The ring that sings

A  female mouse’s desire and attempt for a ring that sings lovely and dark songs. 

Under the red moon, a lake layes still with water clear and dark creatures that are dear with blooded lily pads scattered angrily on the water; and the night is cloudy and the trees bleed loudly yet slowly. Across the lake, a temple that is broken yet alive sits and watches the lake with great intent; the place for clowns are still frequent by creatures or other dark things.  

And at the base of the lake, a young girl mouse stands with a mind that contrasts the lake, a place of thoughts darker than past thoughts of beaches and sweet but salty ice cream and the long warm talks; she remembers the love and heartbeats of her family but not the words themselves. They are fragmented like a lost dream. She tries every night during her dreams to live the moments real and long talks that made her feel, but every night ends with love gone with all the good times never to dawn. The remaining are pushed down by the urges; it kills them with laughter and stabs deep but she holds on even as the blood falls and the moments cry out for the beloved to let go. She holds and holds and holds, and finally the urges win, and the moments long dead fall down below in the cold corpses sleep. 

Looking to the dark heart of the lake where a black ring lies but cannot be seen, a pull, a tug, a hardened grip holds on to her and then seduces her with dark songs of evil real and dark thoughts to deal. And these thoughts become darker to a scene of clowns in their best skins and they horrible things; she cries as the scene plays of clowns that eat other clowns and then wear the remains and dance in the shining sun as all the corpses are piling high. And even in the play, it calls to her in a whisper dark and those disturbing thoughts that turn even the happiest moments black. 

Pushing those thoughts away, she looks over to the other side of the lake and to the temple that stands broken but empty. Staring deeper inside the temple, the dark forms shapes of all kinds, some bright and happy, some dark and disturbed; and as she stares deeper in, the dark eats the light with no remorse or respect. Corpses build up on the edges as the shadows move to each other and when only one dark remains: that one disturbed shape then eats itself and leaves a corpse bloating to all corners, spilling out to the rest of the temple. 

She turns and walks away from the lake, the urge crying out, pulling her, tearing the skin off her. But she walks forward ignoring the pain on this lane. Tears are held back as she walks from the lake, but with each step, the walk forward becomes harder and harder at each second step and the skin gets closer and closer to ripping off her body revealing the raw soul underneath.

The urge wins and she is pulled back to the shore of the lake to yearn for the dark ring.  

Daydreams of a ring in hand bleeds into her mind and even as she sits and plugs her body battery cord into the outline nearby, moments with the ring in this world dance in her mind. She signs and pushes out the dark urges. 

……..   

Breathing in and unplugging herself, she enters the lake and sees the creature sleeping soundly. The ring is held in her hand; it glitters in the dark of the lake a blackness that consumes and eats. Limbs long and a face plastic with long smiles with skin pierced and heated raw, the creature sleeps swell with blood dripping down to the ground ignoring the water. Thoughts of creature here eating then laying and finally wearing their meal and other horrible thoughts of things go through her mind as she stares at the creature, unsure if it is a clown or an experimentation of theirs, something they ate, violated, or made new and perfect and they would worship till the worlds end. And across the bottom of the lake, a fog hides all the dark things that reside there. The stories she hears from the rings whispers are grotesque: tales of beings happy with their disturbed thoughts fulfilled.  

She ignores the creature and the dark things that lay sleeping, and only stares at the ring. She walks to the ring only with the water around her moving slowly but surely. She controls her breathing as she walks, breathing in the water on every right step and breathing it out on every left step. The fog seems to move closer and closer to her as she moves forward. 

Walking closer to the black thing in front of her, a fear grabs and holds her back even as she pushes forward. She remains still just for a second but then calms her breathing and moves forward. 

The creature moves its long fingers. 

She stops and stares at the creature and forgetting the ring, breathes in faster then she breathes out. The creatures adjusts their body and the plastic remains seems to peel off and float up to the top and beyond to the sky above. More and more peel off and now it’s raining white dead things up to the moon above. The creature's eyelids flicker and groan and when the groan becomes a wail, the mouse's heart stops; in that moment in time, the wail comes to everything she is and it caresses it as it violates all. 

The creature then lays still and continues sleeping; she looks to it imagining it waking and with its plastic face coming to her with a wide smile. It then begins to speak and the mouse cries blood into the water. The daydreams subsides as the creatures remain sleeping. She breathes in and out and a consistent calm yet unnerved heartbeat starts. 

She walks to the creature. 

Arriving at the ring with her body in pain and mouth dry, she stares at the ring from above and ignoring the creature, she grabs the ring; the ring then sings to her as she holds it. And the water and the darkness around bleed out and the urge to hold subsides replaced with an urge to hold and embrace the dark thoughts. 

The creature's eyes open and wail in disgust and it grabs the mouse with its long dry fingers, its plastic face staring into her while the white plastic peels off and floats above. Unable to breathe, the mouth of the mouse grabs the water and it plunges into her and into the lungs filling them up. Burning everywhere on and inside her body, the mouse struggles staring at the creature's peeling plastic face. She feels her body warming up and her soul cooling down. 

At the last moment, the mouse puts the ring on. The creature white face peels off revealing a black nothing but the hands while looser remains on her throat. Using the ring, she pushes on reality itself and propels herself through the water, peeling off her skin and stabbing her eyes as she moves. Coming through the water and hitting the shore, the skinless and bleeding mouse rushes from the creature and jumps away from the lake. 

She escapes the waters with the creature dead at the shore and her fear subsides, and all that’s left is the ring and the urge of dark thoughts. Under the red moon, the mouse sings darkness and the ring listens.