Coldness
Her hands were cold.
It was the first thing he had noticed; when she spoke to him,
held out her hand, her touch chilled him to the bone.
It was an ice and diamonds thrill, at first. Her eyes glittered behind wire-framed
glasses, skin smooth and so very pale. She
was beautiful; with a kind of faraway beauty, like snow on a distant
mountaintop. They had met in school, and
he had almost always walked her home afterwards. He wanted to get to know her better, as she was
a bright, intelligent girl whose true thoughts always remained a mystery. Her smile was entrancing, she was entrancing;
like a snowflake, a shock of cold, a sip of refreshment. Today, she had invited him inside her house.
The air was dry and empty inside, with a grey cement floor
and plain white walls. Few pieces of
furniture were present. The smell of
sterility and hospital lingered about, like it was trying too hard to cover up
something else. The temperature was very
low; he could feel the chill all the way to his bones. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest,
trying to get warm. He was surprised
that his breath didn’t fog up when he spoke, “Where is your family? I should introduce myself.”
“Downstairs…” She smiled wide. Her teeth were blinding white, gleaming like
her glasses. He found himself staring at
the perfect spectrum of her mouth. There
was a large stone fireplace, empty of logs or fire. Pictures of family and pets, smiling and
cheerful, haunted the mantelpiece.
Everything was right, but strangely, wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but something
just seemed entirely off about her house.
She had changed, inside her house.
Something about the way she smiled, licking her lips, something about
the way the temperature was so frosty, so chilling.
He was suddenly, very afraid.
Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding---
She approached him, holding her hands behind her back.
“You’ll just love what I have in store for you,” she
whispered.
“Uh, I think I have to go---“
“No, no, stay.” She
smiled again, that below zero degree smile, looming over him, stepping closer.
He heard a rustling sound behind him, sending a chill up his
spine. The lights seemed to dim, shadows crept along the walls.
Her smile seemed to stretch wider and wider, and he realized. The cold was not refreshing. The cold was not an ice and diamonds
thrill. The cold in her eyes was not
beautiful. She was not a snowflake; she
was not delicate or refined. Her eyes
bored into him, glassy and staring, mouth grinning, stretched and stretched. Her bone white hands were extending towards
him, an aching, biting, dead cold.
Her smile was truly too big for her face--- the impossibly
wide smile of the truly insane.
Great!
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