Hello! I wrote this a very long time ago and have no idea no idea what to do with it. I don't want to let it go, though. Any suggestions?
S.S. Rose
The light from the room’s only window tossed dusty phantoms to the black-tile floor. Ariane sat upon a threadbare couch, picking absently at escaping threads. Liberated, they quivered like black-and-blue leaves to the ground. Jesse gazed aimlessly through the glass, which was thick enough to make the wintry vista appear murky and indistinct. The girl on the sofa began to hum a mournful psalm that he did not recognize. It resonated in the stony vastness of the apartment with haunting clarity.
Jesse thought of the almost-empty cupboard in the cold, bare kitchen. “Do you want a drink?”
His voice almost betrayed him as the words stained poison on his lips.
She shrugged. “Why not?”
He staggered woodenly to the kitchen sink and reached for a smutty glass. Its delicate stem shimmered dully in the harsh whiteness of a single electric bulb. “Wine?” he called.
“Merlot,” her voice shivered in the silence.
The wine tumbled in scarlet folds from the bottle, luxurious velvet the color of blood. Jesse thrust a furtive hand into his ragged pocket and resurfaced in a blur of dirty beige. His fist enclosed upon a tiny grey capsule.
The clink of glass upon glass startled the smothering air and he glanced quickly to where she sat. But she had not moved.
The goblet trembled in his hand as the whitish powder swooped and diminished.
Her fingers brushed his own as she received the drink, and inwardly he began to crumble. He watched in morbid fascination as rim met crimson lips, the tip of her tongue greeting the wine. She swallowed, and he turned away, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He had done it – the dreadful, necessary act.
The lids of her eyes fluttered as she savored the fruit of his offering. “Lovely,” she sighed.
She stood up and stretched, her slender arms glistening palely in the dimness of his apartment. Twilight had begun its descent. Ariane joined him beside the window. It was not large, but kept the suffocating blackness at a tolerable weight.
“Can you see the stars?” she whispered.
The square smear of ebony was pricked in several places by soft, glowing pinheads of light. But his throat had closed in upon itself; he wondered if soon he would not breathe. If he was eventually strangled, which of them would pass first?
Ariane drifted back to the sofa, and it soughed gently beneath her weight. Jesse listened for her breathing. Presently it softened and rustled evenly, and he knew that she slept. An arid sob of sorrow and relief rattled in his chest and broke like static from his tortured lips: he had been biting them, tearing and chomping them, as if to alleviate the burden on his heart.
Jesse seized in terror as the grinding blare of the telephone shattered across the walls. Ariane did not stir. He grasped the receiver with sweaty hands.
“Jesse Malcolm?” said a husky, male voice.
“Yes?” his greeting snapped like a dry cord in the crackling silence.
“It’s done, then?”
“Yes.”
And the line went dead.
