Faded Beauty
Miriam stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror. Though time had transformed her appearance, she remained unchanged within. She turned her head, scrutinizing her sagging skin and the dark, puffy bags beneath her eyes. Her bones cracked as she grabbed her silver hairbrush and ran it through her long, tangled hair, turned white as chalk. She paused to remove wads of dead hair from the brush, after which she applied clumps of makeup to her face. Lastly, she ran a tube of red lipstick over her lips, smearing half her face in the process. Well, she reasoned, there was only so much a girl could do, wasn’t there? She stood, adorned in all the glory of her faded dress, and headed out.
At five minutes past the hour, Miriam entered the ladies’ club. She ignored the disapproving stares of the other guests, reminding herself that Jealousy could be as corrosive as battery acid being poured into a person’s soul. She chose to focus on the task of flicking spiders off her dress. Her living arrangements, sadly, made it hard to keep her wardrobe fresh. She closed her eyes and envisioned her former self: extravagant, elegant and poised. Oh, how people used to admire her.
“She’s horrible! When did she buy that dress, in 1942?” Their voices came to her unbidden.
“Doesn’t she know when to leave?”
Miriam pressed a water glass to her lips, slobbering liquid over the front of her dress.
“Miriam, dear.” An old friend approached her, extending ring-embellished fingers.
Miriam reached out her hand, a study in angular bones and lumpy knuckles.
“How long has it been?” the woman asked ominously.
“Seven years,” answered Miriam. She disengaged her hand to pluck a loose tooth from her mouth. “Oh, bother,” she whined.
“I suggest you leave, Miriam, before you make a further spectacle of yourself.”
“But I’m bored,” whined Miriam. “I’ve nothing to do with my time.”
“Still, dear, it’s time you moved on.”
The woman wandered off through the crowd, leaving Miriam alone at the table, vulnerable to the horrified stares of onlookers.
“Her time has come and gone,” people were saying. “Can she not see?”
A waiter held his nose before depositing a plate of appetizers on her table and then running away. She stuck a fork into a puff pastry and raised it to her lips, mashing it against her mouth and crumbling it over her dress. As she brushed off the front of her dress, it began to disintegrate.
“I really do hope her clothes stay on,” voices wafted over. “We’re not ready for a creep show.”
Miriam stood and hobbled toward the door. She might have made it had not her ligaments and joints given away, at which point she collapsed in a heap of flesh and bone.
“Oh, God, call the janitor.”
“While you’re at it, tell the manager. Next time, they shouldn’t let her through the door.”
“You’d better believe it; she’s already half past Neverland.”
They returned her to her mausoleum. While others in the cemetery remained dead, Miriam entertained other plans. Hours passed into days. From decomposition, she recomposed. The cycle was complete and she raised herself up from a cold stone slab. As she stared into the cracked mirror of her mausoleum, the memory of her former beauty weighed heavily upon her soul. She could not accept that time’s machinations had drawn her in and brutally spat her out into the dust. Anger burned within her; how dare the members of the ladies’ club demean her. Little did they know that beauty could be resurrected.
Her bones poked through the disintegrating layers of her dress as she stood and stumbled from the mausoleum. She made her way to the ladies’ club on palsied legs. An event was taking place that she was determined to attend, be she dead or alive.
