Icon #48 Shocked

#48 Shocked

The streets were empty, vacant and lonely. Clarissa stared out from beneath the old blanket she’d found. She felt the trembling begin to shake its way through her bones once more as the wind wormed its way into her make-shift shelter, pinching at her skin and dragging the warmth from her heart.

She couldn’t remember how long she’d slept in alleys, nor could she recall if she’d ever slept in this one before that night. She remembered her mother, and she remembered finding the blanket, days, months, perhaps years before. She remembered a rosy-cheeked little girl who’d given her a pastry to eat. She didn’t remember that her name was Clarissa.

She watched nothing in particular; there was nothing that mattered enough, nothing that could have dragged her to her feet, or out of the alley. Not even the hunger that ate away at her insides like a cancer, or the encroaching numbness that slowly claimed her limbs in the name of the steadily dropping temperature could have ever been enough. Clarissa was finished getting up, maybe forever.

There was nothing left — nothing but cold, fear, and the night. She shifted slightly, dragging the blanket a bit more tightly about her legs, and it was then that she heard it.

There was the shuffling of booted feet, the slinking, metallic clang of chains. There was muted, heavy breath that would be hovering, floating on the icy air. She didn’t look up, but she knew he was there — knew that he’d seen her, and what it would mean. The air seemed warm, in that second, against the chill of her heart. Somewhere deep inside, she screamed, but it never reached the surface. It wasn’t her at all.

As the chain swung through the air, its passing created a hollow, humming note of bittersweet music, biting through the blanket, casting aside flesh and slamming into bone.

Clarissa felt herself letting go-releasing the moment. In that second, she heard the note bend, heard it blend to a different sound, a lamenting, weeping tone-joined by others to create a chord. Then all was still.