surface,
vanishing into the unknown abyss.
***
Her body is still not void of a soul,
her fresh corpse danced
to the tune of the undercurrent
in that abyss beneath.
Beneath the veiling surface
which the living cannot see through.
Sorrows of the deep, even within
a living, breathing corpse,
drown in agony over and over,
as is the case with suicides.
As they vainly scream mercy
to shut ears in the heavens.
Lady Sorrow’s corpse had descended deeper
into abysmal depths which only God’s eyes
could penetrate with their purity.
In denial she was in life, pious now
as she suddenly became conscious…
***
A rest without the delicacy of sleep,
rather an unending wakefulness to her death.
A death that came almost the instant she shattered the glassy surface of the sea,
and as her lungs filled with that very sea,
her sorrows still did not disappear,
rather she felt she had died already in life,
and was dying again, and would die more in death.
Lady Sorrow knew all along,
in life, on the cusp of death,
and in death, that she would die
a lady of sorrow.
And as her body has withered
and dessicated like a fallen leaf,
fallen from the heights of what was
an empty home, into a sea of greater sorrows,
her eyelids creaked open…
***
Within this watery grave,
her vision blurred by a fresh rewakening,
she knew then the vanity
of taking that leap.
The vanity of leaping down into the heavens
and looking high up into what was her living hell.
A hell which no flame burned,
nor ice sheeted over.
Rather the blackness of sorrow
crawled beyond the bounds of the sunlight,
within that empty home atop that precipice,
where hell rested atop heaven…
***
Below the breathing winds,
below the lapping waves,
within the heartbeat of this sea,
Lady Sorrow’s pulse somehow
began to drive the blood through her corpse
and as those living eyes were given to the dead,
and with this sudden surge of an awakening
to the vanity, the sea flushed from her lungs,
and air bloated within them.
She dove upwards to hell, leaving the abyss
of heaven, resurfacing with a scream!
Her hell had only just begun…
There I paused in reading. Closed the book and rested it atop my desk. Would it gather dust there, I wondered. Should I call the detective, I asked myself. For that day, I decided I would keep it quiet and as quiet as the book itself and its author were. I remember I went to bed and fell asleep quickly.
