Creative Writing

She Wanted Love

She wanted love and so she walked into the club where the lights flashed intermittently over its dimly lit confines and where bodies moved and swayed over one another along to the club’s music like waves in a turbulent sea.

She blended into the crowd, breathing in the sweat, perfume and acrid smell of cocktails and vodka already spilled carelessly by the club’s drunk patrons.

It didn’t take long before she felt someone caress her arm on purpose as she turned to meet the stranger she knew. He looked less flattering than how his pictures made him out to be but there was an inexplicable thrill in seeing him in the flesh.

Her lips curled impishly at the thought of what were once mere fantasies turning into possibilities and likelihoods.

A cursory, obligatory, and introductory conversation and some drinks later, the intimacy snowballs into physical contact bordering on being scandalously inappropriate and yet craved all the same by both individuals.

Kissing and biting; she wanted love to be fun and so she let him take her away from the deafening music to a room rented for the evening or maybe even less, where all that was left was the thundering of their lively pulse and their now very much audible breathing.

She had already forgotten what they had talked about earlier that evening and whatever it was that attracted them to one another in the first place, but it did not matter.

She wanted love and she wanted fun, but it was never meant in the sense that she wanted him.

What she wanted was what she could take from him.

And what she could take from him was his love for her nurtured by those explicit and tantalizing moments as she took it from him over and over throughout the rest of the night, rousing the restless shadows in the dim glow of an incandescent ambience cast over an impermanent and carnal embrace.

She wanted love but she did not need it and so she slept but for a moment and had gotten up before he nor the sun could rise to bid her a good morning.

Heels in hand, she walked off barefoot with her head held high without a hint of regret nor even a sense of shame.

She got what she wanted for herself for the day and as another new dawn approaches, she awaits the thrill of doing it all over again.

The more one gets what they want out of love, the lesser the likelihood of being in need of it.

The Clock Tick-Tocked

Like a metronome, perfectly timed.

She watched as the snow fell slowly like feathers outside her window. The weather had seemed perfectly fine in the morning yet it had all changed so drastically without rhyme nor reason. It was just one of the many things that was hard, if not impossible, to predict.

Outside, the people were bustling and in a hurry all while she sat there alone, seemingly indifferent.

She didn’t feel anxious; she felt resigned.

She had long changed out of her dress and into a simple, thin, black nightgown that was a huge contrast to what she had worn earlier. It didn’t feel as restricting and in terms of mood, she felt the opposite from what she felt hours ago.

Voices talked in hushed whispers out in the hallway outside the room, unintelligible to her ear. She didn’t need to guess the subject of their conversation and she had no desire to inquire. They, in turn, left her alone–though not entirely out of sympathy, but also because they wouldn’t know what to say to her.

She was in the peace and calm between two different storms. The realization, disbelief and shock had come and passed. Soon enough, the quiet will end and she will slip past the equilibrium and submerge into the deep recesses of self-doubt and utter misery.

For the time-being, she just sat there as the time ticked by. There was no escaping the aftermath and consequences of choices already made and so she enjoyed the tranquility while she waited.

In that moment, she was broken yet she didn’t feel fragile. Instead, she almost felt amused by the helplessness of the entire situation.

It wasn’t indifference. It was being spent, exhausted and drained of all that she had to give.

Little by little, she inevitably gives in. It started with whispers of rhetorical questions and then torrents of misplaced blame directed at herself as well as at every other possibility that her mind could quickly come up with.

She wondered if it had been somehow her fault. Perhaps she had subconsciously driven him away with her attitude, personality, looks or whatever else she could be lacking in. Whatever it was, it was evidently enough for her to be left jilted at the altar and the groom nowhere to be found.

Eventually, there was a knock on the door and there was finally an answer. Whatever guesses she had started harbouring had all quickly paled in comparison as she went back to the first stage of realization, disbelief and shock–except it was for an entirely different reason that held a sickening note of finality.

It had been a freak accident, her father struggled with himself to tell her. He had his hands on her shoulders, ready to support her when she collapsed–which she did as she felt the sudden drop in everything happening around her.

It was at that moment that she realized she would’ve rather been left jilted at the altar by a potentially unfaithful or cowardly groom than to lose the only man she had ever loved forever.

Because even when she had questioned his feelings towards her just moments earlier, she had never once doubted the authenticity of her own feelings of love towards him.