The most rotten truth is the one never told. It's the crack in the pieces that hold fast, that keep us upright and walking in a straight line. But she never said life was all sugar cubes and gumdrops. That wasn't a line that would drip easily from her tongue.
The puzzle had never really worked itself out and no one had ever been bothered to do it. It was simple enough, one would suppose, had there been any thought or care put in. But it was as if it was invisable. Maybe the morality of it was all wrong. Maybe people are just what you expect them to be; they may be unjust but that won't stop them from being lazy. And the puzzle was no beauty it would seem. Hardly worth anyone's time.
She decided to start her life again as a blank canvas. Not quite turn over new leaf, for that was not the direction she hoped to go in. She believed her life could be paint, thrown carelessly at a white sheet and the result would be so so. She would be whatever anyone would want to believe.
She couldn't quite leave behind her past, however. She found this troubling, she found it not quite right. She couldn't hide from it, it was always looming. A shadow attached again and again to her soul. So instead she died inside, and became reborn. She swore it had worked, but one might spot the doubt in the corner of her eye if they looked closely enough.
She never meant to be the cause of suffering, but it was a curse of birth. Something evil lurked within her, and she would have to die for real to spit that little demon out. So she tried to crush it and restrain it. It did not work, but for her attempts, it would have taken her over, fully, every last inch of her. The small things it caused was worth it to keep it from achieving it's true potential.
Though the “small things” were not quite small, as such, more bordering on years in the lock up, or a psych word. Luckily, the evil in her had a way of covering it's tracks, quickly and without fail. Though what it did to her, that itself was plain as day.
Young she was, and the sweetest taste Up Above could have ever given, but unluckily, her face did not quite hold the same quality. Lines etched deep in her brow from too much worry, and her skin was off, the colour never quite right. Lack of outside life had destroyed her as she isolated herself more and more into her fantasy worlds, where she was beautiful and good and graceful and solved everyone's problems. In those worlds, her eyes were not bloodshot, or too experienced looking for her years. In those worlds, her lips were not thin and drawn and cut from biting them too much.
After she died inside, she held a funeral for herself, burning old remenants of her life, those that she could find, in memorial. She cried har with grief and raged that there was no body to bury. She locked the doors up tight for a month or more, and when she finally stepped out, for the brief time that she did, she was thinner and her face more drawn then ever. That day she donned the pale white powder and blood cherry red lipstick that our eyes are now accustomed too, and from that day forth, she never spoke a word of what had happened.
But it whispered on everyone's brain. It taunted and threatened and hissed and screamed. But everyone turned their heads. She was an ill fitting creature, but a loved one. No one was going to destroy what was left of her fragile existance.
And yet, it still kept happening, more and more. It had started easily, when it commenced. A crow, too sick to fly. A rabbit that had hurt its leg. But there was no stopping it. When you feed the belly of a beast, they say, it will never stop the hunger. A three year old, with so much a head of him. A wizened old man, his pale blue eyes still open. A young woman, with good looks, now destroyed. Control was gone. It had not been part of the package deal of the rebirth.
And so I mind her. So I watch her. And yet, she knows me not.
