Dark Places

The Glass

She looked deep into the mirror, wondering...

The wrinkles. Are they really as bad as they look? Laughter lines, surely, though she couldn't remember anything being THAT funny. The hair. A little tug here, a little push there. Thankful that red hair doesn't really go grey. A pout of the lips, the two cigarettes a day not enough to make the pout look like a crater, all ridged and rough.

The ear rings. A bit too much, really. She never, ever wore large hoops like that usually. She didn't even know why she had them in today. Why not? The same reason she wore the simple white training shoes instead of the heels. The jogging suit rather than the black trousers or skinny jeans she favoured.

Dress Down Day. She tried to have one every month, a cure for the chaos of her life. Work, no rest and very little play. Without her DDDs, she felt she'd go insane. A break. A breath. Chance to scratch her behind without feeling she was wiping everyone else's.

So. Why not the hoops. A little much, but still, not the small plain studs she felt she was required to wear.

Some habits were hard to break. The hair for example. She regarded herself in the mirror. It was just too set. Too right. With a sigh she pulled the grips holding the perfect bun in place.

"Stop it," she muttered to herself. "Dress DOWN day!"

She smiled. She had a pretty smile, she thought. Her eyes still sparkled at the rise of her mouth, just as they did a good twenty years or so before. She'd never lost the sparkle.

She picked up an elastic hair bobble from the dressing table by her side and scooped her hair back. A simple pony tail. Why not.

"You'll do," she told her mirror-self.

She turned and walked to the door, picking up her phone on the way. It was also her mp3 players and library, thanks to the music and eReader apps she'd installed. A run, a read and a relax. Perfect for a Triple D.

Her hand was on the door. Something was troubling her. A niggle nudging at the back of her mind like a kitten wanting a bowl of milk.

She turned back to the room, scanning across it. The usual mess of discarded clothes and shoes covered the floor, an assault-course of attire that made getting to the bed in the dark a dangerous undertaking. The bed itself had once been made. The quilt had been straightened and the cushions set out so it looked like an oasis in a sea of insanity. That once was roughly about six months previously. Apart from a casual tidy when the bedding was changed, the bed did its very best to match the rest of the room.

She liked to call it 'lived in.'

Nothing was out of place. Rather, everything was out of place, which meant it was all IN place. She shrugged.

She opened the door. Normally, she'd walk along the short corridor, picking up her keys from the wooden bowl on the small table along the way. She'd grab a coat if necessary (which it wouldn't be today as the one day of summer a year had decided today, you lucky people, was the day), and she'd be out of the front door.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to what she was seeing, and a longer moment still for her mind to adjust to what she wasn't.

Then she vomited. The remains of her breakfast, cereal and toast washed down with a tepid tea, were launched into the corridor. Or what was meant to be the corridor. What was supposed to be. What she remembered it being.

But what was actually...

It started off fine. The big, brash patterned wallpaper. The chrome light switch not quite seated correctly so it clung to the wall at a slightly skew-whiff angle. For a foot or two, anyway.