The return of the challenge
You pick hard words, carrawayeffect! Used them all, though!
A blue vase atop the small mahogany table next to the burgundy fabric wing chair. A bouquet of irises hang their heads, weary and craving rest. Even flowers long for immortality, all in vain. Just like humans.
Silly humans.
A picture of the catacombs of Paris hangs on the wall behind the irises. She put it there on purpose, morbid beauty with recognizable beauty. The buildup amuses her, like anything having to do with the dark does. She’s a child of the night, has been since high school. Her consistency with the genre is questionable, but it makes her happy, and that’s all Jesus asks.
She stares down at her hands, at the scars she’s afflicted with, that she inflicted on herself. Small holes, burns from her cigarette. A humbling array of red, brown, black. She smiles, recalling the sweet feel of fire against pale flesh, holds the lighter loosely in her palm. Her fingers dance over the black plastic surface.
She’s ready now.
Time to begin.
She takes out one of her black-cloaked clove cigarettes, puts the sugar tipped filter in her mouth and lights the end. Inhales sweet smoke deep into her lungs, blows it back out in a slow, steady stream. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, nibbling the end a bit for just a pinch more sugar, then presses it against her forearm.
Ah, yes. Right there. God, yes.
She closes her eyes, opens them back up and catches the various tomes of the transcendentalist authors she’s habit to collect. She doesn’t quite understand it, but the words are beautiful and the humans on the street give her funny looks whenever her nose is deep within them.
She closes her eyes again, takes a drag from her cigarette to spark the tip back to life. Repeats the process of drag and press, drag and press, again and again until the red tip is touching the blackened filter and the smoke is more acrid than sweet. She puts the cigarette out against the ashtray her little brother made her at sleepaway camp, so many years ago. Before he grew up, before he got stupid and got himself shot holding up a Seven Eleven in Baton Rouge.
Stupid, weak human boy.
Her eyes settle on another picture, a strait in Finland, the name of which she no longer recalls, taken on holiday with her friends. Other dark children, but who aren’t as dark as she is. They’re posers, if anything. Only she is truly dark, her soul a black and desolate hole that gapes in the space between her ribs, where her heart should be. If only she hadn’t thrown it away all those years ago. After she’d given up her humanity and embraced her new lifestyle. Her night-oriented life.
She looks back on the irises. She really should replace them, she thinks, for they’re starting to rot and smell of flower death. Not as sweet as human death, like mulch. But the death of the flowers suits her, she thinks. It goes well with the decor, with the black walls and the black curtains, with carpet the color of blood.
-Mai
A blue vase atop the small mahogany table next to the burgundy fabric wing chair. A bouquet of irises hang their heads, weary and craving rest. Even flowers long for immortality, all in vain. Just like humans.
Silly humans.
A picture of the catacombs of Paris hangs on the wall behind the irises. She put it there on purpose, morbid beauty with recognizable beauty. The buildup amuses her, like anything having to do with the dark does. She’s a child of the night, has been since high school. Her consistency with the genre is questionable, but it makes her happy, and that’s all Jesus asks.
She stares down at her hands, at the scars she’s afflicted with, that she inflicted on herself. Small holes, burns from her cigarette. A humbling array of red, brown, black. She smiles, recalling the sweet feel of fire against pale flesh, holds the lighter loosely in her palm. Her fingers dance over the black plastic surface.
She’s ready now.
Time to begin.
She takes out one of her black-cloaked clove cigarettes, puts the sugar tipped filter in her mouth and lights the end. Inhales sweet smoke deep into her lungs, blows it back out in a slow, steady stream. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, nibbling the end a bit for just a pinch more sugar, then presses it against her forearm.
Ah, yes. Right there. God, yes.
She closes her eyes, opens them back up and catches the various tomes of the transcendentalist authors she’s habit to collect. She doesn’t quite understand it, but the words are beautiful and the humans on the street give her funny looks whenever her nose is deep within them.
She closes her eyes again, takes a drag from her cigarette to spark the tip back to life. Repeats the process of drag and press, drag and press, again and again until the red tip is touching the blackened filter and the smoke is more acrid than sweet. She puts the cigarette out against the ashtray her little brother made her at sleepaway camp, so many years ago. Before he grew up, before he got stupid and got himself shot holding up a Seven Eleven in Baton Rouge.
Stupid, weak human boy.
Her eyes settle on another picture, a strait in Finland, the name of which she no longer recalls, taken on holiday with her friends. Other dark children, but who aren’t as dark as she is. They’re posers, if anything. Only she is truly dark, her soul a black and desolate hole that gapes in the space between her ribs, where her heart should be. If only she hadn’t thrown it away all those years ago. After she’d given up her humanity and embraced her new lifestyle. Her night-oriented life.
She looks back on the irises. She really should replace them, she thinks, for they’re starting to rot and smell of flower death. Not as sweet as human death, like mulch. But the death of the flowers suits her, she thinks. It goes well with the decor, with the black walls and the black curtains, with carpet the color of blood.
-Mai