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A Story by coffeelover

Super short flash fiction. I've never really written before.

She felt their eyes on her as she walked. Down the litter lined street in the unnamed city. She could feel them clawing at her. Scratching and biting. Like savages.

Tearing apart her Louis Vuitton purse. Her Burberry coat. The silk and satin dress. The red soled Louboutins. She could feel their eyes burning holes in her delicate gloved hands. Could feel them lighting her on fire. The smell of smoke mixing with her sweet perfume or would the flowery citrus drown in sickly smolder. She could feel them murdering her. A stake in the heart, through the layers of lacy undergarments and the silk and satin dress.

And what she saw. What her eyes told her, was worse. A thousand times over. She could see the sunken cheekbones of the child and the emaciated grandfather with not even a blanket to keep him warm or rags to cover him because he’d given everything to the child. But what did these people know of dignity? And there was the pregnant woman with the hand on her swollen belly. But there was no father to care for her. To keep her fed. Her shoulder blades touched in the back, she could see it through the thin knit shirt, patterned with a life recorded as stains on white fabric.

And there was hardly any left in them. The last of it had come and gone and now they were just waiting and waiting at death’s door to take them away or worse.

They watched her the way she watched plays, as if there was a story to tell, something so strange and so alien it could only be a story. Their eyes glued to her, searching, prying, as she disappeared into the distance. She was a museum display, the lion in the zoo or maybe the elephant. What did they want from her? Did they want to touch her? To pet her? To feel her hair or her fur or her skin? To take her apart and rip her to shreds and shoot her in the heart and leave her to die.

The street was endless.

By the time she reached halfway, her fat Marc Jacobs wallet was empty.

By the time she rounded the corner, her purse disappeared and she was shivering in the cold for her coat too had gone.

With each step they took.

With each step she gave.

With each step she grew lighter and lighter.

Soon fading to bones.

But it was not enough.

As she reached her destination, there was nothing left but a pile of dust.

But it was still not enough.

© 2014 coffeelover

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Reviews

xFlightlessBird

Great use of words ! I don't regret reading a single word. Each word just begs you to keep reading on and on. Great story portraying modern life ? How people are just stripped of everything until there's nothing left of them. And how women are also taken advantage of because they're ...women.