In her old age, it seemed her face was slowly dissolving due to the frequency her younger self infused her skin with plastic and the infrequency her older self didn’t. She was a dumpy woman with features that made passerbys inclined to stare directly at her or firmly in a much, much different direction. The attraction to her features was derived from the sublime interest in how the rich become poor. It happened here and there, as it was a city that took just as much as it gave, but her case was particularly severe, and, therefore, particularly interesting. Down in Los Angeles a fallen idol, with their ineffective Botox and attempts at returning to their prime, was the gossip that people loved. She loathed them all. She sat, squarely on a limp box on a corner of a seedy street shouting—proclaiming—her legacy, but she was hurt on the inside; emotions from years passed were stirring and mixing and amplifying: she longed for the days before her husband had ruined her, before she was forced into this life, and, then, she saw it. Across the street, a newspaper in a window. Lennan Brookes—her husband—was engaged. That repugnant bastard! He turned her away for another? As if she were the trash she’s been forced to share a bed with? Does her not remember how irreplaceable she is? Long ago when they first met, things were different and he would have never dared to disrespect her like so.
Narcissa used to radiate an alluring aura that pulled people in. And one day, when she was being driven through a wealthy neighborhood, she noticed a house that was as enthralling as she was. It was hidden gem hiding behind a full garden-forest. The house itself was opulent with ceilings that careened towards the skylights in a positively wealthy manner. She stopped the car, and approached the door, desperate to know who lived there. With a knock, the door opened and she looked at the man in front of her—her future husband—and then back at the house. His style reflected the house, and the house, his style. He questioned her appearance at first, but he was pulled to her as her him. He invited her inside and that was the beginning. The first thing he told her was how his father had made this house as a debut for his architectural abilities. He had infused it his very being, poured his heart, mind, and soul to this house to ensure that he would, and his family would, be rich beyond measure and live in the lap of luxury. That this house would fit perfectly within the view of the hills in one direction and the Los Angeles city skyline in the other. The house would eventually become Narcissa’s, and it would fall with Narcissa into disordered decay disregarded by society through the same spite that Narcissa has lived with through her life. But, as of now, she looked at the man in front of her and she felt divine opportunity course through her. With him, with his money, with this house, she could have everything she wanted. She glided through the house like an entitled queen through her country. She greedily consumed the room around her. She was blinded with the overwhelming feeling of success. She had done it. She had obtained the life she wanted.
But, as she would later find out Narcissa didn’t obtain the life she wanted because that picturesque perfection only lasted so long. And now she is here, on a corner, full of stories and fat and nothing of worth for society. Since a few days past, the news of his wedding has haunted her. She recalled her youth and tried to pull it back to her, desperately she wanted to the return to the days where her only expectations were youth and beauty, she wanted the days where she could easily attain that standard, instead of now, where she looked as grotesque as she felt in polyester pants and a tourist shirt. She saw herself reflected in a window. Her face had failed her, and got her stuck here. With her once voluptuous, now fat lips. Her wrinkle free forehead that now bunches unnaturally. Once more, she was filled to the brim with ignoble indignation. She deserved better.
It was her fifth doctor’s appointment of the month. The surgeries weren’t taking as well as they used to, and her body wasn’t bouncing back as well as it should. She thought to herself amid the other housewives in the waiting room, “Is this the depraved condition of those stuck in the purgatory of middleagedness? Must I hang in this ailment right above the fall of beauty?” She was disgruntled. At the call of her name, she glided, a little less smoothly than she did in her true youth, into the office. There, she was poked and prodded with the eventual portent that she was aging, and her regular visits would soon become void. At the doctors words, she crumpled in on herself like the old lady she would soon become she thought back to the house, her pride, her symbol of what she’d become; she thought back to her husband and how he would hate her in years to come, she thought of the deep-set shame of her mother and grandmother before her—how has she let herself deteriorate like so? She could barely handle the dishonor. So she packed up he bags, and left the office.
As she shuffled through the dirty streets of Los Angeles, she tried to find her old forgotten home that was so tangibly connected to her husband, while recounting her fall from grace. Her once well-admired self is now completely lost, just as the doctors foreshadowed. Once she was expelled from her home, her garden, she broke her rules of health and fell into complete despair. She snarled and growled at those who came too near to her. She wanted to protect them from her horrendous visage. But, as she pulled in on herself from the people, an outcast in her own right, she remembered something.
