One shots

Little white lies

"She was beautiful, but not like the girls in the magazines.
She was beautiful, for the way she thought.
She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eye when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile even if she was sad.
No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks.
She was beautiful, deep down to her soul." - The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

She didn't try to understand it again. Had no will power to comprehend the fainting beat of her heart. Yet as she placed her hand over the dying organ it ran. A mile a minute. Never ending. It felt like being stuck in her trance. The inescapable seconds that had consumed her. Living barely breathing. Functioning barely moving. Did she know any one anymore?

Did she even know herself?

Lord the sound of her own haunting laugh made her sick to her stomach. The soft melodic sound that drifted in the dimness of the early morning hours. It travelled around the empty home, beckoning fainter by the second. When had she last eaten? When had she last slept? No the dying of a heart was the most morbid of moments she had ever had to live through so far. And even so numb to the outside world of her little bubble where she burrowed in further she felt the few silvers of hope she held slip away.

Tomorrow would just be another fighting day.

She watched her little dress dance away. Sway against the water. Barely acknowledged the droopiness and fatigue that consumed her. She marvelled at her pruned fingers. Hardly registering the water that had turned icy cold from sitting in since the night. Her body trembled from the lack of warmth. Her finger nails turning a pretty shade of blue. If only she could change time.

She couldn't bare to stare into her home. Home. She scoffed out loud. She slid down further into the water. Pink toe nails sticking out the end, she wiggled them. Marvelled at the outside world like it was something she had never seen before. The harsh reality. The storm from last night had only just begun to calm. The violence of the rain echoing against the glass of the windows. The silence stretched.

"Time will scatter the tempest," she whispered. Yet she felt resignation instead of a wave of anger.

She gripped the half empty wine bottle in her hand. She lost count after the second bottle how many glasses it had been exactly. She was afraid. Terrified of her heart, her mind, and what lay ahead. No, each sip provided a little more warmth, worked to ease and bring a little bit of comfort as she lost all her inhibitions. Sleep was the ghost of today, that would leave her alone in the darkness with a defeated soul.

Morning light made her wince. The brightness a steak contest to her battered self. The glint of the mirror caught her eye and she stared. Bore into herself into the depths of her tattered self. What remained? Did she even recognise the girl that was left in the wake? Mascara ran down her face, circled her eyes in black. Chocolate brown eyes that sat empty and lifeless. Lips were turning a pale blue, all chapped. Her cheeks were flushed a scarlet red. Her auburn hair sat matt and wet, clinging to her face and neck.

"How do you forget?" She whispered to no one running a hand down the side of her face.

There was a faint sound of the door opening, shuffling and the deafening click signalling someone being here.

"How do you forget," she whispered harsher, the first the first of a storm breaking through.

It felt like insanity that was inescapable and all consuming. A steady growing fire that was causing her throat to tighten and body tremor from something that wasn't the cold. The first of what she knew would be endless tears fell. Down her face, leaving the stain of her black mascara. The only way she could describe her reflection, a pretty broken doll. She sat deadly quiet and stiff not moving.