Linger: A Novelette

Daphne

I walk into the room- or a least I think I did. I didn't even feel my feet move. I'm suffocating! The walls moving in all around me. My feet and hands feel numb and can't stop trembling. "Oh God, I can't even breathe!"

I snap myself out of it and steady myself against the walls. I don't know if I can support myself without the wall but after a few contemplating minutes fly by I attempt to move away on my own. Walking forward, I lean on rows of chairs, gripping them if I begin to feel light-headed and dizzy. Finally, I reach the front of the room.

I feel sick to my stomach. "Why did I even bother to come?" I bite my quivering lip. "Just peek and go." I will myself even further and up the stairs of the blood red velvet covered stage.

"Who are you?"

I whirl around, silently grateful for the interruption of a young girl's voice.

Or at least I thought it was a young girl's voice, but in fact, it belonged to a fragile middle-aged woman.

"I-I." I stutter. "I'm s-sorry."

I meant the last part more out of guilt but the woman didn't seem to notice. She just slowly walked up the bloody velvet steps and sighed when she reached the edge of the white roses. I kept my eyes trained on her glossy black pumps. When she finally spoke she sounded tired as though just walking up the steps was exhausting in itself.

"It's a horrible thing isn't it?" She said it more as a statement than a question to be answered.

"Yes, it is." I speak so softly I barely hear myself.

The woman doesn't answer she just instead walks past the white roses up to the bouquet of black ones.

I lift my eyes off the floor and look up to the study the ceiling. Beautiful crystal chandeliers hang from the wooden sky. A fool might mistake the dropping crystal glass as priceless diamonds. The flawless sight blurs as I stare and look back down at the carpet. A lone tear escapes and trails down my probably blotchy face.

The woman's fragile voice reminds me she's here.

"Did you know him?"

I glance up for a second. Her eyes are empty and hollow like that of a dead corpse. The woman has deathly beauty though. Her honey blond hair is thick and silky- I can tell even though it's pinned up in a tight bun. Her skin is flawless and if not for the situation would be glowing. The fine line that her lips make is a natural pink and I'll bet the teeth behind them perfectly white. But her eyes. I couldn't look at her eyes, they were too much like his.

The woman and everything in the room begins to spin. The walls, as previously before, begin to start closing in and collapsing around me. The weight of it all seemingly trapping me and crushing me under it.

The woman steps away from the wall of roses over to where I'm barely able to continue standing. She leans forward to press against my ear. She speaks in a cold whisper. The scent of her like the scent of him.

"I'll leave you alone now. It's a horrible thing, isn't it? Death."

I drop to my knees and fight to hold back tears that are gradually building behind my eyes. The full force of everything now crashing in.

I stay there until I hear the sound of the heavy mahogany doors slam shut. I am all alone. The sounds of low, hushed whispers that the small handful of people generated was now gone. The stillness surrounds me. It isn't a peaceful quiet, it wasn't even an eerie silence, it was as if time had stopped. Like beyond this room nothing else existed.