The Girl With The Sparkly Louboutins

(Short Story)

She knew she needed to run faster. She could hear the howls of the beast, even though the sound of her own heart beating in her ears was loud enough to drown out a concert. She was running as fast as she could, but she needed to go faster. Even at her top speed, she knew it was catching up with her. Her legs were beginning to shake. Her lungs were already aching. But she couldn’t stop. It would catch up with her.

She could feel blood dripping from her cheek from where a sharp edged-branch had struck and cut her. She knew in her gut that the beast was able to smell the blood.

It would be night soon, not that it made a difference. The dense forest was already blocking any attempt the sunlight made at trying to help her. She was trying to find some direction but her mind was running rampant, much like her.

She had finally arrived at a clearing. She took a moment to stop at the edge of the clearing, to take a breath. She needed it, badly. And she needed to figure out which way to go if she ever wanted to get out of Nature’s backyard.

She was leaning against a huge tree when she heard it again, the deep, guttural growl. It was closer this time, somewhere right over her shoulder. She had to do something. She had to find a way out, a way back to civilization. But which way should she go? Everywhere she looked, all she could see was a thick forest and dense undergrowth.

Before she had a chance to panic about direction, she felt it, the warm stingy breath on the back of her neck. There was no use running now, no misinformed notion of survival. It had caught up with her. Her momentary stop had lasted a moment too long. She couldn’t move now. She stood still with her breath hitched and her mind numb. She knew it was sizing her up. And then it walked around to face her up front. For the first time she got a look at the menace she was running from. It was hard to look away from the big green eyes, but once she did, she saw only black, like an absolute darkness. It was crouching on all fours, her beast, and it looked much like a huge rabid teddy bear, except for those penetrating green eyes, which were anything if not human.

In those moments, which were possibly her last moments, when her whole should have been flashing before her eyes, all she could think of was that her feet were killing her. The beast, as if reading her mind, suddenly started eyeing her feet. Without thinking, she bowed her head and saw that she was wearing her sparkly, 4-inch high Louboutin heels!

Before she could even figure out why she would wear 4-inch heels for a run through a dense forest, she raised her head only to see the beast lunge at her with his teeth bared.

The searing pain in her neck was what jolted her back to reality. She was sitting in her bridal room, dressed in her elegant red wedding dress and even though all the make-up and the finality of what was about to happen to her was making her quite uncomfortable, she had dozed off in a very uncomfortable armchair.

She couldn’t bend forward for risk of her dupatta messing up her hair, so she raised on foot and saw that she was indeed wearing her 4-inch high Louboutins. The angle at which her foot was would probably give her a sprained ankle by the time she got to her new ‘home’.

When her father finally came to walk her ‘down the aisle’, and the first face she saw when she walked into the hall was her mother-in-law’s, with her deep green eyes, she realized the beast that was her fate had finally caught up with her.

There was no place to run now.

And all she could do was smile and pity the beast because if she couldn’t run from it, she would definitely give it indigestion.

The Last Romantic

You may fight your demons with swords, but I fight mine with words. I tell them how they must not try to hurt me, for I am the last of my kind, the last Romantic, the one remaining legacy of the people who truly dream. I tell them how they must not hurt me for I may be the only one who might yet save our world from damnation, from eternal darkness. I tell them they must not hurt me for I am the only salvation, the only hope the lost people of this world have left. And in doing so, I force my demons to step down onto earth, fall down to their knees and weep out of pity for the sorry state to which we have all driven ourselves. They weep for my fate and for the burden I must carry. They weep for me, the last Romantic, because there are great tasks with which I am charged. They weep for me simply because I do not; because I feel weeping to be a mediocre man’s job. Us, the Romantics, we do not weep for ourselves, but for others and their failure to understand what it means to be truly loved.

I, the Romantic, the last of my kind, shall not fight my demons with swords, but with words. & in doing so, I will make them my allies, my friends, as they are the only friends I ever hope to find.

Kooky But Charming

Tomorrow my prince shall come. He might not be a knight in shining armor, but instead he might be wrapped in tin foil. In place of a helmet, he might be wearing a tin foil hat that he fashioned himself to keep the aliens from reading his thoughts. In place of a sword, he might be holding a torch to ward off the darkness. And instead of slaying the beast for me like a brave knight, he might depend on me to help him kill my demons. But this flawed man shall be my prince. And I’d be damned if I don’t love him as completely as one can love another. For he shall be the only one who would know which song to put on the radio when I need my motivation and he might be only one who would remember to keep a tub of ice-cream in the freezers for days when life has no meaning.

So, yes, he may be flawed, and he may be a little kooky. But I’ll love him, alright! More than he deserves; because I’ll need him to do the same for me. 

From Hero to Human in A Glance

My perception of everything in this world is based on the two glances that I give it; the first glance sees only perfection, God’s image, & the second glance sees nothing but the imperfections, the ridges and the cracks. Some imperfections enhance the beauty of the view, making it more human and more real whereas some imperfections provide a look into all that is wrong with the view, again rendering it human and real. Whatever I make of the things I look at, the people I meet, the experiences I go through, these two glances shape my perception.

Today I saw a man. At first glance all I saw was his fairer than snow complexion and his eyes the color of emerald’s glinting in the sunlight. But when I looked at him again, I saw the scar, barely hidden, on the underside of his chin, I saw the ridges on his cheek, the hollowness that the bags under his eyes gave to his whole face. The Greek God that I had seen at first glance had suddenly lost all immortality and turned human in front of me.

My perception of everything in this world is based on two glances that I give it, the first glance is through the eye of the child that I have kept alive inside me even after all these years, a child who believes in magic, & the second glance is that of the adult who is slowly trying to beat out the child, the adult who sees magic as an excuse for a laziness to find true answers. The child in me sees the hero and the adult only sees the human. And if growing up means seeing your heroes turn human in front of you, I’m afraid all it takes for me to grow up is the second glance.

And I think the person who came up with the adage, “Love at first sight” also suffered from a similar sort of growing up. Because the adage implies that it is the perfection that we see at first glance that captures our heart, all glances after that bear witness to the imperfections; the attitude, the crazy habits, the weird family, the overall persona. And if “love at first sight” endures, it is a testament to our commitment to our “love at first sight” that even after all those imperfections, even after seeing the Greek God/Goddess forsake all immortality and turn human in front of us, we did not turn away, lest for another angle to look at them with.

Yes, we all sum up the world in our first two glances at it; all other judgments are merely to satisfy the ruse that is civilized society.

Photo Credits: alayna.deviantart.com