Glass Tombs

A story of the fluctuating relationship a girl has with her body.

 

She entered.

It was a world unlike that which she had ever known, a world of brightness and shimmering colours. Glints of light streaming in were magically transformed into hypnotic glares that burned her skin. She saw the shards of glass – each containing a piece of her – come together, like mosaic tiles, each iridescent and glimmering, incomplete yet whole. Colours danced about the room, casting rainbows on the cool, blank walls.

She was aware of the shadows despite the dazzling light everywhere. The shadows in the crevices between each of the million glass pieces everywhere. Slices of darkness framing each glittering glory that made up the portrait of her.

 

*

 

They were glasses that told the truth.

And she had come to realise that the truth was not necessarily something good. Her mother looked into them and always hated what she saw in there, sometimes even driving herself to tears at what she saw; her older sister could not stop staring into them, like a starry-eyed narcotic bird; and in school she had heard the story of the handsome young man who died after looking in there too much.

These were strange, powerful glasses. She vowed never to go near them.

 

*

 

When she finally possessed a piece of glass, it did not strike her as a monumental moment. It came with barely any shocking realisation that she had broken the promise she had made herself a few years ago. There was just a sudden need to; glasses just became important all of a sudden.

She had seen how her sister painted her face, a delightful canvas of soft pinks, apricots and rouge. But she always felt they were unnecessary smatterings of colour on her face. She was beautiful enough not to need any of those. The paints concealed the beauty that the glasses revealed.

For herself, she had no beauty to speak of, so painting was justified.

Even at the age of thirteen, she was still convinced that magic existed. It lay in those brushes and the smooth promise that stroked her skin, filling them with life everytime. It was the good force.

Back then, everything seemed like dangers new waters. She did not know how else she could look like, the multitude of faces she could wear.

Back then, her skin was a blank canvas, her only canvas, an expanse flung as wide as a promise.

 

*

 

Her fourteenth birthday was when her mother gave her a complete makeup and skincare kit. She handed it to her, beaming in the dim orange glow of candles, as though it were an initiation gift of sorts.

The kit was wrapped in a pink silk paper, the fabric of girlhood. It was the beginning of a rite of passage, the beginning of what she was, of what she could be. Pledging came in the form of accepting it.

They were weapons to be wielded, tools to construct that armour so that she could take on the world as its equal. With these, she was indestructible.

“You will always be my beautiful little girl,” her mother said, kissing her lightly on her forehead, careful not to smudge her lipstick.

That was the language of love as she knew it.

 

*

 

Pretty was an elusive term, a concept too esoteric for her to grasp. It was like reading about raids and rationings in other war-shredded countries, something too distant to associate herself with.

Pretty conjured images of pink-cheeked girls, their soft long hair twisted and teased into flirty braids.

Pretty was not getting mud on the knees of your jeans or cuts on your elbows or jam all over your mouth.

Pretty was something to be earned – only on the good days. That was what her mother would say.

 

*

 

This was how Death looked like.

You were slowly, alarmingly, stripped away, flesh from bone, until all you had left was a papery skin, a thin waxy layer, draped upon you. Your eyes would roll to its leaded ceilings, too heavy to focus. You would be cold, deathly as unsalted ice, as your hand slips out of your sister’s.

You would lie there in a white bed in a white room – both as white as your face – as wires and pipes snaked out of you, like a tangle of lifelines fighting to rope you back to life as you crawled away.

Only eighteen, your mother would weep, how could she do this?

Death would reject you for how you looked when you met him.

 

*

 

She had a gift. That was what she was told countless times. She had the best canvas to work with, tight and flawless; her eyes were wide, while nose and lips were delicate. Her limbs were long and her gait was graceful.

She had a gift.

She should translate her gift to the world. She could earn adoration, something her sister had fought for when she was alive. She could have it all, the love the world had to give her.

She did what she was told. Her mother would be so proud.

