I've been obsessively cleaning this week, so I unearthed another old flash fiction for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.
I rest here, waiting for the blood to fall again. It slips
slowly down my fingers from somewhere near the realm of my heart. It drips again,
splashing against the whiteness of my wedding dress.
On my wedding day, I should be smiling. Looking across the
room at my husband, I see only emptiness. The void lingers until he turns his
eyes upon me. I see myself in those eyes. I see the woman he wanted to
marry—the adoring wife he thinks I am returning his gaze with my own blood
dripping from my fingers. He doesn't see the blood though, just the veil
falling back from long golden hair.
He crosses the room and takes me in his arms. He has no need
to be gentle anymore. Though he cannot see the blood welling up and pouring from
me, he knows that no harm he inflicts will be worse than my surrender to him
has been. Luckily, his knowledge is not conscious and he enjoys melding with me
as snaps and hooks come undone and leave me, simply me, for him to behold.
He still doesn't see me. Even with no veils or skirts to
hide my nakedness, he can't see me. He doesn't recognize the pain behind my
eyes as I smile and make all the right sounds and then wait in the dimming light
for him to sleep with me cradled in his arms. He is so gentle now, caressing my
cheek with his fingers, gazing into my eyes without seeing into their depths.
At last his eyes close. Dark, untamed lashes come together
to conceal grey eyes. Now my own dark eyes are free. The teardrops slip down my
cheeks. I regret that I will hurt him someday when he learns to see beyond the
face I put on for him and them. For a time though, they're all happy, even if I
am bleeding away in obscurity.
For this is all I was born to, this marriage where I can
finally die without anyone ever having seen that I existed without a man to
give me his name.
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