Lacuna

• Kexin Chen, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2021

The sun was setting in dusky flecks of amber shavings, bright ash settling down into a thin layer on the horizon. It filtered through the window, swirling into dust, illuminating the room with a rufescent glow. It made the space welcoming, immersive- a place too far apart from the blank miasma of hopelessness.
She stared intensely at the mirror, disfigured cracks attached to the corners like spiderwebs- imperfect, broken, and beautiful. Words rolling almost too effortlessly off her tongue, forming sentences laced delicately with a bitter coat of remorse. She hastily rearranged her features into a melancholic expression as she repeated the same lines, over and over again.

The words pleaded innocence, concealed carefully under artificial sincerity and empty compassion. Orchestrated to comply with a dolorous and repetitive tale of enormity, one which she brutally manipulated to satisfy her portentous yet sinister desires. After all, innocence is just a matter of perspective, and remaining innocent corresponds to remaining ignorant.
She made an intentional mistake; she is now suffering the consequences, but she doesn’t regret it.
Or maybe she does, she sacrificed a lifetime of emancipation and tranquillity for evanescent relief, to relish in momentary superiority. She had tainted her hands with impure substances for the bittersweet taste of vengeance, for the transitory agony derived from someone she spent her entire existence abhorring.
She had, in that tiny space of time, disavowed her future for her past, almost willingly, irrationally. Her personal vendetta mercilessly blinded her vision, clouded her judgment until she could no longer see past her individual enmity. Her ironic facade sinking deeper until it became intertwined with her authentic features, gradually becoming the real face of her judgments. It had sentenced a man to eternal punishment, ruthless agony, helpless trepidation, the entity called death. All within the expanse of her own liberation, of her own future, of a life free from trepidation and perturbation.

But regret was too late, ultimately, what she might regret now is what she once desired the most.

A cacophony of shrill sirens and distant tyre sounds resonated across her front yard, a mixture of blue and red splattered almost artistically over her creamy beige walls. Dawn had long rested, the cardinal radiance that once accompanied her replaced by a darkened hue. It spread across the sickly pale walls, sneaking in every crack of the room, until the only visible light source commenced in a small obstinate candle.
She waited, humans are creatures of patterns, their habits and instincts form the structures of their cognitive and behavioural process. It was any time now; she just had to remain patient.
A heavy bang reverberated through the house, distinct shouts followed shortly after demanding intrusion in her own home. She felt something close to hilarity forcefully tug his lips upwards into something ugly and misshapen, an obstreperous laugh escaping her chapped lips. This is it, the moment she's been waiting for.

At that moment she was just calm, she looked outside and saw the snow falling.