Collection of Older Works

Flashbacks of a Fool: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Annabelle closed the door to Logan's room quietly. Having spent the entire morning in the gardens, he hardly made it back to the house before falling asleep in Annabelle's arms. Pacing from the door completely lost in familiar surroundings she somehow arrived at her bedchamber where her she sought to be alone.

Stumbling into the room while simmering in Nathaniel's hurtful words, she found herself oddly accompanied. A ghost trapped in an oval glass stared at her from across the chamber. Scanning the room, she searched for something. Something heavy and solid. Anything that would relieve that God forsaken mirror of its damned duty. Seizing a hairbrush in sheer desperation, she lifted her hand intending on shattering the mirror to hell when she froze.

The brush fell from her fingers, hitting the floor with a cutting sharpness. And in finally seeing herself, Annabelle too fell.

Barely breathing, her nails dug into the cold hard floor, clawing her closer to the pale figure watching on with wide, alarmed eyes. With an outstretched hand, she hauled in a breath and pressed a quavering, unbelieving finger to the glass. Maybe it was all a dream, an illusion to her teary eyes. Perhaps by touching this unknown face, it would ripple away. She touched the phantasm, and it remained.

She retracted her hand to her pale face as the ghost did the same. Shaking her head in disbelief, she closed her eyes. Who was this girl? And where had Annabelle vanished to?

Into Martha, her conscience offered.

Inching closer to the oval mirror, her mouth dropped in horror, not able to find Annabelle anywhere on the grief stricken face of this reflection.

She touched her cheeks of sunken colorless skin. No blush adorned them anymore, just paleness, reminiscent of a slow, torturous death. The soft supple skin that radiated with life was no more, all replaced by a gray veil draping her whole existence.

Trailing her hands to her lips, they trembled under her touch. Thin and dry...nothing like the plump, pink roses she once owned. Her rose had long withered leaving behind fruitless, scorched vines.

She lowered her eyes she stood; needing to see more of this woman she had never taken the time to meet.

Slowly unbuttoning her dress, Annabelle watched callused hands and blistered fingers fumble with the small buttons. Rough hands, weathered and chafed by much labor and cold, trembled in shame. Certainly not the hands of a lady, the lady her mother had trained her to become.

The flowered dress tumbled to the floor, the harsh sweeping sound cutting through the painful stillness. There was no turning back.

Stepping from the bundling fabric, Annabelle lowered the worn petticoat. The sharp hitching of her breathing pierced the silence as cold air assaulted her skin through the tattered chemise. She pushed the abandoned clothing from view with numbed feet.

She trailed a hand down her thin arms and shut her eyes. Bones barely covered by dry skin throbbed under her hesitant touch. She skimmed her fingers back towards her shoulders, down her pulsing neck and impoverished breasts. Cringing, she tensed as they traveled over her sore and protruding ribs. Then her hands unexpectedly stopped at her stomach.

Stiffening, she begged her hands to retract, but they masochistically refused, rather pressing down further at the flat surface. Annabelle suppressed a sob and clenched the thin fabric harboring the abdomen that would never carry her dream. The one dream she would treasure more than its father.

She bent over in painful realization as soul wrenching screams shattered through the stillness of the room. Looking up at her reflection, Annabelle realized the screams came from her very mouth. Her conscience remained silent as too her body and her mind. Together, they all watched in mourning as her soul finally broke.