Ashes

There was very little left. A few charred fragments of cloth, dyed black from the heat with edges singed, rested gingerly upon a small pile of ivory and charcoal colored ash. The room was vacant, but the window had been left open. The hastily drawn back curtains, having lost their hold, now loosely fluttered in the breeze. A gust built up on the street with the passing of a delivery truck and rose to the second story, roaring in through the window and sending the curtains back. The soft fluttering of pages filled the room, as the half-dozen books which covered the table, left open and dog-eared, flipped softly in the sifting air. A soft clinking sounded, as the strands of a wind chime hanging just to the left of the window, partially obscuring a shattered picture frame, rocked gently back and forth, filling the air with a vaguely cacophonous but nevertheless soothing set of chimes. The setting sun glowed red, reflecting on the doorknob and dead-bolt and leading down to the gray cement floor, gliding over the not-quite-sine waves of carpet glue and past dark splotches and finally to the somber remains, where the wind flapped the fabrics and sifted the ashes, blowing them gently into the fallen white sheets of the unmade bed, mingling with the red and blending into a dark amber. The sun glinted off a metal key where the pile of ash had once been, glowing red in the setting sun.

The sun set and the sky darkened. Shadows grew across the room, darkness devouring everything until sound was all that filled the room. The pages fluttered and the wind slowly rippled through the curtains, softly whispering the night and the blackness it entailed. A coolness settled over the room as the chimes softly sang of the night, of hope, of desperation, of beauty, all emotions sounding together in the lightly harmonious, gently percussive dissonance the air played quietly on instruments of brass. The whites of the bed faded, and the cement and door no longer met but merely blurred together, indistinct and invisible. The key glowed red.

Another gust of wind rose up, this time determined to make its course around the room. Swirling back from the closed door, it caught a few loose scraps of paper from the makeshift table library and blew them down, fluttering slowly, until one of them rested upon the key. The light was extinguished, and the paper invisibly blackened as invisible smoke rose from it and out through the open window. Light suddenly danced from it as fire sprung up and illuminated the room. The paper writhed and crumbled as the flames spread to the window curtains where, ushered along by the wind, they quickly climbed, illuminating the room in their flickering makeshift light and spreading their heat to the wooden window frame, which was quickly set ablaze as well. The fire, moving cautiously at first, reached its arms out to the wallpaper and quickly spread in a circular path about the room, blackening and curling the wallpaper along its path until the wooden structure of the walls was heated to the point of combustion as well. Burning from within, the flames climbed to the ceiling. Having demolished the thin wallpaper, which settled slowly in ashes on the ground, the room was momentarily lit only by the burning square of the window, the curtains having lost their hold and been blown onto the street below.

The silence was eerie, broken only by the faint crackling of flame, as the room sat dimly lit in expectation. A strong gust of wind and a splash of rain extinguished the windowpane, and the room was again plunged into silence and darkness. This lasted but a second. The inferno within the walls grew, and as the intensity began to destroy the drywall the roof fell in, sending a burning length of wood down upon the books and tables, illuminating the room once more and rekindling its flame. The table and the books burned, as the drywall was burned away and the walls again were plastered in fire, painting the room orange-yellow as the black and white ashes of papers floated throughout. The wind-chime fell, surrendering its music as the bed sheets and mattress burned away their stains in a redeeming blaze. The key was a dull bronze, flickering red in the reflection of the inferno surrounding it.

The fire spread throughout the building, escaping through the roof and sending billows of smoke and sharp tongues of flame up to meet the stars. Sirens swelled softly in the distance, slowly growing louder and changing pitch. On the eastern horizon the sky turned orange as the sun began its slow climb through the vast canopy of what would soon be blue but was for now a deep, fiery amber.

