Tipsy in the Garden

The wine bottle was empty now, smudged with the remnants of the cherry red lipstick that I’d put on just for this special occasion. I set the bottle down with the rest, right in the middle of the dew-dipped azaleas. It wobbled and fell over, crushing the pretty flowers. I couldn’t help but laugh, a wet and strangled sound that startled me in the dark. At this point in the evening, when all was said and dead and done, I was the wine bottle. Empty and cold, a killer of all things beautiful. Dead like…

Dead just like me.

The voice in my head mocked me.  I glanced around the grim, mossy garden as I sat amidst the rot and the deep, deep silence.

Like a graveyard.

“Do be quiet!” I muttered, almost tongue-tied in my drunken state.

Was it really the wine, though? Something else numbed my tongue and made it heavy as a tombstone. A weight in my chest made my stomach feel as if it were sinking. Down, down, down. My heart had slowed to a lazy BOM…BOM…B—

I gasped for air as if I’d drowned.  

A scream cracked the silence, peeling through the air in waves of terror. It came from the house behind me. I knew which room without looking, the windows painted a gauzy scarlet.

“Just like the flowers…” I muttered.

Another scream. The next room. Yellowed light blinked and fizzled out. Darkness. Silence.

The house was dark. I didn’t glance back at it, but it was. I could feel its cold blackness creeping from the shadows to my feet tucked neatly beneath me. I pulled away from their touch and stood up.

Breathless. I was breathless, staring up at that dark, dead house.

Are you sure?

Of course, I was. It was dead inside. Everything inside was dying, dead, gone. Life slipping out into the chill of the night. The thought gave me no comfort as I thought it would. Instead, I felt woozy and sick. My heartbeat…I couldn’t even feel it now. My chest was empty and cold. Like the darkness, that cold swept through my body in shocking waves. I tried to take a breath, but it wouldn’t come. My clothes were damp. I scraped my eyes from that eerily quiet house and looked down at them. My baby blue dress, so delicate that the fabric shivered in the hint of sour breeze, was stained in red and ripped at my center. A deeper red ran there.

I backed away, my steps fumbling and stumbling until my feet plopped right into the azaleas. The wine bottles clinked at my feet. Peering down, I saw the mess I’d made. The flowers were torn to bits, the rich earth upturned into a sickeningly large mound.

“Dead.”

The word was whispered before me. My head whipped up and I saw…a deep shadow that burned blue as it stumbled into the shifting moonlight.

“Dead,” it said again. It came closer.

I stared at myself. This pale and bloodied me stared down at our mess within the garden, fingering the fresh bit of mess at her chest. She smiled.

“Dead just like me.”

Keshia C. Willi