Tragedy

Writing prompt: Write a scene that follows a tragedy, but don't say the tragedy.

She stood in the garden, the one that the hospital put in their courtyard as a place to find solace in tragedy. She found noting calming in the garden, it was well into autumn and everything was dormant, dead. The air was crisp with the smell of on-coming snows. Usually, she loved that smell, that crisp clean scent. Not today. Today it was a vile stench that reminded her all to well that she was a survivor.

Her hands were covered in blood, but it wasn't hers. She looked at her palms, they seemed so foreign to her now. Her hands were stained, the long lines in her palms mapped out in red roads of no returning. That sight was one of deep sorrow, blood, such finality to it.

For several moments, she almost felt as if this nightmare belonged to someone else. Things like this should never happen, not to her... not to anyone. But happen it did and here she was at the brink of an abyss of sorrow. Her heart shattering, slowly at first then all at once. Her eyes lifted from the frozen soil to the grey skies. The first flakes of snow falling, freezing her cheeks as her heart slowly started to grow cold.

How could this happen? Why? It didn't matter, nothing mattered. Not anymore. Her fingers raked roughly through her hair, digging into her scalp. She had to focus, to think, to try and cool the blood that was coursing through her veins. "Solace garden, indeed," she thought sarcastically. Solace? There was no solace, no calm, no peace!

She couldn't hold back the gates anymore. She tried, but there was nothing she could do to stop the pain. It erupted without remorse or restraint. She screamed, a loud and mournful sound that ripped worlds apart. Her voice carried beyond the garden, beyond the hospital, carried to eternity on the winds. Her throat was raw, her lungs ached, her heart broke, her knees gave. She knelt in the freshly falling snow, surrounded by the dormant remains of summer and life, crying the tears that solidified into ice as they fell.

"No.." she whimpered, a voice soft as a child's, "no."

She stayed in the snow and the cold, mourning.

Reviews

[Church]

A difficult prompt.

It was so well written, however, that I thought of a multitude of tragedies it could've been. You did a good job of exclaiming her pain, I could feel it.

I honestly couldn't find one thing to improve. For what it is, it's the perfect short story. Well done.