Mannequin: Prologue – “Something Missing”

She was nearly complete.

I couldn’t remember when I had stopped referring to her as “it.”  When had she so completely enthralled me, thwarting my senses and sensibility alike?  I had been so careful.  When had she become more than an object, more than a mere sum of her parts?  When had she become my masterpiece?

Looking back, it was all but inevitable.  I knew full well how abominable my task might become when I first started on her.  Perhaps if I had not kept her hidden for so many years, those closest to me would have had a chance to save me, before she had consumed what remained of my sanity.

It was too late for that, now.  I could not be redeemed.  I did not want to be redeemed.

And yet, looking at her now, lying there with a glow that only my gentle, caressing hands could give her, I felt something missing.  Something gone, or something that never was.  One last shred kept her from true perfection.

Eyes.  She needed eyes.  Eyes full of passion, full of intelligence.  Eyes as deep as the ocean and as clear as the night sky.  I needed eyes to give her life.

I felt a slow smile creep across my face.  Eyes.  I knew exactly where to find them.

Benches: Prologue

The harsh bite of winter is in the air. Yet there you lie, cold metal pressed against your back, gazing up at skeletal branches stretching to the slate gray sky above. You did not intend to linger at such a place. Yet here you are, hidden from many but exposed to some. You followed the seldom-traversed path you saw that day, a path that you had seen many times before but never thought to follow. Why does no-one know where you are?

Close your eyes. Listen to the whispers of the breeze rasping through the concealing hedge. Can you hear the rustle of the few dry leaves overhead, clinging desperately to the source of their nourishment, calling out to their fallen brethren crushed on the ground below? Can you feel the wan rays of warmth gently caressing your face as our dear yellow dwarf star bids farewell, à la prochaine and bon soir?

File it away. File it all away, just like you do any other hour of any other day. We live in the here and now, but you have no desire to participate in the present. The scenarios run through your mind, a constant barrage of those frivolous hypothetical junctions: what if, should I, maybe. Life will not wait for you. No one will wait for you forever.

Every moment of every day, you make decisions that will irrevocably and permanently alter the course of your life. Where we have come from, where we are… these are mere contrivances that allow us to see where we might go. Soon, you will come to realize this.

Open your eyes. Open your eyes, and see what there is to see.

Eye of the Beholder by ~RecklessConformity on deviantART