 

*

 

It was an entirely different feeling altogether, dreamlike. When she strode forth to the edge, her feet felt like foam. It was possible to feel light in all the designer satin and velvet adorning her.

Bursts of light splashed in her face, and she indulged in the ponderous gazes clinging on to her. This was what her sister had died for, what she could never enjoy. She would be sure to bottle up the experience and mail it to her; she would make a piece of her sister’s dream live on in her.

Her mother was there, a vision in blue, amongst the crowd. She was staring up at her, struggling to retain her usual composure.

I love you, she mouthed.

Her mother smiled, her eyes shining. You’re beautiful.

That was the only response she ever needed to hear.

 

*

 

Whenever she was tempted by the warm smell of chocolate cookies, she would think of the hundreds, thousands, of people sitting at her feet, staring wondrously up at her, running their gazes down her long, lean body. She would think of her mother, mouthing You’re beautiful.

Whenever she was tempted to ignore her clenching stomach, she would think of her sister, cold and forgotten by time, a shrunken vessel of a young lady who had let go of her hand first that day. She would think of the girl who sat in front of the precious piece of truth-telling glass, practising her smile, but who ended up leaving none for herself.

There was no way to win.

To be loved, you had to make yourself what others loved.

 

*

 

Age had a way of moving.

It sat in the distance, watching, waiting for you to reach it finally. The expanse between you two seemed safely wide, like a gulf that would never be crossed.

Next, it would be under your skin, creeping within your flesh, like an extra weight to heave around.

She could feel it in her, like a disease, festering, like worms in her gut. Each day, it nestled in her, a terminal degenerative illness, making her skin sag and fold into itself. Her mother was no better. She had faded into a whitewashed vision and before long, she was sure her mother would be washed away, dissolved by the foams of Time.

Youth was not an essence; it was a memory. They were both convinced love was, too.

 

*

 

The second time she saw someone get eaten up by Death, she had a preconceived idea how it would look.

What scared her most was not how it slowly tore you down until you had no energy left to fight it, like how a python strangled its prey before it ate it. What scared her most was the face she would have to wear to meet the time-keepers at the end.

Her cool, dry hand slipped down the planes of her face. “My beautiful girl. That’s what you are, what you will always be.”

She was bald, her fleshy head horribly bare, a huge smooth orb attached to her face. She remembered how she loved to comb her mother’s hair every night, letting the teeth sink into the glossy strands, watching it plunge down to her waist.

She left without fanfare, just the two of them, one holding on, the other departing. At the deep end, her mother’s wordless wave signalled the end of the rite. The end of the initiation.

But all she could think about was how bald she looked, how ghostly and luminous her skin was, how awful those coffee-coloured shades sat beneath her eyes, how she had willingly let it all go.

 

*

 

The light reflected by the glasses was beginning to blind her. Her eyes hurt.

As she sank to the ground, she watched her reflection in the glass under her, mimicking her, mocking her. She watched the hundreds, thousands, of eyes all around her stare back at her – her own, her sister’s, her mother’s.

And then everything burst into a million teardrops, raining down on her, like sea sprays, making way for a new wave to reach in, pull her in.

Reviews

[Sammy]

Your spelling and grammar is good, which puts you a cut above many other pieces on this site. However, you overwrite constantly:

Slices of darkness framing each glittering glory
a starry-eyed narcotic bird (?)
Your eyes would roll to its leaded ceilings

Some of this is really very good:

That was the language of love as she knew it.
Youth was not an essence; it was a memory. They were both convinced love was, too.
Her cool, dry hand slipped down the planes of her face.

Make your language more simple and less intense and it will achieve the elegance that your vision requires. The first paragraph was almost impossible to get through, hence why there are so few responses to this. Nevertheless, your talent and intelligence is obvious: now work on trying not to flaunt it too much ("precious piece of truth-telling glass" = "mirror").

[Phantom Heart]

Unbelievable! your writing is fantastic. the descriptions you use are mesmerising, your wording is flawless. very well done indeed!