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Thursday, July 10th, 2003
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| Subject: | the music in her heart. |
| Time: | 10:45 pm. |
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She ate stuffed quail, and talked animatedly to the five other people at her table between bites, using her fork like a conductor's baton, her audience hanging onto every word that escaped her lips. Her chirping voice rang through the restaurant, bouncing off the back wall, snaking between glasses of water and waiters, and soaring out of the front door onto the cobblestone streets like a frenzied midnight miasma.
I was sitting at a nearby table, finishing off my third glass of wine. The skinny child with golden hair sitting across from me no longer interested me. I watched the mystery woman with the melodic voice with rapt attention. She moved like a curl of smoke, the round edges of her frame setting the smug air around her afire. The tight-collar stranglehold of manners couldn't contain her. She sat with one foot curled loosely around the leg of her chair, and the other sitting firmly on the ground in front of her. It was almost as if she allowed her feet to leave the ground she would float into the stratosphere.
The girl across from me grabbed my hand, apparently in an attempt to draw my attention back to her. I shook it off, like one would shake a bug from their hand. I didn't have time to play silly games with silly girls. I was in the presence of a woman, a feminine volcano, gushing all that is divine and delicate and wicked about the race in a splendid torrent.
She soon threw several bills onto the table and sashayed away, leaving her audience, her disciples, silent in her wake.
I did the same, and left the silly girl with the blonde hair sitting perplexed in her chair. I followed the large woman, who was dressed in such a manner that she resembled a Christmas present, in bold colors and iridescent fabrics, large diamond earrings tugging at her ear lobes, and a matching diamond necklace tickling her collarbone.
I ran to catch up to her, a plan hatching in my head, almost drowned out by the hum of admiration and astonishment in my head.
"Excuse me, ma'am?" I called out after her.
She turned around, almost huffily. "Yes?"
"I..." Words were beginning to fail me, and she was losing patience. "I wanted to compliment you on your dress."
This was the most ridiculous thing I could have possibly said, but it was the song she wanted to hear.
"Thank you, thank you." Her full lips curled into a smile. "I feel a bit odd walking around in such an extravagant get-up, but tonight was opening night, and I didn't have time to change before dinner."
"Opening night?" I asked, relieved that she took over the conversation.
"Yes. I sing. I'm performing in the production of Carmen at the Ponchielli Theater on the other side of the city."
"Oh, how lovely. Would you mind if I walked you home? The streets are not always safe for women such as yourself at night."
"Why, thank you, that's very kind of you."
As we walked, she spoke of opera, her travels, and leaving her family in New Zealand to study opera abroad.
In what seemed like no time at all, we arrived at her posh hotel. The street around it was abandoned, except for a doorman.
She invited me upstairs.
Her room was much more sparse and unremarkable that I would have imagined. There was a large bed, unmade, sitting in a room adjacent to the one we were in. There were a few lamps scattered about, a phonograph, scarves draped artistically over every solid surface, an admirable but ultimately failed attempt to make a cold space seem like home. She was a nomad. It hadn't occurred to me as I listened to her talk that she was a woman who had never known a home, never known security. The gaudy patterned wallpaper was yellowed by the nicotine of decades of smokers, a thousand souls come and gone, the only evidence of their existence being the stains on the carpet and the wear of the drapes.
She fiddled about in the kitchen, clanging china together, as I sat on the dilapidated couch that was once, most likely, a luxurious piece of furniture.
She came in with a tray that held two cups of tea and a few odd biscuits.
We were silent for awhile. It was almost as if, by inviting me into her hotel room, she had confessed the darkest sorrows of her heart. She looked tired. It wasn't the kind of tired one experiences after a spectacular evening; it was the weariness of solitude and travel. I knew that particular sorrow all too well.
The police found her body a few days later, resting beneath the mattress in the bed frame, eyes closed, chest open, throat slit. She got a proper burial a week later, and there were outraged reports in the paper. The production of Carmen closed out of respect, and everyone mourned the loss of a great performer and kind woman. I had left town long before that point, her secret safe with me, for eternity.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | lily of the valley |
| Time: | 11:53 am. |
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She stood pigeon-toed in her undergarments, taupe stockings looming loosely around her knees. She studied the intricate patterns in the wallpaper, digging the balls of her feet deep into the plush carpet below her.
"What's your name, dear?"
"Lily," she replied, voice light as the narcotic summer breeze that wafted in from the window across from the bed.
