The Symphony of Death
Florence Bradbury

Dappled light streamed through the rippled bleak water. A persistent ringing ran round my left ear, the other completely silent – most likely deaf from the icy plunge. My heart was pounding like a metronome to the music of my fear. Under the depths of despair, I hollowed and screamed, though it was all in vain, for water rushed down my throat. Choking and struggling for a breath, I kicked my legs suddenly in hope to slip off the gripping tangled weeds and battle to catch a breath. Yet they only clutched tighter! It was as though they had a mind of their own, although everything was so faint and vague. I had given up on reality making sense; I could have sworn I just saw a dagger sink down.
 
Everything around me was spinning and flurrying; trying to find my feet, I panicked but managed to land a trembling foot on something solid – probably the bed of the sandy trench…
 
Pausing for a second, my heart dropped. A sharp piercing pain shot through my spasmed foot like a bullet sending reoccurring, sickening, sharp, staccato agony through every inch of my tense frenetic body. Sinking to the desolate depths I clutched my severely stabbed foot. The murky water grew clouded of red, the siren in my ear grew to a forte, the pounding in my head crescendoed. As I thumped on to the sandy bed of weeds, a tornado of lily stems tightly wrapping around my irritated neck, I closed my heavy blood-shot eyes as my whole life flashed before me.
 
Blinding bright vision sparked memories in my head; the joyous laughter of a babbling baby; the pure harmonic sound of a sweet, soft nightingale’s call; the warming legato of a bubbling brook, all these heavenly sounds a heavenly gift to this dark depressing despairing hope-draining life.
 
A new hallucination projected in my head, it was a reminiscence of… me. The figures were blurred and vague… but… I know it was me. I was sitting round a laughter-filled table, a young slight girl chanting my name. I couldn’t hear, but I know it was my name… something about this felt familiar, like a relative whom you have never met yet you feel a deep connection formed from nothing but a mutual respect.
 
The next scene unveiled to be a memory which I couldn’t quite interpret… It seemed to be room filled with people… ahh, a concert, the communication of the musical dominium.
Though through none of these recollections revealed who I was, how I had got here or what I had done to deserve such a cruel and unforgiving coda?
 
Transforming back to the world’s sadistic ruthless reality, I could not tell if I was crying, knowing that not a lone soul would discover me here. I drew my last wistful smile of hope, sighed my last breath of humanity, hummed my last memory of melody. Letting despair swallow me whole, I knew that my life would always remain an unfinished symphony.

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