She had a jolly, tender face, her ruddy red cheeks the hue of warm pinkish-purple blush, matching the shade of her red-wine-tinged lips and seeming – to all whose gaze fell upon them – at once as luscious as a rose petal and succulent as a slice of moist red velvet cake. Her eyes blazed – like bright twinkling stars reflecting off the sea on a clear, dark night – with graceful passion, as if she were a benevolent guardian angel plucked from the pages of a fairy tale, with unassailable mountains of compassion and tenderness within her. Her hands seemed to sway and dance as she talked, hypnotizing her audience, leaving them open mouthed and gawking before her, transfixed by the fluid rhythms of her speech – as musical as the mellifluous melodies of a jazz saxophonist – and the beauty of her language – as achingly poetic and perfectly poignant as a maestro writer’s magnus opus – somehow equally enthralled by her tales of dreamy adventures in exotic coasts and sojourns in glamorous private islands, inspiring heart-wrenching waves of yearning and an inescapable burning wanderlust, and yet still, magnificently enticed by her alluring voluptuous hips swaying rhythmically as she dances across the room – her own personal stage – with the ease and grace of a virtuoso ballerina, all who stand before her left utterly mesmerised by the brilliantly regal presence she so elegantly exudes.
So perfect was her performance, so picturesque was her masquerade, so impenetrable was her mask, so unbreakable was her resolve, that not a single miniscule crack in her grand and elaborate charade even existed to be seen through, not even a solitary hairline fracture nor a lonesome silvery splinter in her pristine visage. Behind the opulent, sensuous curtains – that shelter her soul from the scolding scorn of realities scathing glare – her skeletal true self shivers and weeps terribly, so bitterly isolated from the loving embrace of acceptance and affection, yearning to be swaddled by the arms of love, to be squeezed tenderly and to bask in the nostalgia-rich realms of memory where she can finally feel the fondly intimate human touch of another. Alas, not even elastic limbs can stretch far enough to reach her, and so she remains, like a lonely princess locked in a bleak dungeon plunged miles beneath the earth’s surface, or an angel incarcerated in a magical tower that careens heavenward higher than winged birds or aeroplanes or hypersonic space rockets alike can soar.
Such is the nature of her dire situation, her sad story made sadder still by the realisation that her steel cage of sorrow is locked from within, that the key to unlock her suffering lies within her desperate grasp, close enough to touch the cold metallic curves, to smell the shiny silver paint on the steel surface, the key that could slot perfectly into place inside the titanic mechanism of cogs and wires and metal pipes –sparks of electricity flashing suddenly – that spread like robotic worms through the smog filled warehouse of her brain’s vast sedated synaptic system, to ultimately catalyse a great, life-altering, soul-saving, reality-shifting spiritual transformation.
But one brutal fact remains, one savage truth, one awful certainty known – on some level – to all: that the most malevolent architect of our suffering is our own self, that the evil saboteur – that monstrous destroyer of joy, lurking within the dark depths of our strange souls, brooding menacingly and hatching elaborate strategies to propel our downward plummet into despair to even greater speeds – is the spectre of ourselves, the ghostly child beaten and malformed into a vile creature, a sadomasochistic abomination, of pure, viscous hatred and resentment and self-loathing, forever lacerating our trembling souls with unceasing lashes of self-destruction.
Who could possibly imagine such vast depths of horror lay deep beneath the surface of that jolly, tender face?
Short Story by Stamos Mardou