FEMANIA

bloodied and pale

It started with a car.

One that Vivienne had decided to borrow from her grandfather. A green 1967 Ford Mustang, with a plush white leather interior, the kind that blood has a hard time getting out of.  At 8:21pm, Vivienne had finished a short dinner of braised beef and new potatoes, a glass of Merlot on the side. Her father had taught her to cook whilst attending an academy himself. She was a vegetarian usually, but lately she'd been taking a liking to meat. She also felt the occasion called for something luxury, extravagant. She'd stolen many items before (her mother's velvet dresses, her father's cooking knives, lingerie from the store, her high school teacher's award for academic achievement- 1959.) This time felt different. Singular. Marked and individual. When she stole her grandfather's car keys, it gave her a special sense of thrill that nothing else had been able to give, until that moment. She wanted almost desperately, to try and keep a record of it, to maintain that feeling. But it disappeared almost as instantly as it had appeared. And in it's place was that same numbness, that same monstrous hard-heartedness from before.

Vivienne had never felt anything quite like that feeling. She hadn't been particularly joyous as a young girl, but then again, most girls aren't. At least, as far as Vivienne knew. She had been born angry.

Some time ago, back when she was a child, there was a specific incident that could have perhaps been the catalyst of all this.

At seven years old Vivienne Caldwell had broken her arm rather badly. She had fallen out of a tree- one that lined the leafy expanse of her street. It had resulted in the landing of her body weight, on her left arm, which stuck out rather horrifically at an odd angle. The bone had been visible- poking through her flesh, torn like a stick through an animal skin drum. A hot and pulsating fiery pain had torn through Vivienne as she lay observing her arm. The break had resulted in excessive bleeding- as it would- and Vivienne slowly sat up, as onlookers- the Caldwell's neighbourhood was a busy thoroughfare- stared blatantly in disgust. The horror for them- more so than the sickening sight of Vivienne's arm, was the lack of emotion that came to rest on her face. She just sat, observing. Holding her arm above her head and exploring the wound, marvelling at the break. The seven year old girl looked ghastly. Blood dripping from flesh, bone protruding, her face pale and wan, sweat beading at her hairline. She was shaking but still, no tears fell. She looked like a ghost, the spirit of a deceased child that had been in a horrific accident, doomed to wear her wound, her cause of death for the rest of eternity.

People remembered it years later. The little girl who didn't scream- nor cry, even as she was loaded onto a stretcher and taken away. For seven year old Vivienne, something had changed slightly. The break in her bone had healed after weeks in a cast. Something had remained though-the sight of her arm on that swollen July day, the breeze that had picked up as her arm bled, the sound of church bells in the distance as she sat up. Something about impermanence and change. Something about moulding, about trying to shape up and heal. Something bitter but sweet. A searing pain tore through her body that day, but Vivienne was in no pain at all.