Three cycles prior, from that very same vantage point, the sun had seen into the source of the blaze, rebounding its light from the building on the far side of the street and in through the window, past the gently fluttering curtains and softly singing wind chime and into a bed of two. Though they had previously become one in the cover of night, where beneath the darkness invisible lips touched and merged, legs and arms and bodies fused, and a surge of emotion and lust eased the two together in a singular convergence of mind and spirit for a timeless moment, they had slowly melted back to their old forms and sought the solace of sleep to hide from any lingering traces of guilt.

By morning each clutched their pillows with ringless fingers and had fully become two separate entities. The morning sunlight through the window beat down upon the closed lids of their eyes, knocking an invitation to open. One accepted, and glanced over at the female form laying beside him, drunken by morning drowsiness but nevertheless quite aware of who she was. Before his mind could wander too far, though, the ringing of the chimes in the breeze evoked yet another thought, this one a memory.

The chimes were ringing as he looked up at her, standing, speechless. Maybe it was excitement, maybe it was horror, maybe it was love, maybe joy, maybe all of them, and maybe none. He held his breath and listened to his own heart. The beat was rhythmic, winding forth in powerful accelerando, thumping emotion strong against his ribcage. A second passed. Two seconds. Three. She tried to speak, but the words that formed so rapidly in her mind came out only as a croak, so she nodded her head and smiled. Seeing her cue, he stood and wrapped his arms tightly around her, supporting her on her weakening knees, as she returned the gesture. He pulled back a moment as she offered her hand, and he slipped a shimmering ring over her finger. The two shared a blissful sigh before returning to each other's arms. Their lips met, and his breath breached her parted lips, and together joined in a sentimental kiss her eyes swore herself to him, and his did likewise. The air was sweet, and he could taste her perfume on it.

The air was stale, and he tasted sleep bitterly on his tongue. Emotion surged behind his blank face, and he looked again at the woman next to him. Her lips still bore their scarlet dressing from the evening before, and her face blushed gently in the morning cold, soft and fragile. Her eyes fluttered, and her lashes scraped the pillow like stiletto heels echoing down a tenement hallway. She stirred and rose halfway, resting on her elbow as her crimson bedclothes hung limp from her body. Her blood coursed, sanguine, through her veins.

His mind was quick to cast the blame, but it was his eyes that had first strayed, his tongue that had first spoken. As ashamed as he was to admit it, it was all his doing, and he had been the first to act.

An act. It had all been an act. He didn’t love her, he didn’t need her, and he knew that the words he had whispered meant nothing. He knew who he truly loved, and the band around her finger proved it. He blinked. Dark circles under her eyes, black streaks where the mascara had ran from sweat. Her luscious dark hair lie tangled on the pillow as her drowsy eyes looked out through black pinholes. Her mouth creased gently into a smile. He saw her now, as red as before but black as night, a dark seductress, luring him in and feasting upon his infidelity. She saw him from across the room, instantly knew from the glow in his features the details of his engagement, and acted as a spider to draw him into her web. The black widow had lured him in with dark cunning and the red hourglass of her flawless figure.

His closed his eyes and thought again of her soft cheeks, her glowing eyes, her gentle complexion, her honest demeanor. His own betrayal was too much to bear. Bitter thoughts raged within him towards the sultry seductress sharing his bed. The sly, unashamed desecrater of his future marriage. Such destruction had her prim hands wrought.

She felt him tense and saw the photograph on the wall and she knew. She didn’t even need to ask. God, he had lied, and she had believed. She wasn’t angry, she was tired. And sad. And if she were able, she would rise and grab the eraser from his bag resting several arm-lengths away on the carpeted ground, and wipe the whole night prior clean. They'd never met. They’d never touched.

And what strange a place to meet as a library? A graduate student. He would need to make a living, he would need to support a family, and from behind the stack of books he eyed her. She made contact, the sly devil, and he fell into her trap. His research could wait, he had plenty of sources at home regardless. Instead of studying books, he studied her, and rose to meet her. They met outside that evening, with smooth greetings passed behind collars turned up against the night. The dinner had been classy, accompanied with blood red wine and brought to a finale with smooth black chocolate.

