The Lady in Gray

To the left there were locals conversing over coffee about when they were young. To the right there was a man whispering to his wife and I alone. I don’t know why I went that far to meet someone I didn’t know existed, had never met, and didn’t want to. Her skin was as gray as her eyes that had sunken into her head of straw that once was a mask to guise her sorrow and regret.

 

I left my penchant for this place when I left my room that morning. Every wall that fell down before my eyes then stared me in the face knowing the secrets that I hid, yelling louder than the clink of ice in the glass, the scrape of silverware across the plate that filled my ears. The plate that sat in my place filled with my reiterated thoughts that I could not ingest.

 

Water trickled from the faucet into the sink, toes were tapping to an indistinct beat. With each new glass my heart sank deeper, swimming in its broadening waters. The crude poison ran through my veins, racing to the end.  Slowly the sounds began to fade; my focus was drawn to my breathing as I steadily slipped between the rifts of this dimension and another. There she appeared to me, haggard looking in the shadows. I feared for someone else’s desires. Her sunken, gray eyes bore pity into mine.

 

As she sauntered toward me, my heart beat erratically. She laid her hand upon me and kissed me on the lips. I shuttered as she slid her tongue between my lips and I felt her forked tongue sliding down my throat, pulling out my heart.

 

To my surprise, a smile spread across my face. Her gritty smile showed back at me. My blood stained her teeth. I watched as she slowly ingested my heart and I realized that I am part of her. She’d always been slowly eating me away and now she’d consummated my last living part. I was the only one to blame. With my heart she swallowed my sorrow and shame, to leave me for dead, void of pain or despair. I was leaving her for all that she deserved.

 

I opened my mouth to scream to discover I was voiceless. I was dying; my body grew limp as I fell on my knees, my hands melding into the ground of liquid fire beneath me. Her laughter rang loud in my ears, a bell sounding off warning me my time was up. My sobs turned to laughter in spite of myself. Isn’t this what I wanted? A fire exploded within me, expelling my soul, turning my heart to stone. It sent me spiraling as a whirlwind of dust and flame to the soil of this earth, sowing my seed.  Then vanished the lady in gray.

 

 “Ma’am, are you okay?’ ‘She isn’t moving.”

 

“She had the most beautiful gray eyes. What was her name?”

Reviews

[Bluerealis]

That was chilling but good!