There were popcorn kernel chunks of skin from her hand scattered among the shards of broken mirror on the ground. She looked down, not at her mutilated hand, but rather at one exclusive triangle of cracked mirror. The one with the smudge. The one that started this whole thing.
The first punch she threw at the mirror created a spider web. The second punch repeated in same spot, bloomed a red rose. The little reflective knives were now pointing towards her. Still, she threw a third and shaved off parts of herself onto the ground. And her assault would go on for quite a while.
The shard with the smudge held her reflection. Christine was furious. She was mostly a bag of bones, her clothes hung on her like a coat rack, but she still carried a rage bigger than her body. She wore a yellow floral blouse and yellow track runner pants, her unkempt electrocuted blonde hair tied up by a yellow bandana. Her eyes were dilated black, her teeth about to crack under her jaw pressure, and she shook ever so slightly. Her vibrations grew. Then, a scream so loud, the dead were awoken.
She stood there in her home a shadow of her former self. Hopes and dreams gone. Her swan-like grace, her goddess face, and creamy milk skin that used to glow like beach sunshine. A figure skater. An Olympian, even if as a backup. A model. Never paid, but an art model nonetheless. Still she had recognizable beauty, the kind your grandfather understands, unaware of it, but beauty that should have been protected. Pure and innocent like a flower. Elven features like the fairies of the forest. Big cat eyes, green like the trees. Her face a perfect oblong, a sharp nose directly centered, lips full with pearl teeth, and deep eyebrows always angled like wings of a sailing bird. That is no longer the person in this room.
Christine was in the guest room, which is closest to the backyard of her ragged green and purple Victorian home, which also means the room closest to her neighbors' ear shot. A swing hung from the largest branch of the oak tree in the backyard and had there been a child using it they could see right into that window. They would witness the entire thing. Underneath the guest room window in the backyard was her impeccable garden, hoping to shield the scene from onlookers with its beauty. A garden grown by spite and hate. The first row sunflowers, the second peach tulips, the third purple azaleas. Christine would spend time in her garden to get away from him. She spent hours precision trimming with the tiniest of scissors. Many of her "snips" are not even aimed, often cutting at air. It was just nonsense motions to occupy her, helping to hold in her screams. Each snipping sound there to reset her rage. But she knew never to indulge in the act of cutting in the same vicinity as her husband. Some day she feared, things like that may trigger her around him. And triggers? She already had many of those.
The guest room was a disorienting perfect cube, but Christine liked it. This kept everything even. She didn't keep a bed in there (since she never allowed guests) only four storage cabinets with doors that swung open, one on each wall, all filled to the brim with cleaning supplies. Each cabinet was part of a system, a meticulous method so deep, it needed soul sucking effort to maintain. She had broken mirror number four. The mirrors hung on the right side of each cabinet. An art piece hung on every left. Christine had broken the mirror of the cabinet between the two windows to the backyard. Twin rays of sunshine gleamed through the windows both joining together as a spotlight of mockery highlighting the mirror she just shattered.
In an effort to finally clean up, Christine gathered the pieces of the frame first. She grouped those in one pile. She then sorted the shards of the mirror by shape. Triangles, diamonds, squares, and rectangles. It would take the better part of an hour just to finish sorting. From her "dry" cleaning closet she grabbed a blue broom and blue dust pan. Each pile was scooped and tossed in its own garbage bag, the four bags were lined up, in ascending size order, in a line against the wall by the entrance to the room.
The blood was to be handled next. From the chemicals closest she pulled various cleaning liquids. Then onto the disinfectants (they're different). She exhausted every bottle type she had on hand just to be safe. And after she rubbed out any sign of sin on that floor she stood up and rested her hands on her waist. She hears a sound. There was something behind her.
Another pile of broken mirror.
Christine notices it in her reflection. And when she turns around to confront it, the whole room is filled with shattered mirror. She looks down at her feet and she is now waist high in razor sharp glass.
She shuts her eyes to soothe herself. It was her husband's footsteps that she heard. But the wrong kind. The heavy set kind. Footsteps with shoes still on. Bringing the dirty world into her home. Sidewalk sludge. Moldy carpet scrapings. Worst of all, people dander, oh the places they have been...And Christine has told him to leave his shoes at the door fourteen thousand, five hundred and thirty two times to this day. Of course she counted.
Her husband still doesn't get it, he doesn't listen.
Why doesn't he ever fucking listen to me?
YOU ARE READING
Pristine
HororChristine is a perfectionist. This started with pressure from her father, and has festered since. It grew into an obsession tumor in her brain that rubbed her signals haywire. She fought to major success. But now the same anxieties that pushed her...