"Pretty name for a pretty girl," was all I could think of to say. She didn't want to hear me speak. She didn't require platitudes or lies. The pithy, sorrowful silence was the only reassurance she needed.
I'd first seen her in church two days before. She sat in the second pew, clutching a rosary, mouthing silent prayers, quickly, as if the speed of her penitence would hasten her salvation. I sat on the opposite side of the chapel, discreetly watching her. She was beautiful in the weary, guilt-ridden way that all good Catholic girls are. Her eyes were benediction, wide and blue, and her red hair was modestly hidden by a purple veil. It peeked through at the ends and by her ears, like sunlight pouring through the leaves of a tree. Her skin was milky white, kissed ever so slightly with freckles on her nose and on the apples of her cheeks. I followed her out of the chapel, down the road to the grocer's stand where she bought an apple, to what I presumed was her house. It was the kind of house I would have imagined for her--old, sagging a little in the middle, slightly dilapidated, but full of charm and mystery. There was a garden tucked neatly into the space in front of the porch. The shutters were closed, but light from the inside shone through the cracks.
"So, are we going to do this, sir?"
"The money is over there," I said, motioning to the end table where her payment sat. She walked over, in her hunched, nervous manner, and shoved the bills into the pocket of the petticoat sitting on a chair next to the door.
It was quick and emotionless. Her skin was warm and ripe with anxious sweat. The lanterns flickered in dismay.
She had two boys and no husband. She tended to the housework and the children during the day, and sold herself after the sun set. I watched her the evening before, in an alley, with a large working class man. I saw her limp home, kiss her children goodnight, and cry with her head in her hands at the kitchen table.
She put on her clothes, and walked over to the door.
"Wait, Lily. Please. Come here."
She looked at me, and slowly walked toward the bed, where I kneeled, my submissive demeanor coaxing her into believing that I was harmless. I grabbed the sheet, and when she got close enough, used it to lasso her onto the bed, where I wrapped the sheet around her thin, white neck, and slowly choked what little life she had out of her. She now lies under a layer of brush at the foot of a hill, her body finally at rest, her mind still, and her eyes shut, in peace, and in solitude. At long last.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | things left unsaid |
| Time: | 12:36 pm. |
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The evening crackled with manic energy, and the girl was dim as the sun setting over the hills across from the inn. Fireflies lit up the navy sky as we walked to the tiny cafe at the end of the road. At her request, we talked of my home in England, my wife, my little girl. I showed her pictures, and she responded with the singsong "oohs" and "ahhs" specific to the members of the female race. Her shiny black hair cascaded over her shoulders, tickling the small of her bare back before her toffee skin disappeared into her ivory cocktail dress.
"What do you do for a living?" she asked, mile-long eyelashes batting like spastic wings.
"It isn't important," I forcibly cooed. "None of it's important. I'm here, with you. I didn't leave my home and my family to spend my time thinking about them. I simply want to enjoy the evening, feel the breeze on my face, and stare into your those beautiful brown orbs sleeping underneath your brow."
My intent and true character weren't important to her as long as I spouted the silly romantic poetry she existed to hear. This is the case with most women. They were easy to figure out and even easier to fool.
"Why don't you finish your tea, and we can take a walk along the pier?"
She lifted her saucer and took a generous sip. She placed it back on the linen-covered wrought-iron table, unaware of the liquid mustache that remained on her lip. I sniggered inwardly--she was a little girl playing dress up, toddling around in mummy's heels, blissfully unaware of the tumble she was about to take.
The pier was abandoned, and the reflection of the bright midsummer moon on the water seemed like a million eyes peering up at us from beneath the docks as we walked. I grabbed her hand. It was small and warm, pulsing with life.
"Oh, sir, how I wish you were here to stay," she said, squeezing my cold hand. "We've only recently become acquainted, but I'd like to know you more. I could show you around the island, introduce you to people, and I could cook supper for you every night." Silence was the only appropriate response. I stared at the water, knowing that she knew as well as I did that her girlish fantasies would never become reality. It didn't need to be said; the moment needn't be spoiled with truth.
I grabbed her around the waist, securing her to my side, and discreetly cradled my fingers around the knife that was resting in my pocket. I slid it into the sleeve of my jacket as I turned her around to face me. As our torsos and lips touched, I plunged the blade deep into her bare back, stopping only to look her in the eyes and smile before I tossed her delicate body, stiff with shock, into the water.
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