STALKING THE FRINGES
By Ethan Swage
She creeps along streets as murky as the inside of her skull. She is small and frail. Her sallow, papery skin is swathed in black on black on black. Too many layers for such a sultry night, yet still she shivers, her skin steadily growing colder. The absinthe—a scant taste sipped from a thimble-sized glass, barely enough to wash down this morning’s pills—has already begun rewiring (emancipating?) her mind. She perceives things she considered imperceptible two sips ago. Like a tiger discovering its prey’s weaknesses, she has become aware.
Emboldened, she stalks unfamiliar ground. The towering ones await her arrival shoulder-to-shoulder, engulfed in each other’s intertwined shadows. A lack of fear, she suspects, will prove their fatal misstep.
The buildings she has been quietly skirting leap from their anonymity and bow before her, shaking loose curtains that flutter like handkerchiefs offered in surrender. But she is leery. The stronger their foundations, the broader their facades, the worse they hate her, hate all of her kind. Hate the blackness cascading behind her like a luxuriant bridal train. She is soft, and the looming hulks with their feral, jutting cornices and corbels gathered like fisted knuckles loathe her for it.
They could easily crush her, and they would, but she is faster. The razor she plucks from her boot and flicks open in one lethal swipe is deathly sharp. Its finely stropped edge gleams in the grainy shafts of light cast from their windows. She slashes wildly, savoring the acidic smack of retribution as they crumple to the ground, eviscerated heaps of brick and mortar. Passersby vanish into their own screams like smoke snaking its way back into a cigarette.
Sirens wail. Her eyelids Morse code a frenzied SOS. She peels off layer after blackened layer. Her skin glows like a dying incandescent bulb. Then she crouches, wraps her arms tightly around her knees, and squeezes. She collapses in on herself and disappears, self-absolved of all pending iniquities.
The next morning she wakes, naked and shivering. She trades breath with pigeons on the same graffiti-scrawled bench where she has watched bus after bus stop day after day, never opening their doors to passengers. No layers, no boots, no razor, no crime. They, the towering resident haters, with their collections of day-old wounds tightly bandaged, rush her, piling on as if she were an end zone fumble begging to be snatched away. They drag her back inside, into familiar daylight darkness, just like last time. They hose her down and towel her off and drape her, front and back, in threadbare, bleach-faded gowns. No black, no layers, no bridal train sweeping her footprints into oblivion.
Dutifully submissive, she shuffles forward, catching stride in another day’s lockstep trudge. She quietly muses about the moment when she will finally slip away, strip herself free of her robes, and once again swathe her aching skin in layers of black. This time she will savor her absinthe, swirling it with her tongue along the roof of her mouth. Her eyes will roll back, and with her razor safely tucked away in her boot, she will . . . escape. Before third shift reports again for work, she hopes. Before an impromptu head count finds their ranks one short, and a windswept trail of brick dust leads them to her atrocity.
A speaker perched high overhead crackles, and she smiles. All residents report to the day room for meds!
Today she will ask for a larger glass.
- - -
Ethan Swage is a New Jersey–based writer, artist, and photographer whose work has appeared in Flashshot, Eclectic Flash, Liquid Imagination, Flashes In The Dark, The Linnet’s Wings, The Legendary, Everyday Weirdness, DiddleDog, Staccato Fiction, 50 to 1, and Six Sentences.
By Ethan Swage
She creeps along streets as murky as the inside of her skull. She is small and frail. Her sallow, papery skin is swathed in black on black on black. Too many layers for such a sultry night, yet still she shivers, her skin steadily growing colder. The absinthe—a scant taste sipped from a thimble-sized glass, barely enough to wash down this morning’s pills—has already begun rewiring (emancipating?) her mind. She perceives things she considered imperceptible two sips ago. Like a tiger discovering its prey’s weaknesses, she has become aware.
Emboldened, she stalks unfamiliar ground. The towering ones await her arrival shoulder-to-shoulder, engulfed in each other’s intertwined shadows. A lack of fear, she suspects, will prove their fatal misstep.
The buildings she has been quietly skirting leap from their anonymity and bow before her, shaking loose curtains that flutter like handkerchiefs offered in surrender. But she is leery. The stronger their foundations, the broader their facades, the worse they hate her, hate all of her kind. Hate the blackness cascading behind her like a luxuriant bridal train. She is soft, and the looming hulks with their feral, jutting cornices and corbels gathered like fisted knuckles loathe her for it.
They could easily crush her, and they would, but she is faster. The razor she plucks from her boot and flicks open in one lethal swipe is deathly sharp. Its finely stropped edge gleams in the grainy shafts of light cast from their windows. She slashes wildly, savoring the acidic smack of retribution as they crumple to the ground, eviscerated heaps of brick and mortar. Passersby vanish into their own screams like smoke snaking its way back into a cigarette.
Sirens wail. Her eyelids Morse code a frenzied SOS. She peels off layer after blackened layer. Her skin glows like a dying incandescent bulb. Then she crouches, wraps her arms tightly around her knees, and squeezes. She collapses in on herself and disappears, self-absolved of all pending iniquities.
The next morning she wakes, naked and shivering. She trades breath with pigeons on the same graffiti-scrawled bench where she has watched bus after bus stop day after day, never opening their doors to passengers. No layers, no boots, no razor, no crime. They, the towering resident haters, with their collections of day-old wounds tightly bandaged, rush her, piling on as if she were an end zone fumble begging to be snatched away. They drag her back inside, into familiar daylight darkness, just like last time. They hose her down and towel her off and drape her, front and back, in threadbare, bleach-faded gowns. No black, no layers, no bridal train sweeping her footprints into oblivion.
Dutifully submissive, she shuffles forward, catching stride in another day’s lockstep trudge. She quietly muses about the moment when she will finally slip away, strip herself free of her robes, and once again swathe her aching skin in layers of black. This time she will savor her absinthe, swirling it with her tongue along the roof of her mouth. Her eyes will roll back, and with her razor safely tucked away in her boot, she will . . . escape. Before third shift reports again for work, she hopes. Before an impromptu head count finds their ranks one short, and a windswept trail of brick dust leads them to her atrocity.
A speaker perched high overhead crackles, and she smiles. All residents report to the day room for meds!
Today she will ask for a larger glass.
- - -
Ethan Swage is a New Jersey–based writer, artist, and photographer whose work has appeared in Flashshot, Eclectic Flash, Liquid Imagination, Flashes In The Dark, The Linnet’s Wings, The Legendary, Everyday Weirdness, DiddleDog, Staccato Fiction, 50 to 1, and Six Sentences.
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