She could throw it all up now and she still wouldn’t feel relieved. He could do the same. She felt sick for playing any part in any fidelity. He hated her for it. She wondered how such a kind person could lie like that. He marveled at how such beauty could hide such malice. She made up her mind that she should go. He decided that she never would.

Reaching for the night stand, now fully awake, he grabbed for her room key. It was short and blunt. He fingered the key ring, and found her car key.

“I think that I-” she was stopped short as she saw his hand raised. Her breathing quickened, and her heart followed closely behind in its beats. She started to scream, but he was over her now, and she found a pillow covering her face. She writhed and clawed out from beneath his weight, and the key now risen high in the air found its target in her chest. Once, and the force of his fist caused a rib to crack. Twice, and the key’s point found its point of entry. Three, four, five, six, each digging deep, the wells springing blood as white flashes of pain coursed through her body. The suck of air as a lung was pierced, and her mouth gargled with blood under the muffling pillow. 10, 11, 12. The blunt force of his fist against her body, the sharp entry of the key beneath her skin, until her breathing halted and her head span and she found herself nowhere, her consciousness subsided. The air from her lungs rose and mixed with the stale air of the apartment, hovering briefly around her killer before escaping out the open window, rising through the morning breeze and mingling with the passing clouds. A minute passed, and her body lie cold.

The fever of madness had ravished his mind, and before his mind could make any attempt at rational thought the deed was done, his skin flecked with splattering blood, the key dripping the scarlet aftermath, his hands dyed red in the hot but cooling blood. He sat in a daze as the madness subsided, his body restraining the now lifeless vessel of what was briefly his consummate partner. Panic and guilt cascaded upon him, and like a child he hid the fruits of his crime, wrapping her pitifully in the bed sheets and laying her on the ground at its foot. The sheets could go with her, and the stained mattress could be covered.

Her body still ran with gore, and it ran from the bundle in a gentle stream across the carpet. His hands, dripping as he paced for what must’ve been hours, left deep splotches on its surface, marking clearly his path to the window, around the table, to the door (blood drying on the door handle), but drawn back, again towards the bed (bloody hand print on the pillow, which was now on the ground), and running this peculiar gauntlet until his mind was empty.

And so he tore. The frail old carpet stood little chance against him, and he shredded it until the last of the spots, which save for beneath the table ran throughout the majority of the room, had been removed. He shoved the torn carpet beneath the bed as he worked, and by mid-afternoon his labor was finished, his nails chipped and hands raw, but his face holding a satisfied (if not terrified) smile. There were areas where the thin carpet hadn’t been enough to hold it, and so the concrete itself was now stained with the quarry of her veins, black against the gray with pools of reflecting red. He stood, and he saw, and he knew this could not go undiscovered. It wasn’t the trial or the jail time that troubled him (for punishment was temporary and second to his own internal, eternal anguish), but the disappointment of the one he thought he loved. How shattered would her life be, her fiancee now murderer and adulterer days after their engagement? He gripped the key until his hand bled, and in a fit of rage and despair struck out against her portrait, shattering the glass which stuck in him like a pin-cushion, and yet the sensation wasn’t even felt. His extremities were numb and his head was light, his eyes were blurred and out of focus.

He felt the flames of despair growing within him. Stepping to the window, he looked down at the world beneath. So great had his hope been, but greater far the life he had abandoned. He had passed the point of no return, and he could only wait until the full implications of his actions were clear to him, the remains discovered, the consequences carried out. There was no more time, nothing more to do, and it scarcely mattered. His head grew hotter as his rage and despair, at himself, at his fiance, at his mistress, at his life, grew in burning intensity. And he felt it rising within himself, in a crescendo of a scream which couldn’t leave his lungs, growing instead within him and burning to every extremity. His thin shirt began to smolder.