Hello my loves! Just a quick short story I've jotted down for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to comment and critique. (Sorry if the grammar is a mess.)
Gentleman Caller
She’s sitting alone in
an old worn out velvet chair that was as crimson as the gloss smeared across
her lips. Tucked into the back patio of a sleezy bar, she fails to notice the
small lamp on the table beside her flicking on and off. A cigarette, which had long
ago burned out, is gripped between her first two fingers so tightly, he
wondered if she feared to let it go. With her free hand, she twirls a lock of
wheat colored hair lost in thoughts he could only imagine were dark and full of
unanswered questions.
He had seen her here
before. The last time, she had been pacing the small table yelling at someone
on her cell phone. He had been so drawn to her, like a tether had been placed
between his chest and anchored itself to the wild, fire lit beauty, who clearly
knew every curse word ever written. She
had been so alive, so animated, that he was sure his own heart would burst from
witnessing her drama unfold on that smoke choked, gum stained patio. But, he
only watched as the vein in her forehead pulsed with each obscenity that she
screeched into the phone, her voice crescendoing into uncontrollable sobbing.
He didn’t move to where she slumped into the seat, staring wide-eyed at the
blank screen of her cell, the other party having hung up at sometime during her
tirade.
Still, he remained
silent. He could only observe, like he was supposed to do. Never get involved,
was his motto. Besides, his work would
come later, there was nothing he could do for her then.
The lamp beside her still
form flicked off. Still, she took no notice.
A man walks past where
she’s sitting, eyes still glazed and not focused on anything. He ponders for a
moment, hovering near the empty seat next to her. The light flicks on again, he
hesitates as though he could feel that something just wasn’t quite right, and
then decides to move on.
She’s reliving that
night. It’s written in the tight lines around her lips that can never take back
the words they had spilled in anger.
It’s in the furrow in her brow as she puzzles out how it had ever gotten
that far. It’s in her sad eyes that saw a relationship that has been changed
forever. It’s in her shaking hands—actions that can’t be undone.
She laughs suddenly;
the sickly orange glow of the lamp, flickers. He’s not going to be able to wait
much longer. He hated starting too early, sometimes people just need a moment
to reflect—to put things into perspective. Always patient, he watched as the
laugh died as quickly as it had come on. She had moved her hand slowly up her
breast, past her pronounced collarbone, and had come to rest on the ruined
flesh that circled around her thin neck.
The lamp went out.
It was time.
He removed his hat, a
long ago lesson he had learned was the polite thing to do when greeting a lady,
and slowly walked to where she sat clawing at the corded, bruised wound. He
cleared his throat, trying to get her attention, but she was beginning to fall
into the panicking stage. He cleared his throat again, this time a bit louder.
Her head snaps up to
him, and for a moment, he let himself get lost in the beauty of her face.
“I didn’t mean to do
it.” Her voice is raw, scratchy, a condition caused by her own bad decision.
He stooped so that they
met eye to eye. “They never really do.” He said, in what he hoped was an empathetic
tone.
She reached for his
coat, her small hands winding themselves in the lapels. “If I would have
known.”
“One never does, until
it’s too late.”
Desperate, she asks,
“Can I do it over again?”
He shakes his head, relaxing
the muscles in his face to the practiced expression of what he had learned was
called “compassion.”
She let him go, dark
eyes wide as she looks at her hands. “I can see through them,” she rasps.
He nods again, waiting
for her to understand.
“Does that mean?”
“Yes.”
A small gasp escapes
her glossed lips, and he wonders, for a brief moment, what it would have been
like to have known her when she was alive and if he had ever been human. He
never used to allow himself to fantasize about what the feel of a woman’s lips
would feel against his own, and he shouldn’t start now.
Resolved to the fate
she had brought upon herself, she whispered, “So what now?”
He stood, placing his
hat upon his head and reached for those delicate hands. “You move on, and I am
here to guide you.”
She slips on soft,
slender hand into his waiting one and stands. The lamp’s yellow light burns
bright as she moves away from it.
He suspects it won’t
act up again.
