[video: saved recording - 07/07/10 - 17:27]
[The recording is a few days old. The device seems to be resting on a dresser on its side, facing a young woman in profile. She's looking at herself in the mirror closely, expression fluctuating wildly as she surveys herself, robed in a soft black yukata and dove grey obi. Thin, ropy hands peek out of delicate fluttering sleeves as she reaches up to run her bony fingers through her lank hair, twisted off to one side and falling over her face all wrong, like a short cut gone to seed.
It doesn't seem to work. Frustrated, she combs harder, but it only makes her look more haggard - she tears her hands away and buries them in her lap, face down and cheeks flushed pink in embarrassment. Her distress voices what she doesn't say: This is a Mistake.
It takes her another long while - a long pause drawn out further by the way she catches her thin bottom lip in her teeth, wrings her pale hands until the ridges of her knuckles are snow-capped - before she can look back up into the mirror, into her own gaunt face made paler by contrast. Dark eyes peering out of bruised sockets. Like an ink painting, a study in black and white.
Slowly she raises one skeletal hand to her concave chest and presses it there, flattening her palm against the fabric and splaying out her fingers. Her face is twisted with confusion, as though instead of her reflection she were looking at a photograph of some distant relative; the familiar features fit together all wrong.
A voice from offscreen startles her out of her reflection, sending her flinching out of her chair. Climbing to her full (not inconsiderable) height she twists anxiously in place, casting about for a forgotten something.]
..... I'm....
[She hesitates, her eyes dragged back to the mirror. Staring back at herself, her face crumples as though she might cry - or is that anger?]
I've changed my mind. I'm not going.
Go on without me.
[Her voice, for someone so whippet-thin, is startlingly rough and deep. From the other side of the door there's an outraged yell, followed by a rumbling growl - whoever's on the other side, it doesn't sound like they're happy with her answer. Her expression grows darker by degrees as the grumbler goes on.]
What? You can't.
[There's a threatening jostle on the doorknob and her eyes go wide. Startled, she begins casting about again, eyes finally settling on the camera and body lunging for it, arm outstretched. Before her hand closes over the viewfinder there's a full glimpse of her face. While not "pretty", the girl in the black yukata is certainly striking: a long, swanlike neck and a thin, angular face; the eyes, while dark, are sharp and piercing; her lips a curving red smear on porcelain white.
And then there's black.]
I told you, you can't!
It doesn't seem to work. Frustrated, she combs harder, but it only makes her look more haggard - she tears her hands away and buries them in her lap, face down and cheeks flushed pink in embarrassment. Her distress voices what she doesn't say: This is a Mistake.
It takes her another long while - a long pause drawn out further by the way she catches her thin bottom lip in her teeth, wrings her pale hands until the ridges of her knuckles are snow-capped - before she can look back up into the mirror, into her own gaunt face made paler by contrast. Dark eyes peering out of bruised sockets. Like an ink painting, a study in black and white.
Slowly she raises one skeletal hand to her concave chest and presses it there, flattening her palm against the fabric and splaying out her fingers. Her face is twisted with confusion, as though instead of her reflection she were looking at a photograph of some distant relative; the familiar features fit together all wrong.
A voice from offscreen startles her out of her reflection, sending her flinching out of her chair. Climbing to her full (not inconsiderable) height she twists anxiously in place, casting about for a forgotten something.]
..... I'm....
[She hesitates, her eyes dragged back to the mirror. Staring back at herself, her face crumples as though she might cry - or is that anger?]
I've changed my mind. I'm not going.
Go on without me.
[Her voice, for someone so whippet-thin, is startlingly rough and deep. From the other side of the door there's an outraged yell, followed by a rumbling growl - whoever's on the other side, it doesn't sound like they're happy with her answer. Her expression grows darker by degrees as the grumbler goes on.]
What? You can't.
[There's a threatening jostle on the doorknob and her eyes go wide. Startled, she begins casting about again, eyes finally settling on the camera and body lunging for it, arm outstretched. Before her hand closes over the viewfinder there's a full glimpse of her face. While not "pretty", the girl in the black yukata is certainly striking: a long, swanlike neck and a thin, angular face; the eyes, while dark, are sharp and piercing; her lips a curving red smear on porcelain white.
And then there's black.]
I told you, you can't!