Bed of Roses pt 1

She walked hurriedly along the avenue. Through busy streets and crowds of people. The box she held tightly to her chest rattled. Long brown hair blew around her tear stained face. But no tears were falling now. Her dark brown-green eyes have hardened, along with the look on her face. A placid look. A look of no more hurt. The swelling bruise on her face was turning an odd shade of yellow and purple. She seemed to almost run through the streets, and when she could walk no further she stopped on a corner. And waited for the bus coming down the street to her. Once on the bus she paid her fair and quickly found a seat on in the back and there she collapsed. She hunched over the box she had held to tightly and her she cried. Crying silent gut-retching tears.

She had become a horrible person. A person who couldn’t kiss their mother goodnight. Not there she knew where her mother was. Not after the ten year gap of never talking to her. She was sure if she had to she could track the woman down, but not now. And as she had told her once before, not ever.

She had left the home she grew up in, the one that hurt her and caused her to be a broken person, to live with a man she loved.

Love, she thought, What load of shit that was. She snorted to herself and wiped at her tears.


* * *

In the corner their sits a mattress on the floor, bare but for one tangled sheet strewn at the top. Around the bed are empty alcohol bottles. It is morning but through the tall, dirty windows, light barely makes it into the room. There is a tall man standing at the window, a forlorn look marks his boyish features. His dark hair hangs in a shaggy hair style into his dark blue eyes. He has a two-day growth of beard growing on his beautifully chisled jaw line, he seems not to notice. He has the look of a man who lost something. And a bit of a childlike features remind us of a boy who is hoping that his lost dog will come home. He watches the busy city, busses, cars, people, all doing something, going somewhere. People yell and horns honk, minutes tick off on his watch. But he watches on still. Unaware that time and life itself is passing him by.

His mind is off thinking of brighter days.

Mornings he woke up with her in his arms. He used to lie with his arms around her and watch her sleeping for hours. Her with her silky soft brown hair tickling his chest.

As this memory creeps through his brain it plucks at his heart strings, and the tears come.

He falls to his knees and in a groan he speaks on word, “Anne.”

* * *

She walks down the steep staircase, her boots making clicking noises on the marble. She walks determidily down the hall wall, the floor beneath her slants downwards and she finds herself in the train station. As she walks up to the counter, the clerk smiles at her.

In the back of her mind she grimaces. She didn’t want to think of how happy other people wore. She wanted to soak in her misery. Alone. In the depths of utter despair. “Can I help you?” The clerk asks, oh so innocently.


She sits on a train bound of the happiest place she could remember from her very messed up childhood. The middle of nowhere. And nowhere he could find her.

* * *

Smoke fills the room around him, as he sits on the edge of the mattress, his legs brought up to him, an arm around them. He takes a drag on his cigarette. He blows the smoke out of his mouth, the way people spit out dirty words.

He had never given up smoking, to all her begging. He was glad he didn’t. Happy in fact. If he had, how else would he spend his time.

She’ll be back, he kept kept repeating to himself. But no matter how hard he tried, their was a thought he couldn’t entirely push out of his mind.

She’s never coming back.

That wasn’t so bad, but it was what the voice said next that scared him.

EVER.

Ever meant always. And for as long as he would allow his mind to play back memories, she’d been there. He would be lost without her. And if she didn’t come back, he’d find her. He would track her down and find her. And then he’d bring her back here to live with him.

She’d be sorry she’d ever left, he thought to himself.