The floor is cold. The room is bare. Its only contents are her, a pack of cigarettes, and a crystal ashtray.
She looks like the picture of a broken woman. Her hair is in disarray, falling in tangled strands in front of her eyes, which are swollen and red. Black streaks from her makeup stain her face. Her lips are chapped, and her hands are shaking, and she is clad in only a thin nightdress. One strap is falling off her pale shoulder.
Her eyes are dry, and she thinks maybe she is finally through crying. But she doubts it. The tears will be back in a few minutes' time, like clockwork.
She stubs out her cigarette and pulls another one out of the pack. His voice rings through her mind, reminding her what a nasty habit smoking is. She tells the voice to fuck off, lights it, and inhales. The smoke fills her lungs and tickles her throat, and she thinks again about how, with every cigarette, she is just one step closer to death.
She feels disgusting, having not showered in three days, and she knows she must reek of smoke. But she doesn't know if she even remembers how to walk to the shower or turn on the water.
Three days. So much has changed in just three days. That was when he decided he couldn't play pretend anymore, and he had walked out the door, taking her furniture and her whole life with him.
She should have seen it coming. When he started coming home later, with lipstick on his collar. A sickeningly bright pink shade she would never wear. But she, the stupid lovesick girl she was, thought he would come to his senses and things would change.
And he did. And they did. But not the way she imagined it. Not the way she imagined it at all.
And now all she has is this damn empty house, a few packs of menthols, and the tears she has cried. Sometimes she considers taking the lighter and setting the house aflame, and letting it consume her and burn her the way the pain is. But she has yet to do that, or anything else. She remains exactly as she was when he left. When she had gotten down on her knees and sobbed his name over and over until it was just sobs and nothing else.
And he hadn't listened at all. He just walked his patent leather boots, shined and polished as always, out that front door with her heart bleeding in his hands.
And she wishes she had listened when she was told that all is fair in love and war.
And love is much more brutal.
fin