Title: Beautiful
Author: Collete
E-mail: frenchcollete_17@yahoo.com
Feedback: Critiques, thoughts, and any general feedback (or whatever) is always, always welcome. ;)
Summary: In a world where the truth is dead, honor has fled, and happiness is a mere myth, can you face the terrible consequences of your own bloody actions? Without destroying yourself first?
Quickie note: This is a really odd story, I'll be the first to admit. I have no idea where it came from, nor where the choppy, fragmented style did, either. I secretly aspire to be Yeats, gals, and usually write in long prose that no one can understand. ;) However... This is a bit on the different side. Good or bad... I haven't a clue.
***
(I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?)
She walks down the street like she owns it- broad daylight and moving like a sleek, exotic fish through stale, still waters. A flash of pale skin here, a glitter of gold there. She is nothing to them, the staring ones with huge, watering eyes that watch in her wake, the ones that talk in strained voices and throw narrowed looks over coat-clad shoulders trying to get one, just one, glimpse.
She is different, they say. Strange.
And that she is. A strange thing, that woman is. An island unto herself. Lo, it's January and five below and the skin of her shoulder is uncovered. Her hair is not bound up in a knit cap or scarf. Her legs do not hide beneath heavy corduroy pants. And she seems not cold. Her dress is the same short, flouncing one she wears in the heat of July- cheerful, pretty pleats in a cold, cruel world. Such a bright blue for a winter's day.
The people in the streets, they talk. Different, strange, unlike us... She's lived there for ten years, and time, it seems, time does not touch her. Her skin, her lips, the shadowy curves of her eyes... Supple as yesterday. They talk about it in the salons, the homecoming queen and her aging brood about her. It's plastic surgery, they say, it's got to be. Either that or magic. You know, black magic. All in all, they wouldn't put it past her. No one here would.
And yet, she walks on. Riga- an unusual name for an unusual girl- walking down the street, no one guessing what she's lost. Riga with her dress swirling in the wind and eyes that stare straight ahead.
They see the outside, is all.
And never the bleeding, ripped apart inside.
It's been ten years (really that long?) and she still grieves. Ten years of tears, of pain, of crying into her pillow at night. Ten years of bitterness, of unspoken words, of wearing a dress she never liked in a world she's come to hate. Ten years, she says to herself every morning. Ten years.
Yes, ten years later, and she realizes, as she turns the corner of Lampton and First, that she can't remember his voice. Was it soft, smooth? Grating, action-hero-tough? When she sees the sign for the B & B, she tries to imagine what his voice would sound like forming the words. Connie and Rhea's Country Breakfast and Bed... But to no avail. It's like trying to remember being born- impossibly far away. No, his voice is gone to her, caved to ashes in the ground. Impossibly far, far away.
And it's some things, she thinks, that are better left unremembered. Because maybe, maybe in time, he'll end up fading just like his voice. He'll be gone, and whenever she chances to come upon even the whisper of his name- the lovely boy who she loved to love- it'll be just that. A whisper, a vague and distant memory of somewhere with someone, sometime.
Hello, Riga. Lovely morning for a...stroll, isn't it? Fish eyes walk by her, and she thinks that doesn't like that, not remembering him. She wants to remember him always- a vampire's curse, she understands. Vampire to a human, and she wonders, rather dully, why she ever thought they could escape that little cycle of misery. Misery for her, for the sleek, exotic, ageless fish. Misery for him, for the poor, unhappy human.
But still, as she walks, she remembers the time he brought flowers for her on that human love holiday- red flowers that spilled over the lacy funnel that held them together and a pretty card with dozens of red, flying hearts. I love you, he'd said.
Oh, don't you know? She'd laughed then. I love you too.
The cold passes around her, but for a moment, just a moment; she thinks she can feel it, the cold pressing on her skin. So cold. Like her, she thinks, as she approaches the house. Methodically, she pats the snow away from the gate, but something catches her in the chest- swift and painful like a stake. Her hand stays on the globe of the post, caught between opening it and walking away.
Don't you know? I love you too.
Her eyes close and her hand fists on the wood. She could swear she smells roses.
But she opens her eyes. Roses in January, she thinks as she wrenches the gate open. Impossible. But on the steps to the door, she has a sudden flash of the face of a boy laughing in the summer rain. Always young, always laughing.
She slips the key in the lock, sighs. That boy is lost to her now.
But, my oh my, she remembers as she pulls the door open to darkness, he was beautiful for a human boy.
Dark, yes. Lost, yes. But beautiful too.
She shivers as the darkness of the foyer rolls over her, and imagines the icy cold fingers of the boy reaching out from the shadows. Beautiful he was, yes, but did he ever deserve the fate she gave him? Death in exchange for loving her. Suddenly, in her mind's eye, she sees her hand holding a knife over the boy's lovely, white throat.
There's still a bloodstain on the floor. She steps over it, but doesn't look at it. She can't be reminded of those days. Out spot out, she thinks, and as she watches her gliding reflection in the wall of mirrors opposite her, she wonders why she didn't do it the day she met him. Killed him. Killed the human. The one who stripped her, made her love, made her think there might be more, might be something else. Lacy gauze and daisies, perhaps.
And happily-ever-afters.
No, he had to die, she knows. He was weak. Weak, she thinks as she turns the doorknob of the room that was once his. Weak...
She collapses in a heap near the edge of the bed. A human ball of moaning, rolling flesh.
But beautiful.
("No one kills someone they love," [Gilbert said.]
"Maybe not," said Iris. "But they will kill because of someone they love. Perhaps they kill some people because they love them so bad they can't stand to see them do wrong that way. Or because they can't stand the unhappiness anymore.")
***