Their next conversation is a continuation of their first. He walks in, just as he had done the past few days (how many, she doesn't know, and she doesn't care), this time holding a tray. In his other hand, though, she sees something that has a small, bitter laugh escaping her lips.
A potted asphodel, sitting in the palm of his hand, its blooming white petals covered in droplets of quivering dew clinging to the flower, and she hates it, she hates hates hates hates hates it to the point that she wants to pull its roots out of the soil and grind her heel into its delicate throat until nothing but crushed pulp and mangled fibres are left, and even then her hatred won't be sated.
She's insatiable.
He sets the plant on her bedside table and for once her attention isn't on his shadowed face, but rather on the pretty flower, an unreadable look in her bottomless eyes. He lightly taps the tip of the asphodel, and it shivers, sending a shower of dew droplets into the soil. "Flowers, huh?"
She finally tears her gaze away from its petals and raises her eyes to meet his. A raised eyebrow is all that is needed for him to read her mind and he laughs, a dark, spine-tingling sound that she both loves and hates. "Don't worry, the flower isn't for you. I bought it for my sister-she loves flowers."
She shoots him a deadpanned look before pointedly turning her head, her hair escaping from behind her ear and lightly brushing against her gaunt cheek. Days of eating nothing but five spoonfuls of rice and drinking a sip of water per meal has done wonders for her figure, thinning her body and shedding the pounds (despite her never getting out of this bed that she continues to occupy) until she has reached that anorexic figure that her mother always seemed to love.
He watches her silently for a few moments before setting the tray down right next to the potted asphodel. Turning, he begins to leave.
"Wait."
Pauses. Doesn't turn around. "Yes?"
"Aren't you going to take it?"
"Maybe it'll give you some motivation to live now."
And his laughter continues to echo in the room long after he leaves, reverberating in her head as she glares at the flower with burning, burning hatred.
YOU ARE READING
Her Definition Of "Life"
Short Story"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane." -Kurt Vonnegut "she wasn't living" She truly believed that she had found the meaning of life. Or rather, the meaning of her life. "there never was anything in her" For her, she wanted to spen...
