Grin

I walked along a deep lush forest, where there would be no signs of human life for miles, in hopes to clear my thoughts of the action I had just committed. Branches and twigs cried beneath my feet as my weight fell upon them. Guilt ate through the soles of my shoes, every step, every crackle I could feel, a pain in which I knew I deserved. The only thing keeping my thoughts in line was a crystal clear lake I was headed toward. The calm lakes tranquility eased its way into me , lulling the racket that went on in my head. The glassy surface danced in a rainbow of colors with ever ripple left by the fish populating it.

However, as I got closer the rich colors began to lose its color and become paler, the light dimmed. The tranquility and the beauty that once was, slowly faded away. Now I stand at the lake’s shore and everything has changed. The rainbow colored ripples were now splashes of hope swallowing darkness. As I stared into this darkness, there was only one thing visible now. A reflection that stares back at me, though it is not my own. Its face shrouded in darkness, with a sinister grin that slices across of it.

“That isn’t me,” I shake my head in disbelief, “that’s not who I am. That’s not what I wanted to become.” My legs collapse beneath the weight of my sins, images of the past flashed before my eyes, each one stabbed through my soul.

Clouds form in the dark gray sky without my noticing. In moments it down poured, thankfully erasing my reflection from existence. Ripples tore apart the fiendish figure, his grin that will no longer be able to haunt me though my eyes. Though my mind couldn’t forget it. For a moment everything slowed down around me. Every drop of rain I could see clearly, and that’s when I saw it again. The evil grin was back, but this time he brought friends. I turned away but it didn’t matter. Every direction I would turn, the grin would be there.

Without anywhere to turn, I knelt over and shut my hands over my face. “If my eyes aren’t open, then I wont be able to see it,” I comforted myself, and for a while it worked. The sound of the rainfall calmed me down and eased the strain on my weakened heart. The splashing of the rain as it plummeted into the water started to sounded like a whisper. I could barley make it out at first, each droplet whispered “guilt” as they met their fate and melded with the lake below. It grew louder and louder. “Guilt, guilt, GUILT, “was hollered all around me, hundreds of times every second. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and plunged head first into the murky lake. I opened my eyes into the nothingness that surrounded me. The noise was muffled now at least, soft enough that I was able to slip out of consciousness. Where the grin could no longer haunt me, where I could be at peace.