At her home perched gently on a small hill amidst a quiet enclosure of nature, she sat in the parlor awaiting her husband. The door opened quietly and the man himself floated in. He had had a good day, it seemed. He approached her and took her by the hand, kissing her gently. At this point, her cheeks were tight, firm, and rosy—as was the rest of her. She was on the brink of death in her own mind. However, her husband noticed nothing wrong, and prattled on about this and that. Previously, Narcissa thought it was now that she told him of her misfortune and he immediately dispelled her from the premises, except now she thinks a different occurrence happened.
Narcissa stopped to a halt in the crowds of the drunkenly to truly think, a feat that was not common in her life. She had avoided reminiscing over this memory for years now, but looking at it now, she realizes she might have changed the story.
Her husband offered her dinner that he had ordered to be delivered and talked to her a bit more. At the end of his debriefing of the day, he came close and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Cissa, are you alright, you seem a bit…off?”
With a coquettish smile that was more suited to someone twenty years her junior, she said in her most ignorant and breathy voice, “I’m alright as ever, thank you” and that was that.
It had not been that she had been kicked out, but in the dead of the night, she took what she could carry and slipped out of the front door, trying to escape a confrontation that would shame her even more. Part way down the driveway she looked up in awe. The house was large with multiple stories. It had peaks and valleys and roofs that flowed with the swirling clouds in the sky. It was a masterpiece of modern invention with a flare of the decadence of past ages. It was a magical mystery to those who see its noble stature situated in the most humble of ways.
Narcissa looked at it now, in the same spot she did years ago. And she felt a long buried emotion bubbling up to the surface. She still loved her husband, more so now that she knows she left him. With the love in her heart doubled, and the shame tripled, she scrounged more for memories of her love and happiness. When she left the house, her husband left too. He couldn’t bear to live there without her. And the house reflected his pain. It intricate frame had fallen in places. And the Windows that went from the floor to the ceiling were cracked and barely transparent. The garden of exotic flowers and trees had turned to nasty weeds and infested the building with their spindly leaves. The dusk light backlight the house and revealed the holes in the walls and the murky dust that clung to its outer shell. She felt at home here. The house used to bring her peace because she was entitled to that affluence, but now she is entitled to the rotted decay it had become.
She breathed deeply, not minding that she pulled other bits of things into her lungs other than air, and listened to the cadence that the house and all its creatures has created. She had stepped in closely to her house and put her forehead to a cracked glass pane. However, what she heard a few moments later was not the nostalgia of her home, but a delicate laugh. With ferocity unknown to her, she whipped around to locate the source. Walking up the driveway was her husband and a pretty young thing on his arm. They hadn’t noticed her, but she saw them clearly. Once more, Narcissa was enveloped by her shame and her anger, she was a maelstrom of emotion that could not be stopped—she thought back to everything she had sacrificed for him, and everything she’s gone through, and with an explosion of her fury she hit the glass window to her right and watched it break and crumble. With that one moment of pure undiluted energy, each window cracked and broke like a chain of dominoes. The happy couple had finally noticed Narcissa, but it was too late. Inspired by her pain and the image of the dilapidated house shattering, she picked up a long, thick piece of glass and charged at the woman who had no right to fulfill that gap she had created. Tears, for the first time in a while, burned her cheeks and assaulted her tongue as she screeched her war cry. A few feet away from her victim, she raised the shard high above her head and plunged it into the chest with a final sob. She rubbed the tears from her eyes to see what she had done, and saw, not the innocent face of lady, but the face of her dear husband. His warbled, dying breath punctured her heart as the realization of her mistakes flooded her, and this time the pain was unbearable. Her heart beat powerfully twice and then seized, Narcissa fell adjacent to her love and died with him.
Short Stories
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A combination of love, jealousy, guilt, and regret throughout. I really enjoyed reading this story. The depth of description of the house, how Narcissa feels as well as a brief look at her past make this short love story very entertaining and intriguing for the reader. Great job and great writing!