Mascara

07 Casket Pretty

The wine was sour and sharp but they kept drinking. He lay behind her stroking her hair and face with his index finger as he stared outwards into something else: an image. They lay on a sofa of soft brown velvet, and though they were young their heads were filled with terribly grown up thoughts. She turned her head out of the bright sunlight and into shade while her eyes followed up from the floor staring at the grand conservatory where she lay unable to move. It was their tomb.

As she reached down for her flute once more she knocked the glass onto the clean stone floor, its lip chipped but everything else held together, just weaker now. In the red puddle, she propped the glass back up and poured herself some more before sipping it thoroughly. She closed her eyes but did not sleep. The thoughts in her head were too loud for her to move away so she spent this time trapped on the inside of her own eyelids. Isabella saw a girl dressed in a pink gown grasping lilies - she knew the girl. She was more beautiful than she ever remembered her being and she was asleep too, tucked into a wooden bed with her legs dressed in delicate sheets of wispy blue. Isabella sensitively opened her eyes and sipped more wine.

Milo held his arm around Isabella and held her in closer. The smell of charred oak from her hair brought him closer in and he could do nothing but strengthen his embrace. In front of them was a tower of red and white roses winding round sets of trellises. He too had that image of a girl that he knew. This one was similar but less beautiful with dirt on her face and muddied clothes. She had cracked lips and in her eyes she held a look of wilted endearment that wrapped itself around Milo. He buried the image in more wine.

By the time the water from the fountain stopped moving they had finished the bottle. The sky turned a marigold yellow and the moribund dreams of the boy and the girl on that sofa turned into frayed ignorance. Isabella turned herself inwards and kissed Milo on his cheek a few times, but between each one she stared at his face and smiled jocosely. Though he would sometimes look back at her, he was set on remembering a story that lingered in his head. He knew there was a boy and a song and though the notes could almost form and play a melody they fell away like a pile of leaves swept away by wind. He giggled as he gave up all effort in thinking and he swung his leg around Isabella. They fell asleep soon after.

When they had just awoke, it had just turned dark and the porch lights shone through the sheets of glass. They felt tight in their heads and heaviness in their eyes. Milo had dreamt of the boy and the song very quickly and they left soon after, leaving him with nothing else but the dirty girl. As the wine settled that buried girl was taken out of a casket and raised out of the ground and was lying there in front of him with her mouth ajar. He looked at her and she looked back at him with the same sorry look that grew into him. The sullen gaze woke him up and he thought to wake Isabella up too.

Isabella had seen the same girl she had known. It was only when the clarity of sobriety came wandering back to her that the beauty of the girl came to unsettle her. For her to only be so beautiful in that last moment where she slept and awaited a service and nevermore - Isabella both envied that beauty and realised its impossible circumstances and felt sick with herself. She felt terrible but it was only when she was awoken was she in any way released from this marsh within her.They both got up and neatened their clothes before walking down the steps from the sofa, along the beds of colourful flora and out of the tall doors into the garden where they continued to walk around the large plot of primly decorated land. They walked through their fatigue and only stopped when their legs ached and heads hurt too much. The puddle of wine continued to thin out over the clean stone floor.