Notes: Two 'chapters' because it's been a while and I realised that while I only intended to be three parts ahead of what I post, I was actually four. A big thankyou to everyone who reviewed... and I'd just like to say now, that the chapter after this is not intended to be the next day. These encounters are linear, but they dont happen from one day to another.
They looked bruised. Like someone had punched her in the teeth. Dark bluish-black, the colour of domestic abuse. Shilo peered into the mirror, a startled, pale face stared back at her. She quickly ran a washcloth under the tap and raised it to swipe at her lips, stopping at the last second. Her heart was still pounding a million miles an hour, if she'd had hair it would have been prickling. She looked at herself again, imagining the sound of his laughter if he could see her now, staring at her bruised-black lips.
Careful strokes of the cloth took the black away, leaving just the barest of stains. Her lips, as clean as they would be getting, were now lavender and not pink. Shilo hadn't counted on the adrenaline.
She painted her lips pink, The colour of rosepetals, according to the tube of lipgloss. Her cheeks were splashed with spots of colour, a natural flush that made her look all the more like a porcelain doll. She was breakable, dressed in layers of cotton and lace, tiny white gloves on her hands. A white glass ball hung about her neck from a thin chain, a small circle of bright blue in the centre.
"Doesn't she look fancy?" He spoke to an invisible audience, or perhaps the to security camera blinking innocently from a nearby corner. "She has hearts on her sleeves and an eye to her chest. Could it be that she's looking for love?"
"That's stretching it," Shilo replied, touching the glass eye self-consciously, "even for you."
"Alas, puns elude me. You do look nice."
"It's not that bad, kid."
His voice is soothing, his fingers stroking her hair. Human hair, he notices. Shilo's hands shake, her gloves dirty with smudges of black, two fingers covered in a thin, watery liquid that glows just a little.
"Not bad at all, for a first time." Graverobber slings an arm about her shoulders, comforting her in the face of her failure. "If you don't want to..."
"I want to," she interrupts, quiet but insistent. Shilo turns to face him, a stubborn tilt to her mouth. "I'll get it right."
"It's my mother's birthday tomorrow," Shilo told him at the steps to her crypt, "we always celebrated. It's going to be so strange..."
Graverobber's hand caught her wrist, pulling her back at the last second. He stepped up, his grip tightening, lips crashing down onto hers. The contact only lasted a second, maybe two, but the seconds dragged and seemed to take forever. Shilo was dazed when he pulled away, staring at him in surprise.
"Have a party," he told her, casually walking away.
Shilo stood on the steps for a while, trying to process what had just happened through the tingles of shock and the sudden icy cold of her lips. She could hear him whistling, the sound growing steadily fainter. Shilo slammed the door and ran through the dark passageway and back to her house, heart pounding.
Her lips were bound to be as black as sin.