YRKB
12-20-2010, 07:42 PM
Christine would never forget the reflection.
She'd begged her friend - in the broken, thin voice she'd been unable recognize since she'd come to consciousness - and Rachel had relented after almost an hour, lips drawn and eyes mist cold.
She'd pulled her compact mirror out of her bag, clicked it open, slowly, with a creeping, ominous quality to the action, and turned it to face Christine - looking off herself, into the empty space beside the hospital bed.
She'd never forget the searing ice flush that smashed through the dams of her nervous system - almost causing her to slump in it's onset, upon seeing the face before her. Bloodied, stuffed to stretch, a raw, smattering of rotten browns, blues and discoloured purple. The living dead.
And somehow in the midst of it all, she'd met her eyes.
Between the ceaseless tears, the gaping, porous void between her mind and her physical self, Christine was barely aware of how she'd come to recover.
***
'Honestly, I'm just proud to be able to raise my glass to the most beautiful woman on earth.'
Christine's stomach lurches. Cooing sounds out across the hall, and the clapping begins.
Her gaze slips away from her groom's beaming smile, glass poised high in front of him, and fall - leaden - into her lap. Hot tears tease the base of her eyes, and she swallows back desperately.
Even swoops down and snaps her trembling hand up in his own - wide and tan, lined with his faint brown hairs. Stroking the bottom of her chin up towards his own - she finds herself pinned by his hazel-green eyes, and her full lips taken up fast into his own.
Her head is in chaos. Nothing here seems real.
Four years ago, Christine, with her heavy-lidded eyes, ridged, bobble nose, fleshy face, thin, tight lips and lank hair, had nothing. Amounted to nothing.
All her happiness followed one decision.
The bright future that's materialised is the work of 15 grand and martensitic steel.
It seemed like nothing at all, the only thing Dr. Philip Gesturn required to have her face crushed, filed, sawed and sculpted into something so new and fine it would shy her entirely of her former self.
The face Even toasted, celebrated and spoke to - spoke of - with such a fervent, unapologetic passion today.
That he'd told her he'd loved since he first saw. Since he'd known her...
And what did he really know? This Christine is a contemporary artifact.
What today had been was everything she'd ever wanted, and at the same time it sickened her, distressed her in a way she struggled to handle.
It wasn't real. Yes, that face, and the feelings he felt by association. Both an illusion, a smoke screen to the darkness behind - the terror, the twisted reality - just the plain truth.
She breaks out of his grasp and hauls a smile across her face. Shaking, she snatches up her glass and drinks everything at once. No one notices, or if Even did - he is distracted by their guests.
She is desperate to be topped up again, or kept talking - either that or to be alone. Away.
It's too much.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
She'd begged her friend - in the broken, thin voice she'd been unable recognize since she'd come to consciousness - and Rachel had relented after almost an hour, lips drawn and eyes mist cold.
She'd pulled her compact mirror out of her bag, clicked it open, slowly, with a creeping, ominous quality to the action, and turned it to face Christine - looking off herself, into the empty space beside the hospital bed.
She'd never forget the searing ice flush that smashed through the dams of her nervous system - almost causing her to slump in it's onset, upon seeing the face before her. Bloodied, stuffed to stretch, a raw, smattering of rotten browns, blues and discoloured purple. The living dead.
And somehow in the midst of it all, she'd met her eyes.
Between the ceaseless tears, the gaping, porous void between her mind and her physical self, Christine was barely aware of how she'd come to recover.
***
'Honestly, I'm just proud to be able to raise my glass to the most beautiful woman on earth.'
Christine's stomach lurches. Cooing sounds out across the hall, and the clapping begins.
Her gaze slips away from her groom's beaming smile, glass poised high in front of him, and fall - leaden - into her lap. Hot tears tease the base of her eyes, and she swallows back desperately.
Even swoops down and snaps her trembling hand up in his own - wide and tan, lined with his faint brown hairs. Stroking the bottom of her chin up towards his own - she finds herself pinned by his hazel-green eyes, and her full lips taken up fast into his own.
Her head is in chaos. Nothing here seems real.
Four years ago, Christine, with her heavy-lidded eyes, ridged, bobble nose, fleshy face, thin, tight lips and lank hair, had nothing. Amounted to nothing.
All her happiness followed one decision.
The bright future that's materialised is the work of 15 grand and martensitic steel.
It seemed like nothing at all, the only thing Dr. Philip Gesturn required to have her face crushed, filed, sawed and sculpted into something so new and fine it would shy her entirely of her former self.
The face Even toasted, celebrated and spoke to - spoke of - with such a fervent, unapologetic passion today.
That he'd told her he'd loved since he first saw. Since he'd known her...
And what did he really know? This Christine is a contemporary artifact.
What today had been was everything she'd ever wanted, and at the same time it sickened her, distressed her in a way she struggled to handle.
It wasn't real. Yes, that face, and the feelings he felt by association. Both an illusion, a smoke screen to the darkness behind - the terror, the twisted reality - just the plain truth.
She breaks out of his grasp and hauls a smile across her face. Shaking, she snatches up her glass and drinks everything at once. No one notices, or if Even did - he is distracted by their guests.
She is desperate to be topped up again, or kept talking - either that or to be alone. Away.
It's too much.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown