Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Ariel: A Flickering in the Darkness (Part One)

(Ariel: unedited)

“Breathe, babe.” Katrina dipped her head towards her, smiling. Her mouth was sparkling with gloss, the bandages on her scarred wrists covered by the rigid sleeves of her blazer. Once, she had been the glowing fixture of every party. She was unavoidable, the kind of untamed beauty that made people look twice. But now, in comparison to the sheen of the ballroom, she seemed lackluster. 

She was faded, her mind taking a toll upon the rest of her body. Despite her best efforts, the corners of her painted mouth were tipped perpetually downward. She was pale, and small, and invisible.

They both were.

Ariel caught the edges of her reflection upon her spoon. Her mother had fussed for hours, trying to compensate for the thinness of her hair and eyelashes, the knobbiness of her knees and elbows. It was all for naught; her silver dress hung upon her frame and her makeup looked unnatural, caked upon her veined skin.

As if sensing her thoughts, Katrina reached over the space between their seats and squeezed her hand. “We’re okay.” She said. “Right?”

Ariel took a shaky breath, staring at her lap. The seams of her dress strained across her thighs. She was drowning in the glitter, like a marionette that had fallen short of glamorous. Nothing belonged to her anymore. Her thoughts, emotions, and doubts all seemed to be a byproduct of her mind. Sometimes she felt as if a million obstacles were stacked, thick as boulders, in her way, and every small piece of her progress was crushed when she tried to push forward.

When she looked up, her mother was watching her. She left a crimson slash on her wineglass, eyes peering observantly over the rim. Today, Ariel could hear her saying, hours before the ceremony, is a special day. This isn’t about you, darling.

Her brother’s wedding was not affiliated with her apparent problem, or her strange, intrinsic desire to whittle away. It was his day. Tomorrow, he would enter a gateway, leaving his family and their secrets behind as he embraced a new life with Mayra.

A life that, he had assured them, he would be living far, far away. He was moving to San Francisco, and he was going to become an artist. Not a businessman, storing cash in closed suitcase and secretaries behind thin walls. An artist, with paint in his hair and freedom on his brain.

Ariel envied him.

But it only took one glance at her mother to know that she was heartbroken. She had spent months upon this day of rejection. There were a dozen lipstick prints upon her wineglass, each sip an anchor that would drag her further into oblivion.

“Right,” Ariel replied, remembering all the nasty addictions of her own. “You got out in time for today. I skipped school to fly out here. What isn’t fine about that?”

Katrina released her. She picked up her fork, sliding it underneath her bandages, as if relieving the sensation of a blade upon her skin. Her faint smile was composed of brute force and desperation.

“Sometimes,” she whispered, “I wonder why we’re still friends.”

Train wrecks need company, Ariel thought. But then she brushed it aside, because wreckage inevitably meant that someone was walking wounded. Wreckage, with all of its smoke and fire and twisted metal, was an open acknowledgement of a problem. It drew people in and seduced them into the idea that disaster was loud and noisy.  

Their disaster – her disaster – was the quiet kind.

And as Katrina had proved, sometimes it was the quiet kinds that caused the most damage. They were hiding behind the smoking trains, intestines spilling upon the ground, mind a chaotic mess. Unlike objects, they could not be repaired. They spiraled downward to an investable conclusion.