Short - But Not So Sweet - Stories...

Pretty

The purpose of life, or so it seems, is not to live or love, or even to die; but to look pretty. A girl can't express why she feels prettiness is a purpose, but will not feel fulfilled until she feels pretty once more.

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A girl stands, staring at her sorry face in the mirror; the blinding light off the ceiling lamp reflects it's force around the room; a bathroom, both plain and simple, boxed and small. She has plans, quite soon, to leave her safe-haven to enter the nightmarish society of the judgemental outside world, but first, she has to make herself look pretty again. Though her skin is usually flawless, it has seen better days, and inflamed acne nestles itself on her cheeks, given the appearance of a deep scarlet blush. Not even a thick layer of make-up, painted ever so neatly from ear to ear around the whole of her complexion, can hide the small swollen lumps where the cursed spots sit, screaming ugly words into her mind. At least her tired eyes awake as she begins to add black liner from tear duct to tip, then up along her eye lid. The dark mascara bottle does not work so well. Her eye lashes start to turn into single stranded, spider-legs that scurry up and down as she stares again, at her sorry face in the mirror.

There's nothing more she can do with her face; it's a hopeless case, a lost battle, and she knows it all too well. Her lips are too chapped and dry to try and save them and she's sure she didn't have one too many chins yesterday. Her hair is not helping. It used to fall in long golden curls before she decided she wanted straight hair. Society had told her to make her hair straight, and so she did what society had said. Now it sits dead on her head, burnt to its wits, ruined by red dye, in matted clumps of knotted dead ends and fly-away strands. She stares in the mirror again, too frightened to look away.

She feels weak and meagre, but she needs to stay put; stay strong. She needs to make sure she is pretty by the time she leaves to the outside world, beyond the windowless room. The girl picks up a brush with many sharp bristles that are ready for use, and puts it through her hair. At first, knots begin to untangle and snapping pieces of dead hair can be heard. Her hair begins to look pretty. The joy, however, is short lived, for the harder she brushes, closer to the roots, the more dead hair begins to snap and soon large clumps are falling to the ground, leaving exposed skin patches. Parts of her head are now bald. Still, she continues to brush, hard down from her scalp to the split tips that sit by her ribs. The sharp bristles are digging into the skin and start cutting into her head, causing trails of slipping, dark blood to fall down her face, into her eyes and the remains of her hair. Only when all the knots are gone, does she decide to stop. She looks into the mirror again. Her hair is neat with no more knots and the red finally stands out in the same way it did when it was first dyed. Her sorry face still stares back, though now it is dressed in a layer of streaked and dried blood stains.

She finds a dry flannel and wets it ever so slightly before attempting to wipe the stains off of her skin, with little result. The girl thinks of another way to clean herself up, as water doesn't do the job. She ponders on her thoughts as she plays with her fingers which are resting in a white sink, now also stained in blood. Then it comes to her: the bottle of electric blue liquid in front of her, mouthwash with alcohol, strong enough to cure infection in the mouth. If anything could clean properly, this liquid would! She forcefully pulls the lid off the glass bottle before placing the plug into the sink. Then she empties the whole bottle and plunges her face into it, her eyes wide open. She uses her blood covered hands to wipe her cheeks and forehead hard, making sure the marks have gone before releasing herself from the pool of, now murky, brown liquid with a strange hint of blue.