Author Games: Ace of Spades

Quarterfinals: Florence French

Florence French had reached a fork in the roads. If she went down one path, she could stay as she was, and, ultimately, lose her life because she wasn't willing to make the hard decisions that survival required. Or, if she chose the other, she would prove once and for all that she had a backbone – and that she was a hypocrite. But, at the end of the day, she might just survive. If she were to make herself ignite, she could find herself reborn in the flames.

            Florence knew which one was the safer gamble.

            For much of her life, she had gone for just that: the safer gamble. She had taken cheat sheets to exams she knew she could have aced on her own if she'd put in the work. She'd married a man for his money to pay for her schooling, and, when that had blown up in her face, she had still found a way to take the easy way out; she had fooled everyone into thinking her a victim, and even she had fallen for the lie. In fact, Florence had been the biggest fool of them all.

            She stood before a door after a night which had been far too long. She was not sure quite what time it was, but she felt as though she were the walking dead; the last time she had spent a sleepless night, she had been in her early twenties, and it was not a thing she missed. She could feel the heavy bags under her eyes, and she knew that her hair must have come undone a long time ago. If she looked in a mirror, Florence had no doubt that she would be a mess. And what was she, if she was not beautiful?

            She was a brain that the world had never seen.

            Strangely, it was then that Florence felt most alive; now that she had been stripped of everything that could be considered what made her who she was. She was no longer lovely or wealthy, and she was even beginning to wonder whether she could truly call herself kind – had she not killed a man a mere few hours ago? She was shaking from head to toe, a leaf being pushed around by the wind; she was bent out of shape, a paper that had been crumpled one time too many and could not regain its shape; she was terrified and in pain, but that was when she felt. After years of constant numbness, she did not care what it was that she was feeling: the act itself was more than enough for her.

            It was not only her body that she felt wake up, however: her mind was running at miles a minute, remembering things she had learnt to stand out as a girl that she'd long since stored away, never to be found again; her heart was breaking inside her chest. She was glad she did so, for at least then she could truly know that she had one. Florence felt like an iceberg in the Sahara, watching everything she had once been melt away into a puddle. But, once she was stripped of all artifice and boiled down to the essence of who she was, she could truly soar through the skies.

            Her walking led her to a door. It was a plain thing, made of maple and brass, no different from most doors, and yet, to Florence, there was more to it than that. Perhaps it was that she saw in the door what she saw in herself, and that there was nothing truly different about this one door; then again, perhaps the aura Florence saw glimmering around the door was the bright light of fate. There was no way for her to know until she walked in, and so she did not waste another moment. Her destiny was ahead of her, after all.

            But the room before her was nothing but darkness.

            For a moment, she wondered whether this was a cruel joke. Is this a statement? she thought to herself. Are they trying to tell me that no matter what, I'm going to end up in the dark, trying to find my way out? Who are the Aces to tell me that, one way or another, I'm doomed to fail?

            Florence French would not fail; of that, she was certain. She would do the most awful of things to reach her ends. She had done those things already.Where are you? she asked, though her mind did not offer her an answer. Is the girl I thought I was anywhere to be found?