lovesick

2

three days earlier

As the train had left the station, the couple, bordered by dark wood window frames out of the moving carriage had gazed lovingly into each other's eyes, and one, didn't matter which, had cupped their lover's chin in a soft hold, and brushed their skin. I had looked on, nonplussed at first, an obvious lie to myself and the odd man in a grey trench coat seated warily opposite me, holding a trembling newspaper in his hands. This man had no real reason to be scared. I was just a young girl on a train to Vienna and crying. He had immediately stared suspiciously. How at all was it my fault that he had started shouting for the train attendant to remove him from our carriage when I had started on the throwing up? I had gone through phases of immediate grief during that brief twenty second period, and I had more than one reason to be reacting as I was.

My mother had given me a ruby encrusted dagger for my thirteenth birthday, a weapon of which I had carried round consistently for the last few years. And to who would I first use it on? Well, in a poetic way it would and should, of course be myself. To be stabbed by my own dagger, and the stabber, myself- was, in every way possible the most lyrical, epic piece of work I would ever create. I plunged the tip into my chest, (missing any major organs, naturally) and promising myself that if I did die that day, bleeding out in the moving carriage from Hallstatt to Vienna, among the foreign furnishings of the European train and the strange company of the trench coated man hurling insults in my direction, I would be at peace.

Needless to say, I did not die that day.

Instead, I stabbed a man.

There was certainly something incredibly disagreeable about that trench coated fool. So, as I bled out onto the plush green train seat, blood mingling with the cotton of my pearl white sundress, I decided that the dagger's next victim was this man, and of course he wasn't too happy about this, as I rammed my weapon into his stomach. I left it there, not wanting him to bleed out too much.

One thing I did find quite strange about the entire debacle, is that once I had gotten started, I couldn't quite stop. Perhaps I had a way of thinking that led me to conclude that if I did in fact get caught and sentenced to jail, I would rather it be for multiple, glamorous and dazzling crimes, rather than one measly crime of stabbing a man in the stomach. So, I set fire to the carriage. Wanting to erase any evidence, of course.

Naturally, I was now a wanted women, or should I say girl, at this point. I never made it to Vienna.