The Broken

Just a short story. I was hoping to use it to enter a competition, so please comment and give suggestions.

I lay in the comfort of my decease. The blood encircled me like a cage around an animal. I could see the tattered pieces of my life all around me, as I lay damaged on the floor.

Death. It wasn't sad like most people think it would be. I wasn't angry or sorrow filled. I was death, and death was apart of me. I was simply ‘nothing’.

It was early on a Friday morning, sometime during the coldest winter I had ever witnessed, when I had first met death. He was the most torn beauty I had ever laid eyes on. I clearly remember how odd it had been seeing him at the house. He looked out of place in the materialistic crowd of useless nothings in the mansion. Or rather it was odd how the mansion looked around him. And that was the thing about this man. His most defying trait; He had the sort of confidence that controlled everything he got close to. He could make the entire world look inferior in his presence. Even the expensive carved furniture that madam would carelessly thrust her wealth on, would shy in this mans presence. He was something of a god.

I had never learnt his name. Madam wouldn't allow me to. I was the only person in the house who knew of his visits, and I guess the madam had intended for it to remain that way.

It was on Saturdays when he would come over, silently like a creature of the night, and madam would ask me to stay up and wait for him. To ensure that the guards got their fare share of gin, then to open the large Victorian sculpted gates and lead the man into the house. Madam would always tell me, when I was done doing this, that I was her favorite and that she would reward me. And reward me she did.

Once a month the master would come home, and he’d bring with him all the luxuries of the world, in a sore attempt to compensate for his absence, and then the next morning after he left the madam would send for me, and when I returned I’d be dawned with the most elegant gowns, and Arabian essence, and pretty glass dolls, and hands stuffed with books, hair pins littered in jewels, Turkish delight…

I had always felt like the luckiest girl in the world, my face would light up like on Christmas day or when Anna Bell returned home at the end of the year for summer.

Anna was the madam’s only daughter. We had been born just one week apart, and we were always seen with each other, until she had left to attend the boarding school. Whenever she returned home, we’d race down to the big oak tree, and then we’d lay under its shade as she whispered to my imagination of all the unexplained wonders she had experienced while she was away. It was a magical world for me, so new, so full of possibility. Then one day, it ended.

I had waited all day, making sure I got Ma Shirley to bake our favorite cupcakes, the ones with the pink icing. I put on my best dress and fixed my hair to match the way Anna Bell always kept hers. And when the door bell rang, I rushed to the front door. Looking excitedly up at the eyes peering down at me, only they weren't the eyes I was looking for. They were the eyes of a thin, frightening looking man. He leaned on a cane, arching his back slightly, his thick eyebrows burning down at me.

“Is the Mrs. in?” He said, his small dark eyes gnawing into my large green ones. His voice was coarse and he didn't smile.

“Yes” I said and then after letting the man in I leaped up the stairs, still not wanting to miss the moment when Anna got home. Only I had not realized then that she wouldn't.

It was only the next day when I had mentioned how eager I was for the return of my friend that my mother had pulled me aside and said:

“Ruth. She isn't coming. Anna Bell isn't coming.”

And I had said: “Don’t be silly, of course she is, she always does.”

And my mother had argued and then I had asked her why Anna couldn't return home. And my mom had said:

“because Ruth… because Anna was in a terrible accident and..”

“And?” I urged.

“And she didn't make it, Ruth.”

I was 11 years old at the time. Just one week older than Anna.

On the day of her funeral, Anna’s tiny face was pale and her dark brown eyes, which had always been so bright with excitement, were shut harshly, involuntarily almost as if the corpse was resisting death. And I had wondered what it would feel like to be her. To be dead. And if it would hurt. And if I would go to heaven. And if it were me lying there in a pretty lace white dress. And if it had been my mother crying in a locked room. And if my father would also be banging frantically on the door. And if all these people would come over to eat the food and pretend to care.

But when you’re dying, you don’t care. You look up into the eyes of death, and he looks down into your eyes making you feel inferior like he always does. And you realize that you had drugged the guards, and that you had opened the gates and that on a Saturday night, in the coldest winter night, you let death in.