She was born on a rainy day, and died in the midday sun.
There was a certain kind of sadness about her, even in life. It was part of her charm, the way her eyes were so wide and dark that they formed a vacuum for the soul of anyone who beheld them, how her gaze was always focused on some distant, unseen place, staring straight through the city for miles. She had that look, that wan and fragile look, that speaks volumes about how a person has lived. It was a look she’d borne since she could walk, and she wore it until that very last sunny day.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in the height of summer, and she was young and broken. The walls of her apartment were shoddy props, serving neither shelter nor solace from the stifling heat- made all the more stifling by an income too low for climate control. There was a flimsy foot-tall fan plugged in next to the couch, but it did little good. She fared much better by opening the refrigerator at intervals, pressing her shoulder against the cold metal strip on the frame and letting the air rush out over her skin. She lived in the kitchen; she cooked, she cleaned, and she cooled. It was her world, ten hours a day, seven days a week, and that day was no different. It seldom is.
But something happened that day, in that kitchen, at nearly a quarter past two o’clock in the afternoon. Something was different, despite the boil of the pot on the stove and the scratching of her pencil on ruled paper and the never-ending beeping of the dead smoke detector that she’d grown so accustomed to as to tune out. Somehow, this day was not the same.
She simply didn’t remember how.
What she did recall was squinting heavenward into a light that was piercing, which seemed to tear right through her, only for it to spin away from her and leave her blind and stumbling. There was a railing which served to help her regain her footing, and she found herself standing there on the pier by the lighthouse. It was not a large lighthouse, she thought, though she’d only seen such structures with her own eyes once upon a long-ago childhood. The building stood in disrepair, clinging to the rocks in desperation lest it crumble into the sea… and yet it remained lit, the only beacon in the dim gloom. Her eyes were drawn to the wooden door- green from either paint or weather, it was difficult to say- above which was nailed a rusted plaque. As she blinked away the aftereffects of the light, she could make out two words in the dessicated metal surface.
POTTER’S FIELD
The wind whipping her hair against her face, she turned, and looked upon a dead city.
Leave a Reply