Skip to main content

Infatuated

 


The deprivations of war stripped nearly everyone of their soul, but somehow she remained innocent. She was at an age where she was leaving behind childhood but was hardly a woman. Her body was a woman's, but when she talked, it betrayed her naivety.

She saved her best of everything for the parade that day. For the first time, she rugged her cheeks, and her mother braided the chestnut locks that flowed down to the neckline on her dress. 

Feeling it was only right, she welcome the soldiers home. She stayed for the entire parade and cheered herself hoarse, blowing the occasional kiss from her painted lips. 

She was there for them all, but like many swooning girls lining the streets, there one she was there for the most, the hero of the hour was a dashing young Captain. From an extraordinary city built from glamor and dreams, she had only seen on postcards and had only visited in her dreams.

Being more modest than she was beautiful, the lass didn't think the famed martial Don Juan would have could ever have noticed her among the many. Somehow, he had.  a note hand-delivered by a sheepish young private made her think the end of the war indeed was a happy ending.

She spent the rest of the day in a dream. Again and again, the Captain asked her to dance and again, and again, she accepted. They twirled in the of a thousand candles under twinkling crystal chandeliers. She tried to make herself prettier than she had been. Her natural humility made her nervous about rejection.

She arrived at the hotel; it was, of course, the grandest in the capital. She was afraid to go inside. She was sure she would be turned away. She gave her name to an attendant with a uniform that might have cost more than her dress.

She followed him through the labyrinth hallways. She could hear the muffled laughter. The attendant knocked at the door, and a man with a wide grin across a melon sized head answered. 

"Ah, yes, the Captain's girl! Please come in!"

"The Captain's girls?!" She repeated to herself. The words made her cheeks burn.  She walked into the room, and the door closed behind her. It was crowded with society types. Men in pressed suits and medals that shimmered almost as bright as the women's dresses.

A glass of champagne was thrust in her hand, and her prince charming came to meet her.  He asked about her, but she mostly listened to him talk while he went through glass and glass of champaign, always insisting she keep up!

When her eyes glazed and the room started to spin, he offered to take her somewhere quiet. He lead her by the hand ad she could feel the eyes of everyone in the room following them until he quietly closed the door behind her. 

"I'm sorry I think I might be ill," she mumbled.

"Don't worry, it will be over soon," he growled.

In barely a few moments, the dream became a nightmare, the hero, a monster, and the naive girl a broken woman. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the Eve of Extinction

The river was like a massive indigo snake coiling in the shadow of the canyons its eternal flow cut out of the very earth. Somewhere along the watery corridor, settled human life grew out of the muddy banks. The tribe sustained itself on the arterial river, steadily expanding and contracting with the rhythm of its flow like a beating heart. As far as anyone in the tribe knew no other arrangement had ever existed. The river had birthed them, molding sand and clay into flesh, and infusing the husks with its life-giving waters. Life under the desert’s smooth turquoise sky seemed safely stagnant. There was no inkling, no deciphered omens, absolutely no hunch of the approaching cataclysm lurking just out of sight obscured by the landscape’s jagged ridges. Not far from the isolated patchwork of green and brown earth settled by this tribe, the scion of ancient god well into his twilight years was on the cusp of fulfilling his divine purpose. Harmakar was sitting in the dust staring into t
Post a Comment
Read more

In the Blink of an Eye

 Until now, the gears of history had ground at such a slow pace our perception of it was like a puzzle. The constantly shifting pieces created an eternally changing picture inhabited and shaped by generations. Progress made it possible for the change to arrive in the form of a flash just a millionth of a second long with a blinding light and the pain of flesh-searing fire that burned away the world I knew as if it were covered in lighter fluid. For us, there were no blue skies. Daytime was just when the sun was shining bright enough to penetrate through the acrid black clouds that had consumed the sky and mingled with the distant glow of the burning horizon, painting the atmosphere with blood. For an indeterminate number of hours, maybe as long as a day, it was the only thing I saw. The constant screams became white noise; as I spiraled into death, my perceptions continued to dim until there was nothing left but fear and pain. Every hour the world became dimmer, and I saw everything t
Post a Comment
Read more

Too Little Too Late

“Ichika, Ichika wake up!” The six-year-old girl was jolted away by her father’s hands. Her mother was standing in the doorway, clenching her little brother Reo against her chest. The majority of Ichicka’s short life had been against the backdrop of total war. She dutifully kept her boots and shelter knapsack ready to go at the foot of her bed and made sure never to let go of her father’s hand in the crowded shelter. Reo was even more accustomed. The desperate stampedes to the overcrowded shelters were becoming his earliest memories. Her father grabbed her by the hand, and they rushed out into the street. Ichicka’s father was walking too fast for Ichika to keep up, and the girl stumbled. Without a word, her father picked her up and started walking faster than before. “Please hurry,” he urged his wife, who was also struggling to match his pace. Despite her father’s panic, the city seemed peaceful. The streets were virtually empty, and the sirens were silent. “Hideshi!” Aiko called to h
Post a Comment
Read more