She clenched and unclenched her fingers. She knew if she looked down, under the black gloves she would see nails bitten, the skin peeling tender pink. Sweat ran down the insides of her thighs, sinking into her stockings into an embarrassing skin-tight puddle. But she knew no one would care. No one really did anymore. Instead they covered up her bloody fingers with gloves, and dressed her in black to hide any stain. Once they cared, with their plastic smiles and knowing looks as if to say ‘we understand dear.’ When they really didn’t. She never understood why adults always felt like they should have the answers. The world and all its mysteries was an aquarium to nod knowingly at. It frustrated her. She hoped feverishly she would never have all the answers. She didn’t want them. In her opinion, that would make the world so dull. Even pain was better than human dolls, walking around with their pretty painted faces. And she knew pain. She knew what it was like to feel hollowed out, her insides cut out with cookie cutters. She knew being quiet didn’t make it easier, only made the screaming louder. And louder. Till it sunk into your bones and fear dripped down your ribs. She would rather be sad then painted.
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She stared at the pool beneath her, wondering how long it would take to drown. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to die, more the fascination with the idea of dying. And she had seen many people die. A boy with his leg torn off and bleeding, waiting until finally lying down, awaiting for oblivion. A woman crooning to a dead child, singing to it as it stared up into the heavens where its spirit drifted. She wasn’t afraid of dying either; her thoughts were more of what she couldn’t do once she was. She couldn’t laugh, her lungs filled with happy gas. She couldn’t dance with her feet or wave with her hands. Beautiful gems among the ashes, among the soot… among the wailing. Such wailing that the hounds were hushed from their howling. Nothing could fathom a mother’s grief. Ever closer the child creeped, closer and closer towards the churning water. Would she fall? Only a single step could tell.
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He laughed at her. Up upon the horse his yellow teeth flicked in and out of sight. She hated him and loved him. He burned in her soul as surly as the flames licked the house behind her. She looked down at her gloves, wondering how it had come to this. His smile was a cruel blade, keen and ready. Her once white gloves bloody with soot. She couldn’t dig them out. Black and red hands, black and red soul. A mirror filled with jagged shards. A child torn from childhood the way buttons are torn from a shirt. The butler’s shirt. She crawled closer, digging her elbows into the ash. Underneath were the painted faces, the blank faces. No water, no tears. Blood and ash. Only blood and ash. The man looked down at her, reaching out a hand. She hated him. But she wanted to take his hand. The faced changed, drifted. Piteous eyes. A deep blue iris swimming with pity. A kind sound within a face of flat notes. Out of place, a buttoned hole. Ash and blood mixed with the gleam of lapis- lazuli.
-OoO-
She rocked the little girl back and forth, watching her twitch at the slightest contact. Once the child had opened her eyes; her blinded, distracted, beautiful grey eyes. Once she had stood transfixed by the woman’s blue, a small wondrous smile peaking behind the dread. A mumbled whisper, a despairing sigh.
‘Blue shatters the dark’
The woman pondered the words, the child’s voice filled with awe as she said it. Slowly the girl had succumbed, a breathless shudder wracking through her body. The woman looked at the child’s hands wrapped in crisp white bandages. For two months the child had been in intensive care, found inside an old abandoned warehouse. The girl hated her, the woman thought. The girl would thrash and cry the moment she opened the door. They had washed her, resulting in a piercing cry of alarm. ‘Painted faces.’ The woman remembered the girl crying. No one knew what had happened to the child, dressed in grubby, ripped clothes. No one knew who she belonged to. Cuts ran along her arms, weeping blood, hair mattered in soot and mud. The woman rocked her every day for two hours, singing soft melodies in her ear. The child whimpered and settled, pulling closer to the nurse’s warmth. Whatever it was holding the child, it held her fast. She knew what the girl had. It echoed in the room, dancing with the flickering light. There was no likelihood of recovering.
The woman held her child, rocking back and forth with her. She crooned and sank further into the chair. They watched her, looking through to the padded wall. Each held a copy of the scribbled insanity the woman had sprawled. The doctors flipped through their notes, tapping pens on paper, chewing on pen lids.
‘No improvement of the patient can be concluded from these last forty days of therapy.’ One said, his voice as flat as a cutting board.
‘There is still-‘
‘No.’
They turned to look at the one who had spoken. The woman looked at the men around her, her face pale.
‘No more. Respite for a month. She will not respond to treatment if we continue with this pace.’
The men looked at her, then back at the woman clutching the doll.
‘Perhaps you are correct.’
They turned away from the woman in a padded cell, shaking heads filled with pity as they filed out of the small office-like room. Dr. Jackman sighed, turning her eyes away from the sight. Her eyes stared, trying in vain to understand the woman crooning nonsense to her baby doll.
For a moment they met eyes. Blue met grey as they crossed the wall. Dr Jackmen swore that the women’s stare was not contained within the room. Just for a moment the insane met the sane, the woman lifting a finger to point at the white wall in front of her as if to say.
I see you.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
