The Aberration of Aksana Rose

This is a short-story of sorts in direct response to my narrative poem 'The Hanging Tree'.

What a tragedy it was, the story of Aksana Rose; a tale of decadent lies and sorrowful woes. A beauty so undoubted and brainwaves of considerable apt but secrets so well kept untold. Secrets she kept hidden from the world for great reason, secrets which devoured her capacity towards the end. Regret-filled secrets, secrets of love-destroying treason and demur. 

He’d hung up easily; it would have been harder for me. I didn’t mean them, the words I called him. They were true but I didn’t want to believe them.

I shook it off but the thought of seeing him at work in a few hours made me want to cry. The b*****d, no wait he’s not a... or is he?

I took my keys out my bag and chucked my phone in. I passed the mirror on my way out. The suit was definitely tighter than it used to be. He always said it was his favourite, I suspect it was because he bought it.. wait, now was no time to be thinking about HIM. I had another man to worry about without going THERE inside my head again. I played about with everything, left, locked the door behind me. I took my f**s out my bag, and threw my keys in, lit up and started walking wherever.

 

She’d replaced HIM with another, much too quickly to recover from the incarnate romance made from dreams. As she wandered around the streets she was unaware, unaware of the police cars arriving like armada fleets to discover news for which she’d be completely unprepared. Inspector Shaw had received a call, one detailing the discovery of body in the fields of Richmond Moors. 

 

I always seemed to see her inside my head when things went to s**t. She’d have her head on the table, trying to drill through it, bury it. The pine painted clownish colours from her tear-running make-up, enough for thirteen days or maybe more.  I took the deep breath and turned the key, knocking as I entered the hallway, climbing over letters and puddles from the dripping ceiling tiles.

‘Mum?’

She looked up from her tomb developed on the sofa, her face awash with bluish tincture, just a tint of green and black around the eyes.

‘Oh, sweetie, shouldn’t you be in school?’

Wonderful, it’s happened again.

‘I’m twenty three years old, mum’.

I looked around the room, it was much emptier than it was just a few days ago.

‘Where’s Tom?’

‘He’s gone Aksana’.

It was here she began cursing, telling me what men were. She’d always told me women hated that word. Perhaps for once I began to agree with her, in all cases except one. How at this moment I regretted that one case.

‘I’ve done it again, Mum’.

 

The Inspector studied the body. Upon it were no details of this man, his life or his history. Yet what was clear was his last act was in response of great misery. He hung there from a willow tree. He did not know of this man or his story, yet still a tear ran down the brave chief’s cheek. Moments later came a ringing, a solemn song from the pocket of the diseased. Inspector Shaw took up the phone and the line bore the intonations of a woman of stricken grief.

 

I closed the door behind me. I raked in my bags for my phone and dialled. It answered on the seventh ring.

‘Jack?’

‘No, who am I speaking too?’

‘Aksana Rose.. who is this?’

‘My name is Chief Inspector Rose. Whose phone is this?’

‘Jack, Jack’s phone, what’s going on?’

 

The grief, oh the grief of the young girl’s heart as they filled each other’s heads with detail. The dawning of great sorrow as she realised how sincerely she had failed. She’d cost the love of her life his own. And of all the ways to hurt her, of all the ways Jack, of all the ways. She ran to him when she left the phone. One by one they filled her head, every word he’d ever said. They passed her by with every drop of ice cold water from her eyes.

 

He told her ‘I love you,’ she whispered ‘I know’.
He told her again and she kissed him slow.

Those words hurt me the most. Perhaps if I’d just said those words back to him, if I could trust my feelings enough to admit them to myself and to Jack at that time. I cursed men, called them that word in my head for doing this to me; for f*****g me up so bad. I sat on his bed as I had so many times before reading this work of art inspired by me, by my failings. This piece he’d called the ‘The Hanging Tree’.

I remembered that day so well, thought of it every day. How we sat there for hours in this place we’d later called ‘our place’. I regretted it all, running to another before the wounds had healed. For cutting him out like he was nothing.

 

For weeks young Aksana embraced her guilt, lived with it every day. She didn’t make the funeral for fear, but still every night she prayed. She prayed for forgiveness but her mind slipped away. She kept that poem for herself, kept it her secret so no one could blame her too. It drove her insane; it tortured her branular broken dreams. Like the Tell-Tale Heart it pulsated its way into her solemnly sculpted seams. Her mother grew ill, turning to drugs the doctor hadn’t said she’d need. Aksana locked herself in solitude, writing the scriptures on the walls. She highlighted the part about how in summer snow never falls. But one day it fell. Deeply it fell upon the fields of Richmond Moors. We return to the start and her secrets of love-destroying treason and demur. We return to his words of that Genesis Willow Tree. We return to its ending and re-tell the horror in narrative prose. The Inspector took a call one December afternoon. A passer had found the hanging body of young Aksana Rose. 

Reviews

[Kaylor Mason]

The human conscience can do strange things to people, and its power can be overwhelming . . . I felt sorry for Aksana; sometimes life just doesn't work out the way we want it to . . .

[TheJordBaker]

thanks :)

[Lost in Wonderland]

How eerie and sad, the ending was well written and ominous. Nice work
God bless
~Mickey

[TheJordBaker]

thanks so much

[Lost in Wonderland]

No prob