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ᴛᴡᴏ 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢
❦
The street across from Maria's flat was bustling with the chaos of everyday life just as it always did. It was amazing how normal everything was when her own life was now anything but. She was irked by the fact that they were carrying in as if nothing had changed, when everything had. Had they not noticed the sudden shift of mood around them? Did they not see that the clouds that covered Small Heath had become even darker and more brooding, as if waiting for something to happen so it could lash down with its lightning, just at the right time?
The woman who lived in the flat opposite was shouting at her kids again, her barking voice travelling the side distance and shrugging through the gaps in the wooden frame of the window that she stood at. The sheets that were hung in her window, drying in the cool breeze, were flapping against each other, struggling out of the mother's grip as she fought to pull them outside as they first spot of rain met her greasy head.
Maria's gaze had been obscured by the drizzle too. The window was already dusty enough, but was now smudged by the drops that sped down the glass pane, racing to drench the outline that already threatened to drop off from the rot.
The only thing that she could see that seemed to share the tension that spread through her small flat, was the small bakery down the road. It was owned by her cousins, and for obvious reasons to her alone, had been sit up, their large windows being covered by wooden boards to try and ward off any rocks or balls. The sign that usually stuck out from the wall, hanging on two squeaky, metal chains, was the only thing that could make the building distinctive from the identical ones that stood around it. It wasn't there anymore, and Maria found her eyes unintentionally gazing passed it, until she recognised the bench outside of it, where everything had started.
In her hands, the lace curtains, that were draped from a badly-place pole, tickled at her skin. Though she had never been the most tan of her Italian family, her olive skin had paled, the fabric almost blending into the colour, the creases in her palm holding little contrast.
In her flat, it would be the little things that she would miss. Much like the view of the busy occupants of the houses opposite, or the way the pattern of the netting would trace designs made from sunlight onto her cream walls, or the sound of the scratchy violin that would travel through the thin walls. She had ten days left to soak it all in and commit it to memory. Ten days until it would be Christmas Eve and her brother's enemies would have their threat.
It had only been three days and she already loathed the stinging of the icy metal on her skin. The gun was slipped under her waist band, marking her body like a tattoo, it's presence daunting. Every so often, she would accidentally reach to it, her fingers pushing it down, making her catch it and push it up, reminding her of the purpose of its use.
