The ebbing

She had lost everything that night. Her beautiful little baby with his golden ringlets that formed a halo around a cherub face, her husband, once her soulmate, now a cruel reminder of that loss, and with him her vitality and will.

It was all her doing he said. There was no sickness in her body, only in her mind.
He did not understand. Every time she closed her eyes it came. The contractions of birthing, the ripping apart of her body, that beautiful face that neither opened his eyes nor cried, and with that an excruciating pain that splintered her heart into a million pieces and left her hollow.

She knew people mocked her. The foolish woman who had thrown her husband into the arms of another! She heard the music. He would be on the piano, while the woman sang with the legitimacy of the mistress of the manor, their fawning audience looking on.

Tired, she felt so very tired, watching the crimson trickle down her wrists.
As her life ebbed for the very last time, she heard the guests applaud.

 

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Written for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers based on a photo prompt from The Storyteller Abode.