Blue Glass

Trickery

Trigger Warning: Slight implications of self harm; if that's something you're uncomfortable with, please skip this chapter (or only read the parts that don't involve the self harm)! Thanks, and enjoy :))

I never thought I would take Alois up on his offer to meet for a second time.

Still, oddly enough, I found myself rising early that morning to iron a new dress for myself, and for the first time in years, I spent more time fixing my hair.
For the first time in a long time, I looked in the mirror, and when I did, I saw a woman, not a killer.
That Svetlana noticed this change was an understatement to say the least. After our first meeting, Alois had insisted that he walk me home, despite me not wanting him to see my house, or even the street I lived on. But no matter what I said to him, he wouldn't let it go, so I reluctantly threaded my arm through his and let him lead the way. My acquiescence had resulted in a huge smile spreading across his face, like a young boy getting a new train set at Christmastime. It almost made me want to smile back. But then, almost as if my brain was reminding me to feel guilty, the thought of Manfred flitted across my mind, so I didn't.

No sooner had Alois handed me up the stairs to my front door, give a tiny bow, and hurry off into the fading twilight, did Svetlana whip the door open and yank me inside with such force that a jolt of pain shot through my shoulder. She steered me over to the upholstered chair we kept near the door. Seeing that chair always made me want to laugh. Back when my mother used to have guests, she would always direct the more elderly ones to sit on the chair. They would smile in appreciation and tell her how prudent she was for leaving such a comfortable chair near the door. Every time that happened, I wanted to tell them that the chair was actually the last piece of furniture my father had left behind; that he had dragged it down the stairs by himself while my mother stood leaning against the wall, her face ashen and her eyes bloodshot from crying. What my father didn't realize was that the chair couldn't be pushed through the door without dismantling it first, and he had neither the tools nor the time to do so. So after spewing string after string of oaths, he rushed out the door, leaving the chair behind. I had rushed up the stairs to watch from the window of my room as he walked down the street, the suitcase he clutched in his hand knocking against his shins. When I came downstairs, I found my mother sitting in the chair, staring at the wall opposite her as if in a trance. A half-finished bottle of vodka lay on its side at her feet, the clear liquid pooling around her toes.

"Who was that?" Svetlana had asked me excitedly as I rubbed my shoulder, wincing. "Who was that?"

"No one, Svetlana," I had snapped, more out of exhaustion than annoyance. "He's just someone I met in the park."

She would keep asking me questions, and I would deflect them until I could deflect them no longer, at which point I would tell her to leave me alone and go up to my room, leaving her standing at the foot of the stairs. Thankfully, she never followed me up. 

I had thought many times to just leave Alois hanging. Who was he, anyway, that I should humor him and go on small excursions with him, walking and talking with him like we were old friends, like I was someone worth knowing? But even as I changed out of my day clothes into my comfortable nightdress, even as I slid beneath the covers of my bed, a small, incessant voice at the back of my head told me that I needed to get up early to iron the dress I would wear to see him the next day. 

Probably the only thing that made meeting Alois bearable was that he never asked me to say much. Either he assumed I wasn't talkative and wanted to put me at ease, or he just liked to hear himself talk. I would only latch onto the conversation if he said something interesting, which seldom happened. For some reason, I found myself waiting for the day he would decide I was uninteresting and not worth his time, and go find some other girl to keep him company. But he kept asking to meet me, time and time again, until I finally realized that shaking him would be a lot harder than i thought.
I didn't want any other man to take an interest in me. I was supposed to be waiting patiently for Manfred to notify me when he was back in Germany so I could come up with an excuse to go see him. We were supposed to get married—how could we not, after all we'd done?
But the more time I spent with Alois, the harder I found it to ignore him. I couldn't ignore the way his eyes shone with sincere happiness every time he saw me. At first it confused me—why was this man so persistent in spending so much time with me? Once or twice, I even let the indifferent, uninterested facade i hid behind drop, and laughed at his jokes and told him stories and anecdotes. But afterwards, I felt guilty. Would he still look at me the same way if he knew the things I had done?
I lived in a state between euphoria and guilt, between sorrow and happiness, punctuated by Svetlana's all too apparent desire to see me turn this budding friendship into something more. She pestered me about Alois' family, his job, his hobbies, and I gave her the information she wanted—I might have been a terrible talker, but I was a good listener. From the rambling way Alois tended to go on sometimes, I didn't think there was anything I didn't know about him or hadn't heard about him.