A Will to Constrict

A Chapter by Leap

Through the years of her residence in this neighborhood, the woman asked herself if she should have the portrait properly framed. Not a cheap General Store frame, but an elegant frame to match an elegant youth. She thought little of it for decades; kept it in her bottom drawer with the night-gowns that used to fit her. She forgot about the picture down there, alone and begging for light. For herself, she wanted no light, only a permanent black. An easing. She was tired of being elastic. No more bending; just broken.

Glances brought her back to the portrait. In and out, in and out; of focus, of consciousness...of being. She gave her breath away to a gaping wound on her face. A mouth she suspected she should use. Bulgy-eyed and bursting about the folds; each crease a bigger mystery than the last. Her teeth so yellow and naked, lukewarm tea made her whimper.

At an exaggerated pace, like fast-forward, she seemed to perhaps be a slightly happy shell of a woman. Not the case, unfortunately. A misery with no tolerance for joy squelched by a form of impressive self-brutality. A harsh and ample lesson missed by those who must walk around her on the street, stepping off the sidewalk curb to avoid telephone poles at rush-hour. A silent lecture for those who can't get past her in constraining aisles of a supermarket. Not with their carts, anyway. An example of what little of life's weight some people carry, yet also, take for granted.

She wanted to take a taxi and allow herself more time, but no one would pick her up yet. She lived in the wrong era.

She finally mustered up the guts protruding from her waste-line to take the picture out of the frame and throw the frame away. It was after much deliberation that she took this course of action. In fact, pulling out the portrait then jamming it right back in her extra wide pockets. Jammed only after dizzying herself in its cheap glass chimera -- while keeping her hefty stride. The woman pulled this indecisive nonsense for minutes on end. Out of the pocket...back in the pocket.

She wanted to throw the whole mess away but obviously opted for a compromise. By the time she threw the frame in the gutter, the glass had cracked and chipped in her grasp. No real notice or complaint from her about the tiny cuts in her palm. Made one more pocket dive to place the portrait as deep as she could without losing the feel of its gloss. She dug so low, it was as if she wanted to bury it, and the safest place to bury it would be in her bowels.

Tears away and moments from her death, she set off the welcome bell and bulldozed through the frame shop. She bumped into a young girl with a gargantuan bible. Looking back, she imagined herself as this girl, only...in a shiny red dress hemmed just for her. She looked like someone she could have been. Someone she couldn't possibly live without seeing at least once in her life. She could tell that pretty girl had many more lives to lead.

Huffing, puffing and choking, she fell on her knees right at the front counter and rested her arms on its display case top. The framer behind the counter grabbed them to avoid her slipping to the floor. She felt this; figured old Walter would do what she asked.

She began to try and speak. All patrons as witness to a stranger's plea and eventual passing. She spread bodily fluids along the case because she could not close that gaping wound she called a mouth. Much effort went into her plea, but no voice was heard. She, instead, pointed at the crumpled photograph she hooked out of her bowels. Pointed with force; drew her finger along the edges of the photo to make her request as crystal as the display case she was dying on.

Within frantic yelling, the framer yelled at a customer to bring him an eight by six frame. The framer was quick to oblige this strangled woman.

Her last, wet intake of oxygen came and went.

A still, only interrupted by a broadcast about Europe's war on the radio, clung to the humidity like plaster.

Her weight had sunk her below the glass display case and counter. Laying just so, in a fashion to where she died smiling for the first time in years by the sight of her own newly framed face, sunlit and beautiful. A portrait of a woman who was responsible for despair and bliss alike.

Love her ugly beauty in life, and feral death.

next chapter