Memories Of A Beauty

It’s Friday! So it’s time for… this week’s Picture it & Write:

I need to destroy it.

I took the soft orange paper between my fingers.

Are you a fool? My conscience was retorting back at me.

I have to. It’s the only way. I turned the paper over and over in my hands. I felt the inked words engraved between the lines. I smelt the faint perfume…

You will lose everything. Don’t let go so easily, Beauty…

My suddenly angry palms crushed the thin paper between them. I’ve waited for too long now. It doesn’t matter anymore. It was over.

He might come-

I hung the paper in front of my face. I had come way too far. I could not go back. It was useless to listen to myself. To my heart. Because it changed into stone while winter had crawled to the land. It was too late.

It was time.

I took the paper by the border with both of my thumbs and forefingers. I pressed it hard against my skin, my nails.

And I was petrified.

I blinked and took a deep breath. I had to find the strength. Be courageous! Come on!

For a few seconds I remained standing in the middle of the hall, illuminated by thousands of candles, whose flames reflected in the golden and velvet texture of the walls. A table was in front of me, waiting eagerly for the bits and pieces to fall upon its polished wooden surface.

Before I knew it, the paper tore.

I gasped as if a poisoned dagger had been thrust through my ribs. The agony spread… I saw a light coming from the torn inky material, the words falling like snow on the table, on the ground. It blinded me.

My body fell, limp on the mirror floor.

Yet my soul was flying. It flew with the words I had freed, words which were the pieces of my memories.Memories of my childhood. Memories of my little garden. The backyard of the castle. Trees surrounding me, hiding me. The sun, so bright, so happy. The green grass caressing my feet.

Only the swing remained lonely, as it has always been, since my departure. Since I left with the Man of the Roses. The Beast. The one I fell in love with, but who abandoned me a few years later, childless, claiming to return soon with gifts and gold…

He never came back.

The swing was still despite the wind. The stairs which I knew led to the house, to my true home was calling me, begging me to come back. Thus I went through the garden; I felt the rough rope of the swing on my skin as I passed.

One step. I went up.

The sky suddenly grew dark and grey; the wind shoved me onto the grass, which was no more green, but brown and rotten. The trees had lost all their leaves and beauty. They were dying.

Winter had come.

The swing was worn and broken. It was lying down on the floor, like the victim of a murder.

This had been the night. That famous night where my father sold me to the Beast. He chased me. He took his gold. And the Beauty I was had died at the same time as her garden.

I then saw my life running as images around me. I remembered how I hated my husband… but then I remembered that I fell in love… Because the Beast was not a beast at all. He had good in him…

Nevertheless, power and ambition superseded his love.

And I was left to wither on the cold floor of our mansion.

As the last piece of torn paper fell on the ground, next to me, I closed my eyes.

To never open them again.

***

Swing, swing, little swing;

Let their be light when lonely.

Spring never-ending.

An Evil Nymph.