Leaving an Image for the Blinded

I met Liz on the London tube one Tuesday morning, the only day I had to be up early for college. She was a wedding photographer and I was a student at Goldsmiths, studying drama of course. I just had to be seen on a large scale by anyone and everyone and so once Stefan had suggested it to me, I was all over it. The doors were making an absolute racket beside where I sat and I really couldn’t wait to get off. Nothing irritated me more than an ugly noise in an otherwise calm environment. I fidgeted with the zippers of my jacket as I waited and waited, getting that feeling you got in the doctor’s office when you knew bad news awaited you behind the wooden door pulled shut in your face as he talked to your mother about suitable medications. Once she’d eyed me as many others had in the past, that brilliant smirk formed across my lips and I approached her. She’d liked me instantly, as I’d expected, and once finding she was a photographer I couldn’t help but think it was due to the fact that I was rather pretty, if I do say so myself.

It was probably all that time I spent in the early hours of the morning, or afternoon – whichever best suited me at the time, making myself look the best of the lot. I woke up that morning and took a look out the grimy flat window, watching the parade of umbrellas below my feet, clearing a spot on the window with my sleeve to get a better look at the faces. Miserable, but that was to be expected. The sun was still too bright for my eyes to handle at that hour, it being a morning I’d woken on this time around, and so I was forced to look away and found the shower instead. The tiles were the same dirty colour as the streets below, and some even had the cracks as the pavement had. I’d broken a few the night Nancy and I had a party in the tiny bathroom and I dropped a champagne bottle but if anyone would ask, it was like that when I arrived. I couldn’t afford to pay for the damages I was responsible for, being a college student and all. I could still see that chewing gum I’d placed there as I couldn’t find a bin and it’d long since lost its flavour. I wondered if these companies made gum like that on purpose so you were forced to open another pack every 5 minutes, but I didn’t know a lot about business. I’d have to remember to ask Stefan the next time I saw him. He knew things like that.

I finally got to the bathroom where I undressed in front of the mirror I’d so come to loathe as the time had passed with me living in that flat, with me seeing everything in it for what it was and eventually, even myself. If you stop to think about something for too long you start to pick it apart thread by thread until you’ve no fabric left to work with but the pieces at your feet. And well, I didn’t like that one bit, as the pieces I found of myself were that of my vanity, shame and ignorance to address the matter at hand so I kept myself together, looking away from the traitorous mirror and jumping inside the shower.

My skin had started to produce goose bumps I noticed as my hands ran over my skin and so I guess I was staring at that reflexion for quite some time. There were dark red trails down the left side of my torso, a small reminder of when her skin had been against my own. I turned slightly to the right, distinct bite marks trailing along my hip. I remembered these to be his. I remembered the sting as I ran my fingers over them, but it was the kind of pain I enjoyed. I’m not a sadist I don’t think, or at least I try not to let it worry me. I always think of those people as too extreme, or something, as a part of that group always striving to be different. Not that I’ve met anyone like that before but if I did, they’d be sure to be that type. I think there was someone else too, perhaps another girl, but she hadn’t left an image in my mind and I had no time for people like that, people that didn’t leave me with an image I could adore in the morning to come. It was the only thing that kept me going, really, through all the selfish love I’d done and the pills and the alcohol and the sweat I woke with still sticking to my skin - I could still smell it on my body. It was probably more in my hair now that I thought about it but I never bothered washing it and she didn’t seem to notice this as she talked with me briefly, just long enough to exchange numbers and a kiss on the cheek.

My eyes caught my reflexion again later that same day and I wondered to myself why I’d become so pale. I got that from my father’s side, couldn’t exactly say I thanked him for it. My ribs protruded my chest a little more than the average human being’s might, I noticed, as my top was pretty tight fitting. I’d got it from a market way back in high school and it’d been my favourite shirt since as the girl linked at my hand told me I looked great in it. She had a good figure and somehow always knew what to wear. I can’t recall her name but if you wanted to know anything about fashion she was the girl to go to. I tried to smile at the reflexion I’d found in the window of the sweet shop and although he smiled right back at me, he didn’t feel it as he should. You could somehow tell. It was in every feature, every line, every wrinkle; it was in everything he was. If I’m going to be perfectly honest with you I’m a mess, but I won’t be so readily admitting that out loud now. I’m a classic example that beauty is only skin deep, yet no one could tell this from a simple glance. It seemed everyone would judge me by my skin, which of course I had no problem with.

I continued on my walk to the tube being careful not to break my mother’s back, stepping on the cracks in the end anyway as I gave up the game. There were far too many to try to avoid these days and in the end, she probably deserved it. I was coughing up my lungs again, something that seemed to happen a lot in the colder months. It was all the cigarettes, probably, and I knew they were doing me no good, having smoked a whole pack last night alone. It was a nervous habit that had developed into a filthy guilty pleasure. I knew I looked good with a fag hanging daintily from my fingertips over the ashtray at the table as I talked crap about that time I went to France in which I never did, but it was always a pleasing story to tell. I like to feel pretty; I realised that a while ago now, and I’d do anything to achieve that beauty. Shallow I am, I’ll be the first to admit that, but it makes me feel good when I can pull it off.

I wasn’t going home this time as I usually would on a weeknight to then microwave my meal and sit watching late night TV until my eyes drooped and I fell asleep on the TV remote waking with the buttons pressed into the side of my face. Liz told me she’d meet me at the local bar which wasn’t a huge walk from my place and apparently she didn’t live too far either. I didn’t want her to have to walk too far. You should have seen the heels she was wearing earlier, really. Totally unnecessary because it wasn’t as if she was short, or perhaps it was but so was I.

But anyway there I was, and it was freezing cold pissing down with rain as I huddled into my fake fur-lined jacket. I waited a little while as the sun set for her to show, thinking after some time that she was probably already inside and how silly I was to be waiting out in the rain for her anyway. And so my feet took me to the bar, to the stool closest to the hard liquor, and I searched the room from there. If you want the honest truth on what happened that night you could have asked Nancy, but probably not me. It’s not that I don’t have one, I just don’t feel much like going into it. She never turned up, that much is true, but that just made me the prettiest one at the bar in my humble opinion and so how easy was it to find another to leave an image for me to enjoy in the morning to come.