Dusk

Dawn was watching the sunset from her lounge-room window when she heard the ping of incoming email.

“That was a quick response”, she thought, smiling to herself. “He must have spent the last three days waiting at the screen”.

She took a little more time each morning with her makeup and increasingly chose her clothes for what they concealed rather than what they revealed, but Dawn knew she still had it. She had what he was unable to refuse. None of them could.

She strolled to the bar and mixed a leisurely vodka and lime. There was nobody else in the flat but still she didn’t want to appear too eager. It was a bad habit to get into. A few unhurried sips, a couple of measured steps and she slipped into the chair, grasped the mouse and clicked. This was going to be good. Dawn loved apologies. So long as they were to her, not by her.

Dawn,

I read your message and found nothing in it worth responding to, except to say it reeks of the petty game-playing I’ve come to expect from you.

I am only replying because it seems I haven’t made myself sufficiently clear.

I am no longer interested in having you as a lover.
I am no longer interested in having you as a friend.
I am no longer interested in having you as a house-guest.
I am no longer interested in hearing from you at all.

I’m tempted to wish you success in finding someone more like yourself. But frankly I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Goodbye,
Stephen.

The glass bounced off the table and fell to the carpet, spraying its unheeded contents across her bare legs. That terrible, terrible pain in her guts, like cold, skeletal claws ripping at her fruitless womb. She wanted to scream but her throat had closed as if she was dangling from a noose. She knew she’d lost him. She knew she’d lost something far more important. Something she’d had since high school. Something she’d built her entire existence around.

Her chair joined the glass on the floor as Dawn reeled down the hall and lurched into the bathroom. She started to reach for the light-switch but suddenly threw both hands across her face. It was no use. The slimy bitterness filled her mouth and spurted from her nose. She collapsed across the toilet retching and gasping. She hadn’t raised the lid.

After an eternity of agonies Dawn lifted her sodden head. The last light of the dying day slithered in through frosted glass, revealing the half-clotted muck fouling the floor, her hands, her hair. She turned on the makeup lights and slowly lifted her face to the mirror. Her eyes were red and and empty, the mess of mascara making her a tragic clown. A bloody snail-trail ran from a nostril to her mouth where it combined with lipstick in a smear across her chin. Puke coated rat tails plastered her cheeks. She was ugly, ugly, ugly! And old. So old.

Turn to the cabinet. Her medicine. That would fill the terrifying abyss that had opened inside her. She would need the whole bottle.

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This endearing little elegy was assembled from the fragmented memories of a bad dream. I think the dream was inspired partly by recent blogposts from Maria, Moniba and Maggie McNeill, partly by fears I hold for someone who was once very dear to me and mostly by the pills I’ve been taking lately.