"I AM POSSESSED BY A DEADLY MUSE. IT STEALS ME OF MY SLEEP, ROBS ME OF MY HEALTH, TURNS EVERY MOVMENT OF LIFE INTO A POSSIBILITY FOR PROSE. IT EFFECTS THE MIND, IT GUIDES YOUR DEEDS, SACRIFICES FRIENDS AND BURNS AWAY ENEMIES. EVERY PERSON ENCOUNTERED IS LOOKED UPON AS A PLAGUE OF MEDIOCRITY AND EACH FACE OF BEAUTY HAUNTS YOUR STEPS UNTIL YOU DIE. PAIN IS THE FUEL THAT DRIVES YOUR ART. HATRED IS THE SPARK THAT IGNITES THE MIND. YOU SPEND ALL YOUR LIFE WORKING ON A PIECE THAT WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD BY MOST AND IN THE END, ULTIMATELY FORGOTTEN."
The black ichor from the old fashioned quill lost it's wet shine as it dried on the paper. An interesting choice, and an unfortunate one, to put such avid words in fine ink on crisp, blue lined college paper. But in times of reckless abandonment, despair, our most precious ideals find themselves smashed, scattered like so many pieces of broken glass on a bathroom floor. The lone paper, now free from it's owner's grasp, floated slowly to the floor. It swayed back and forth as it fell, like a dying leaf in an autumn wind. It settled itself in what it thought was a fine place on the floor, surrounded by glimmering shards and white tile. It was merely paper, and lucky enough to have found a companion in the ink at that. The paper and the ink took no notice of the empty frame on the wall that still held tiny fragments of glass. They didn't care that bare moments ago, a young girl had come into the bathroom nude, closed the door behind her, and beat the mirror with a hard wooden brush until glass fell to the floor like snow on a winter's day. The ink and paper took no notice, they were too happy to have found each other. Too happy to have found a companion to spend the rest of their existence with, bound eternally by obsidian stain and wooden pulp.
The clotheless female kneeled in the midst of the glass covered floor, ignoring the bites of the pointed edges as her bare knees further cracked the larger pieces. A pale, slender hand closed around a large, nearly dagger like shaped slice.
"How convenient." She thought numbly. She leaned back against the white tile of the bathroom wall, her legs neatly folded out in front of her, Her posture was demur, and her position would have been oddly alluring, especially in her naked form, had it not been clearly obvious something was wrong. She raised the glass to eye level, studying the vibrant green of her eyes that had once glittered with youth and life. The deep burgundy of her hair, long and curled, covering most of her pale upper body. Skin so pale and hair so red it was as if someone had spilled a glass of red wine on a pristine tablecloth. Her eyes showed no emotion, no fear, no hatred, no love, nothing but empty emerald gems staring back at her from within the glass. She was beautiful. Beauty was trivial. Beauty was not love, it was no success, and it certainly was not sanity.
No tear escaped her veiled orb, and no sense of hesitation or fear shook or stayed her hand as she lowered the piece of glass to one wrist. Pressing the shard into her skin until she felt it pierce her flesh, she drew it upward, trailing it along the blueish purple roads of her alabaster arm. She never flinched, though she certainly felt a strange combination of pain, and an almost tickling sensation as a wound like a gaping red mouth opened up in her arm. The same process was repeated on her other arm, and, finding the task nearly complete, she carefully laid the glass shard back onto the floor. The white porcelain tub had been filed earlier with warm water, but she felt no desire to rise and get in. What was the point? No matter the means, no matter the way, death was death. It would come all the same in water or not.
She shifted against the wall to become more comfortable, the coldness of the tile on her back contradicting the hot crimson blood that was covering her white skin. She sighed, and closed her eyes, waiting to feel that effortless relaxation that would shortly bring on death.
"What are you doing?" A female's childlike voice echoed in the cold stillness of the bathroom.
