Dahlia Alby's Mirror

• Kalashree Murthy, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2021

Deep crimson pigment trickled down the transfusion tube, disseminating through her varicose veins. The flickering of dim light revealed the sickening grey pallor her bare skeletal limbs shivering from the chilly gushes of wind escaping through the ajar window. Dahlia moaned, turning over to feel the homosexual yet familiar metal bed rail, extending to the very tips of her toes, a latched cage incarcerating a songbird, suppressing it from chirping its melodic tunes. Time had drained her irises of their ocean hue, leaving her with grey wrinkled eyes. Once again, Dahlia could only lay there quietly and observe the soulless space. The room itself was an undertone of bleach and the floors were comprised of ash grey linoleum tiles. Soft muffled shuffling noises of doctors, nurses and paramedics slid through the fiberglass door sweep, and into the consciousness of Dahlia Alby. Today, Dahlia would nibble on the delicacy of bland chicken, mashed potato and reluctant sips of burnt coffee. It was when her gaze immediately shifted to the window screen, to a view of the pleasurable and intriguing world beneath her.

And there she was, as still as ever, her glistening wide Prussian blue eyes following the great egret in flight. She imagined the pointed end of its golden beak lined with tangerine streaks as a witch’s hat and its beady eyes as the conjuring of supernatural spells. Giggling jubilantly at her eccentric thoughts, Dahlia mimicked the rare bird, flapping, pecking and chirping noisily. She held out her tiny cherry-red hands, caressing at the ethereal wildflower petals, glazed in flecks of rainbow gloss cheekily twinkling from the glints of evening sun. As she was about to pluck a velvet petal, she was disrupted an irregular transparent speck over her right arm. Instantly, there were innumerable specks falling from above. “Are these the sky’s tears?” Dahlia murmured inquisitively. “Please don’t cry, sky….please.” It was too late. Forcibly, the sky began to shed its tears, and so did Dahlia Alby, except she could not tell whether they were her own.

Melancholy imbued her flesh and bones, forcing an eruption of salted streams which glided across Dahlia’s face. Her shrivelled bony fingers extended desperately to the bed side counter, where torn foil bits from pill packets remained. BANGGG!! In her attempt to press the nurse call button, the oxygen supply tube had tangled itself around the bed rail, plunging the green oxygen tank to its disfigurement. At this moment, Dahlia’s oral nasal mask had ceased pumping oxygen to her lungs. The repetitive system of lines displayed on the heart monitor were no longer repetitive, triggering an irregular sequence of persistent and abrupt beeps. Dahlia’s soul was cloaked in torturous anguish, her monstrous white eyes writhing in overwhelming dismay. All that was visible to her sight was the blood red dahlia, sitting rather displeasingly yet delicately in the polished marble vase. They both diminished into transparency.