Reasons to Live - a collection of flash fiction stories

Elbow to wrist

Estella's room had been painted a sweet bubble-gum pink when she turned seven. It was a surprise for her birthday. Upon her bed rested at least twenty boxes full of gifts from friends and loved ones. Her new four-poster bed would harvest pleasant dreams.

Ten years later Estella is still in the same room, but now everything is different. A few months ago, with the aid of a can of black paint and two angry hands, she stained the walls this morbid hue. Her parents grounded her for a month, but she didn't care. She rarely left her room anyway.

Now she sits and looks at the streaks of black covering the majority of the pink. It hides what she once was, innocent, sweet and full of hope. She barely remembers the last time she found presents on her bed. The once white lace canopy has been replaced by a veil of black tulle which touches the floor. Everyone hates it, everyone but her. She's grown to love the darkness she's created in her cocoon. 

Estella spends night after sleepless night on the floor, the thin beige carpet is now stained with cigarette burns and drops of blood. Her arms have become open books. Every slash she's created on her pale skin tells of some woe, but Estella doesn't speak. Why tell people what bothers her anymore? Everyone stopped listening when she began dressing in black, listening to Bauhaus and scribbling quotes from Edgar Allan Poe on her notebooks.

Her blue eyes were once shards of summer sun, but now they mourn the loss of June. Twilight now circles them, she rims them with every shade of gray. Smiling lips once chanted childish rhymes, now they spew forth profanities to the sky.

Dreams and hopes have fallen. They crashed and splintered at her feet while the world around her was too caught up in itself to help her pick the pieces up.

She once dreamed of a beautiful lady with braided hair. The long brown strand went on and on, perhaps in someone else's thoughts Rapunzel would be unlacing that braid, right after the prince had climbed up the tower. In Estella's, that braid was wound around the woman's neck and tossed over the rafters. The sound of a chair being kicked down still echoes in her mind.

The razor rests in a small handkerchief her grandmother used to use years ago. It was delicately made, a small cluster of blue and pink roses was stitched on one of the corners. It always reminded her of her grandmother, of a warm caring soul and of spring time in the country. It was the only thing she kept when her grandmother had died. Estella holds it with care, the razor stares at her silently and tells her to write just one more tale of despair upon her flesh. Elbow to wrist this time.

She listens, she nods.

Elbow to wrist. 

© Christine Bottas. All rights reserved 2015-2016.