Night

• Bec Seppings, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2008

And the hell of your eyes and the cracks on your lip and the cold of your breath makes me remember when we were dead.

I am so sick of the pills that make me sit still, turn into Wonderland's Alice. My eyes are wide and a stranger's. My lashes long and dark. Makeup powdered on for perfection, lips full and crimson. Crazy hair. A lip piercing.

Ugly. Beautiful. Red or blue pill. Tall or small. Black, white?
Am I a saint or a monster?
I’m the girl your mother banned from the house.

A whisper.
In a bathroom.
It is my whisper that echoes in the white bathroom of anticipation.
I look to the black scissors that lie in front of me.
A deep breath I should breathe. But my lungs are so filled with terror that I almost forget how to do such a simple act as breathing.

I remember looking to all the hollow faces. The faces of she. Faces lurking in the shadows. They were all searching but with no eyes. Painfully skinny. Beautifully, painfully, skinny. I remember the boy. The boy with blue eyes. The blood. The stairs. The kissing. Death and a new life. I remember it all. No sleep and never ageing. Beauty.

I entice you, I suck you in. My voice, the way I watch. The way I move. I give no name, yet everyone knows my face. Pale in my bathtub. My fire is thin. Skin on skin. Flesh to flesh. Eye to eye.
I may put my hand in your pocket and take your heart.

Would you like to be beautiful? Would you like people to turn green with envy whenever you pass?
I could give you this. I could give you such perfection. Perfection you didn’t even know existed. You could be with me forever and ever. Just give me your neck and all this will be yours. Just one kiss, just one bite. I could take away your pain.