STIFLE

“STIFLE” by L. E. MAE All artwork original to L.E. Mae 2011

Chapter 1~eleven shades of gray

She sat , folded up in in nausea, watching the bleak snow drift from the slate sky, She had scraped the bubbling paint from the pane, and she could see the cold evening through the gray black sharded scars. Across her lap lay Elias’s .22 rifle, and she rested her hand on the barrel still as a mouse. She had taken it down some time ago, taken it’s small cardboard box of shells, and loaded the steel weapon carefully. She could hear them talking about her in the living room, but the ringing in her ears precluded listening. She already knew what they were saying anyhow: She was a whore, incorrigible, and she should be sent away…blah blah blah. It mattered not to Violet, she knew they would never really let her go. She would be stuck in this room full of gunshine forever, she would die right here in this tarpaper casket. If people could die from humiliation , she would have been dead long ago. Mercifully so. She had reached the end of her endurance. She pondered her circumstance indifferently, callous to the thought of herself. She blinked and felt the blue black bubble that was her right eye. She had looked at it in her filmy mirror in her dense room, she knew it was black and blue but in the numb light, the high hot color of it leached into a variety of grayity .Her ghost face was framed with stringy dishwater hair, her eye bruise dark as pond mud, bold as a storm cloud in her twilight. The upper lid had turned wrong side out, and what she was sure were blood spots had formed in the corners , though they appeared only clotted darkness in her reflection. Now she merely sat in her charcoal world , her being absorbed and shaded , morphed into 11 shades of gray. The glint on the gun barrel was the brightest thing about her, and she sat, thinking but not thinking, thoughts buzzed around in her ashen gray matter liked houseflies laying their eggs deep inside her cortex. Maggoty thoughts hatched and ate their way through her lobes: itchy ideas of suicide nibbled on her ear drums. Glassy foggy dented and demented, she merely sat , overwhelmed in the flood of her life. She had been in this pattern of self destruction for so long and she struggled now for a reason to live. She rolled events through her mind, scrolling through the sepian toned footage remotely, like an old black and white picture show. Melancholy rained down upon her in a primer gray tide. Grim as the grave, she surveyed her past and future, measured her present : no matter how she mixed it, gray was the result. She perused all the things she could escape by putting that gun her mouth ; she searched also for a reason to live. Finding none, she pictured herself as a corpse, wondered if it would hurt when the bullet pierced her brain. She envisioned them finding her, half her head missing, blood and brains the only color left in the room. A quick death was the only thing she felt entitled to. To what end and by what means should she live? Poverty, a future of shame and ignorance, breeding more of the same. If she squinted hard enough at the picture show, she could see the truth about herself. She was guilty too. She raised the rifle , turned it upside down so she could reach that trigger . She lowered her skull onto the barrel, opened her maw wide, closed her lips in a cool caress, tasted the gun’s oil . This was it.

Chapter 2~stifle

“Hugga bugga, buggity boo..lady bug, lady, I love you.” It was a soft spring morning and Granny’s peonies were in full pink bloom…so sweet, they glistened in the early morning dew, and she loved to play with the lady bugs she found sleeping there. She let this particular red and black spotted beauty crawl over and under her small 7 year old mitts…the hem of her modest pink paisley dress, soaking in the dew, clung uncomfortably around her ankles. Quite happy with her newly made friend, and especially happy with her ode, she squatted under the tall elm tree that shaded the peony bed that lay at the end of the vegetable garden…sunlight barely touched there, and the old tree made her feel protected somehow, as if it were guarding her, connecting her not only with the ancient earth, but with the sun and sky as well.

“Hugga Bugga…Dang IT!” she exclaimed as her lady bug friend lifted wing and flew off her hand into the early morning sky. She gave a furtive glance around , no one had heard her swear out that dirty word, and being certain she was all alone in the garden, said it again , just for fun… “DANG IT”. She smiled , and pleased with her daring self , set about finding a new friend to play with. The puffy fat flowers were loaded with them, and she bent intently to her work, gently parting the soft moist petals, inhaling their divine fragrance with delight, eyes peeled for spotted red and black amongst the pale white and pink blossoms. She found a lovely one, and straightening up, held it’s round plump perfection to the one ray of sunlight that managed to sneak it’s way into her secret shady spot. It began crawling over her hand, tickling the small fine hairs, making her giggle. She began composing a new song , staring off into the distance, watching the soft dew vaporize in the early morning sun. She took a deep breath, smiled at her tiny buggy pal, softly sang , “ Lady bug, lady bug, you are my fr…

THWACK. Stars shot through her brain, as boyish laughter rang out over her. Wrenched backward her wind knocked free from her lungs, and her vision suddenly gone, he leapfrogged over her face to sit backward cowboy style on her frail chest, leaving her face tightly covered with the pillowcase he had just placed over her head. Arms pinned, with no breath to cry out , it was so easy to stifle her. She struggled under his weight, couldn’t be heard under the pillowcase..she could smell the fresh clean

scent of Granny’s laundry, she was suffocating in the downey tide.

“Dirty bitch” was the last thing she heard before merciful darkness claimed her.