Madeleine

She had forgotten how long she had been sitting there, staring blankly out into the darkness, a half smoked cigarette dangled in tapered fingers. Fingertip flicked the smoldering cigarette, ash drifted downward in a powerless spiral, and a purse of thin scarlet stained lips drew on its end, flaring the ember’s burn at its tip for a moment, before it returned to its weak and faded glow. Dark strands of pitch hung limply against her face, oily tendrils clinging to her brow.

Hollowed cheeks, gaunt frame spoke of iron control and wild helplessness, the faint taste of bile lingered at the back of her throat. Beauty was fickle, the slender frame now skeletal, ravaged by years of starvation and her skin sagged on her dejectedly, the lines that burrowed into her brow premature. Rumpled clothing, the kind that one bought in the attempt to feign wealth, in cut that nearly draped beautifully, save for the cheap cloth and subtle imperfection, clung in silent witness to the sleepless night. The nearly exquisite exterior that covered up the slowly decaying innards, cloyingly sweet perfume that nearly covered the reek of moldering life and hope, she was rotting from the inside out.

She might have been different, perhaps the softly rounded mother with a slightly frazzled air of disarray to hair, clothing, life. Or the crisp sharp business woman, with the staccato click of unforgiving heels beneath prim suit as she wandered down corporate marbled floors. Who is to blame really when you find yourself lost in the middle of your own life, years of aimless wandering, the loathing to commit to even the smallest decision leaving you buffeted by the most mundane choices of the day. So she drifted, from man to man, from job to job, in a direction less flutter that held no greater meaning than the whim that drove her for that moment, that second.

The shadows seemed to creep towards her with the subtle edge of menace for what seemed an age now. The ellipse of fog expanded and contracted against the glass with each breath, she could feel the chill from the window pane leeching heat from her skin. The dulling of senses was welcome, as was the spread of fleeting warmth from the drink as it seeped into her belly, radiating outward. Dusk, that moment of twilight on the cusp of darkness fall, lent an eerie gray veil to the edge of woods that bordered the property. As if the distance began to shrink, closer the woods came, until the last streaks of light were banished from the sky and the trees nearly enveloped the tiny house.