Demon's Paradise / 8

[qdesjardin]

8

And then it is over. No more breath. No more life. There is only total silence – a wonderful soothing calm.

Yet somehow, she still is.

A faint thought crosses her awareness, but it slips away just as easily into that obscurity.

Then the sensations return to her, gradually and surely, and she is able to feel the semblance of her two legs first, and then her torso, her upper body – it's cold, it's so numb and cold, and her very flesh feels tender to the touch.

Finally, her neck and head exist, and with that, her sight.

She is inside a beautiful void. The sheer, overwhelming, undulating whiteness all around. She's already standing, and looking down at herself, what she finds horrifies her.

Her naked body is shrivelled; a pruned simulacra of herself as she ought to be. Her arms are terribly rough – the veins visibly protrude out the skin. And her delicate hands with the petite fingers..

They were beautiful once, she imagines. They were the warm hands that have touched and been touched by many things, with different feelings that had gone into the touching; like softness, immediacy, curiosity, hate, and tenderness. Now these hands are old and flaky, with the fingers like little bones extending from her palms. Touching herself just leaves a stale feeling.

Who is she? Who was she? She feels intonations of earlier memories, but as soon as she tries grasping at their threads, they disappear, eluding her reach like mist. Like a dream that had once been, but upon waking up.. it would fade away.

And for some reason, it makes her sad.