She walked down the street by herself, for she had been by herself for years now. She had lost her shine, her spunk, her body fat, and the dress that was supposed to fit her sagged like an old man's face.
She had had friendly enemies, she had been told a promising lie, she had been betrayed and left in the dust like a piece of spat out gum, for she had lost her flavour.
--
I wonder, she muses for her own amusement, if every man is an island, then what am I? For I am certainly no man and am even less than an island. Perhaps I am a sandbar…
And then she realized this was not amusing in the least bit.
--
"Sunny, isn't it?"
She spins around so fast she feels like she could just fall over. Had someone truly spoken her name? Had a shadow finally arisen from the past to find her? The world stops spinning and she is looking at a man.
"Beg your pardon?" Sunny gasps (for she is not one to forget her manners).
"Sunny day isn't it?" the man says again, his cracked lips separated into a long, strange grin, his crooked teeth rotting.
And suddenly struggling for a breath, she responds with, "Don't I know you?"
The world is spinning again as she turns around without an answer, because she notices that no ray of light can shine through the grey sky. Not that she needed an answer, because she already knew she knew him.
(But knew him from where?) If only she could remember.
--
Sunny had forced herself to block out the past a long time ago. She had turned her brain into a cloud so she couldn't see anything from before she was by herself.
She's sort of an oxymoron.
--
She walks around a lot because she has nothing else to do. She walks around by herself because she has no other option. She walks around with the feeling of the crooked-toothed man watching her, because she has no control over him and his one brow-covered eyes.
Sometimes she runs. Only she should have known that her running was limited in an alleyway.
Sunny turns around and is forced to stare at him, at his sneer. "Sunny," he wheezes.
Her back is pushed up against the brick wall. His crooked teeth cut her. His hands grip her so tightly that she gasps his name.
Olaf.
--
And then Olaf leaves her.
"With your dress, of course," he practically scolds her, "for you should know that no man will want you in this old sack."
She can taste blood in her mouth. "Then why did you want me?"
He never does answer.
--
Sunny sits in the alleyway.
She was stripped of everything from her personal items to her personal dignity (not that she had much of either of those).
Her body is so cold that it goes numb. Everything except for the burning sensation in her lips.
x0
Vintage88