Black coffee, no sugar
She
stood before me daily, smiling and laughing as she twirled round and
round allowing me to inspect every inch of her body without any self
doubt or fear of my callousness. Perfection. It radiated
from her. Her long hair blacker than the stroke of midnight, her once
snow white skin tinted brown where the sun had luckily kissed her.
Emerald eyes sparkled as she looked at me lovingly, devotedly. I was
completely besotted with her. This was my routine
day in, day out.
Until one day she didn’t show. I waited, all the while desperately
hoping she would appear and grace me with her beauty once more. The sun
set on me long before I gave up hope. I waited
for hours, days, until eventually a week went by, and my longing had
tripled, when she finally stepped into my life once more ...but there
was something different about her; the glow had dissipated. She stood
before me and I stared in anguish.
Her once vibrant green eyes, now embedded within dark circles, no longer
sparkled but were heavy with sadness and her skin, tightly stretched
across her bones, was almost translucent. All
that had made her once so captivating seemed to have drained from her. I
could see all the youthful energy had been taken, leaving her hollow.
Her fragile fingers trembled as she unbuttoned her blouse and let it
drop to the ground; she turned to reveal her
once beautifully smooth back now ridden with purple clusters of large,
angry boils. With each movement her hard skin cracked allowing thick,
dark blood to ooze from the wound.
As each day passed, she stood before me and showed me the progression of
her illness. I watched, forever silent, as the sores took over the
right side of her body, spreading across her
stomach, over her chest and down her leg. Although her eyes brimmed
with dread she managed to hold back her tears until, at long last, it
crawled up her neck, resting on her cheek. I watched her as she decayed,
forever helpless to her plight.
Eventually she deteriorated so terribly that I couldn’t bear to look any
longer and fortunately it was then when she disappeared forever. The
last I saw of her was a rogue hand that slipped
from the gurney, a goodbye, as she was rolled out of my life forever. I
didn’t expect her parents to come to me, I didn’t know what to do, I
just stood and looked at them as they cradled one another and asked me
over and over; ‘Why?’
In the end her parents left and I was alone. Alone with the swirling
thoughts of my lost love, of her beauty and grace, how it always
radiated from her... but every so often the raw memory
of her blistering body crept into my mind and all I could do was hope I
would forget her. After a while everything grew grey with dust and
resentment. I see no longer and instead I wait, for what feels like an
eternity, for someone else to give my life meaning
again.
Bio:
Jessica
Cooke is an aspiring writer based in Salford. She has longed to be an
author since childhood and loves to read and write short and flash
fiction most of all. She was also the winner of the
the Flash-Lit Fiction 2011 online competition.
Website:
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