Six too many...

It was almost comical the way she did it; she squinched up her nose in the mirror, rolled her eyes and then pouted her lips in that way fish do, as a ritual calming before she took to the catwalk. Then came the sounds, the carnival tunes, the muffled voices of children's laughter and the glorious feel of the crowds applause: deafening, exciting; but filled with a familiar dread.



Her mother had been queen of the trapeze until that fateful day when she fell to her death. Her own life… Continue

he calls me haunted beauty;

says he's enthralled

by the wisps of hair that

dance around my face.



he wants to run his fingers over

lush lips that look like

they have been kissed before

but he's not quite sure.



he says: 'beautiful'

but haunted

by a tinge of

melancholy.



i wish he just said sadness...

because i am;

so beautiful, so sure, and so sad.



he calls me haunted beauty

and says he is so… Continue

It was crazy to think that she could do it, but it played in her head for ten hours in the darkness. The gleam of silver; the smell of flesh burning. When she finally did it, it seemed all too familiar. First she stabbed him; fourteen times for good measure. Then she burned the bed, and the house around it, so that the memory of the monster could go up in smoke. That's when she saw it: her freedom rising out of the ashes, a victorious phoenix.

He kissed her forehead. It said goodbye. She opened her eyes to a dark room and the sound of the heart monitor beeping. Her vitals were almost okay, but she remembered last night. One minute they were on the highway, singing along to their honeymoon song. Next thing she remembers is the flash of light, the blur of glass and metal, the stench of blood and the white sheet being pulled over his body on the wet tarmac.