A green eye opened slowly, followed by the other. The closed door hadn't opened, she knew that. It creaked, like the door or stairs in any old house, and in the silence of the room, no noise had been heard but her own shallow breathing. "You shouldn't be here." The dying girl chastised. "You shouldn't have been able to... to get in." But as she said it, she knew her protests were worthless. And indeed, it was hardly a protest. The words that spilled from her lips were but a mere whisper, like a touch of fog on a chilly morning. Her eyes focused on the little girl sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. The child's long, tangled dark hair fell in waves around her small, palide face. Big, innocent, doe brown eyes graced a sweet face that would tug at the most hardened of hearts. Her small legs were folded neatly under her little black pinny. A darling waif indeed, but the dark circles under her eyes and the old, battered condition of her cloths were out of place in the child's almost angelic theme.
"But I'm always with you. I always have been. Why should now be any different?" She stayed seated, her little ash covered hands folded in her lap, the tinniest of frowns turning the corners of her mouth down.
"Well, not anymore. After tonight, I'll never have to see you again. I'll never have to see any of you again!" Emotion was finally beginning to creep into her voice, a half tortured despairing sound, laced with triumph.
"I've always been alone, did you know that? My only companions don't exist! They aren't real!" She struggled to hold onto her train of thought. Her blood was now swirling across the floor, following the little paths between the tiles and skirting around the glass pieces. The paper and ink spared a moment for itself to worry. If that horrible, hot red liquid found itself in their safe little corner, they'd be ruined! "I'm mad, mad because of you. Do you know what my life has been like? You should, you've been around me constantly. I have no friends... no family.. no one!" It occurred to her briefly to wonder why she was taking any time to waste explaining to this... this abomination. But she was dying, a self induced act of of desperation and despair. There was no rational thought left to spare to ignore this figment, albeit adorable, who was watching her die.
Tears began to fill the little waifs brown eyes. "I don't understand!" Replied the child, her voice wavering. "I've always been there for you! We've always been there for you!" She got up off the toilet and kneeled down next to the bleeding girl. The broken glass and swirling blood seemed to have no affect on her clothes or body. Solid looking as she was, she was a figment, ethereal. She wasn't real, and no blood could stain her clothes any more then glass could cut her flesh. "No matter what happens, no matter what you said, no matter what you did, we were here for you. You were never alone." She put out a hand and placed it on the girl's.
Odd... the child had no blood on her, but the despairing girl could almost swear she felt the child's hand on her's. Cool, small, oddly comforting. The thought should have repulsed her, but reason was leaving her like water pouring out of a broken damn, and she was almost glad for the company.
"Consider that we aren't here, that I'M not here because you're mad. What if I'm here because I want to be? Because I care about you? Because for as much as I've been there for you, so have you been there for ME." Brown eyes looked deeply into the fading green ones, eager for a response, some bit of reassurance that everything would be ok. She was, after all, only a child.
She wanted to answer the child, tell her she was sorry, she had never thought of it that way. That she was glad she could have been there for the girl, and she was glad the girl cared about her and had always been there. Perhaps she wasn't mad after all. And so what if she was? Someone CARED for her. But the strength to speak had left her, and she could only sit with her mouth almost artfully closed, and return the gaze of the child's deep brown eyes.
Mistaking her lack of answer for a lack of desire to make one (she was a child, what was she to know about a slow death?), the little girl removed her hand and stood. Sighing in the disappointed way that only a child can manage, she shook her head... and faded from sight.
'Wait...' Came the desperate thought, 'Come back...' But it was too late. Far too late, in every sense. As the edges of her vision slowly gave way to a clouded black, she closed her eyes. She had felt many emotions in her life; fear, anger, love, hate, sadness. And with her last dying breath, a single, solitary tear fell from beneath a closed lid as she felt something she had never felt until now; regret.
There was no avoiding it, the pool of blood was mere inches away from the paper and ink companions. They had mere moments to share a brief exchange of care and the greatfullness to be together before the thick liquid, bearing mute witness to despair and destruction incarnate consumed them both.
