Silver Wrists

 

  ‘What is that dripping down your forehead, girl?’ I asked a young lady as she stood, rigid, alone, in the centre of a dark side street.

  ‘Why, it is my trust in others.’ she replied as I moved hesitantly closer. A silver liquid was slipping its way down her face. Blonde hair was getting matted. Eyelashes were drooping under its weight. ‘It shattered moments ago.’ she informed me impassively.

  I nodded solemnly, attempting to feign understanding. ‘That is most unfortunate,’ I offered in tentative consolation. ‘It appears to be quite a problem.’ Pigeons fluttered and cooed above us, uninterested. Occasionally they took flight and momentarily blocked the light that had accidentally – reluctantly – fallen into the alleyway we stood in, face to face.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing I can’t handle. It has happened many times before.’ the girl stated without emotion. The viscous substance was now sliding down her neck; it was pooling in the dips of her collar bone. the source of it was somewhere on the top of her head, buried under her hair. Was it pouring out from within?  Her arms hung limply by her sides. When she blinked, slowly, the grey splashed, flicked from her eyelashes, and hung in the air, hovering around her eyes.

  Curiosity got the better of me. ‘What happened?’ I ventured, weakly.

  Objects in the alley shifted just then. Oversized, empty cans of rapeseed oil seemed to jump for a second; large blue waste bins pressed themselves closer to the crusty brick walls; an old crisp packet scrunched itself smaller. It’s true, there was a pressure emanating, growing, from the girl that I too wanted to get away from.

  ‘I’m afraid that if I told you, you would be overcome by this too.’ She pointed gently to the drips now slithering their way down her frilled white shirt, unhindered by any friction the fabric should have created. So, this was no self-imposed suffering, not from inside her, I thought to myself, but something much more sinister. Something very far from my understanding.

  The first expression since the start of our conversation passed over her shiny, silver, enveloped face. It seemed to me to be a twitch of regret. Regret that I, a stranger, was the one to see this? Regret at the event that had caused it? Regret she could not ask me for help? Regret that she had allowed the culprit to escape?

  Metal pipes clinging to the walls screeched and bent suddenly. My curiosity fled. I asked no more questions. She opened her mouth, titled her head back slightly, and the grey liquid poured in. Bricks fell around us and smashed on the gravel like china teacups. A pigeon, too oblivious to flee earlier, exploded above me.

  Her eyes were now coated in chrome, her arms hardening into solid silver. She seemed to have forgotten I was there.

  I panicked wondering who would help me to escape.

  A window burst into glittering ash behind her. The open ends of the alley had been replaced by walls of black. The girl’s shirt fused, metallic, to her skin. A static ran up my legs and the vibrations of it brought me to my knees. I stared up at her from the floor, certain of my imminent destruction. A discarded plastic bag had melted nearby. The giant waste bins had been crushed flat like beer cans. Drops of silver orbited her slowly. Only her black buckled shoes remained uncovered, her smooth legs now glossy and grey.

  My eardrums burst. My fingers snapped. Standing frozen and monumental above me, she surrendered the last of her flesh. If I could have, I would have cursed that surrender, cursed it for dooming me, but my ribcage pulled into itself and my heart poured free before I got the chance.

 

 

 

Writing prompt: Use this sentence: “What is that dripping down your forehead, girl?”

 

 

 

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