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Description
Gathering Gloom

The light changes in this quiet, subtle way, in a way that is only noticeable when there is nothing left to live for at all.  When the mind has finally shut down and the world seems to swirl away from you, the light shifts into something much more beautiful.  The light followed her across the room, across the world, across the street to the place in the park where she used to go and smoke, where the street lamp would warp and change the world through the haze of her daily needs.  The lamp shut off at eleven exactly but she hardly ever left with the light.  It wandered home without her and she pulled her lighter from the depth of her bag, letting the pages fall loose over the hard plastic bench above the ground.  Her life lain out in ink and ash.  But she was happy then and the world seemed a safer place, a place where no comes to take you away and parents love each other as much as one's child's heart loves God.  The street light went off at eleven and she pulled her lighter from her bag, letting the pages fall around her on the hard plastic bench above the ground.  She found a section and burned a hole along the line with the end of her cigarette, wondering if there was a way to publish stories with little cigarette burns on the page.  If there was a way to make the reader understand what it meant to burn away words from one's own work.  There is no way, she exhaled slowly, watching the darkness eat her drag, there is no way to gain that knowledge without coming to it your self.  And she wondered silently, the walk home always slower than she wanted how much one must come to alone to understand.
The dust gathered in the corner and around the edges of the bath.  She watched it swirl, watched its movement flow away from her like leaves in the fall.  Leaves on the short walk home, across the street across the lawn across the hall where books were more than fairy tales and she lost her will to read.  They stole her lighter and her cigarettes and her ability to think.  They boxed her up in windowed rooms with human smells and human tastes and nothing but leaves and dust.  The leaves fluttered out and away and up, trying to return home.  But once alone, the world will not take you back.  Will not let you cling back on to the edges of society.  The park filled with children and leaves and the hard plastic bench didn't welcome her and she lost a notebook beneath the wood chips and the words drifted away.  The cigarette burns and the lost words and knowledge of burning your own work lost to time, flowing away on the movement of season change like dust motes on the floor of the uncleaned, unloved bathroom.  The light shifted and the dust motes floated up and away.
And the water cooled.  The waves settled over the rim and the line of soap scum seemed to drift away.  Her skirt floated in the cooling, green water like blue rimmed ice flows.  Nothing quite like winter in the coldest part of the world.  The pond froze up and the hard plastic bench became cold and hard and plastic and the notebook resurfaced but the words were gone.  They had been stolen by the water and the time and the cigarette burns had leapt off the pages and onto her arms.  The cold made her cold and the lighter kept her warm and she shivered in the park with nothing but a cigarette burn and a razor in her pocket.  And the paths iced over and the walk became treacherous and she wondered how long before someone found her if she died amid the cold.  The warm bed in the warm house with the cold parents who slept in separate beds on different floors in different houses didn't bring her heart above the freezing point, where love melts and fills the body.  Love was trapped within the frozen lining of her heart and her arteries because an ice flow.  The light cast shadows on the wall and the dust motes settled and the water froze.
And the blood flowed and filled the water and the minutes passed with each beat of her heart and finally she remembered what it felt like to write her life in ink and burns.  The skin turned pale and the water turned red and the blood skirt sunk further into the cooling water.  And she watched the light shift and she saw the dust settled and she knew it was done.  Knew the answer to all her questions, to all the things she had ever thought, to all stories.  There was an ending and a time and the blood swirled out from her and filled the bath and  flooded the floor and the dust mixed with blood and just before she exhaled she wondered how long it would take for someone to find her.