L
Lilith
Guest
"Just one..." Her voice turned to mumbles as all her brainpower got redirected back to her trembling hands, a closed eye to add an extra layer of focus to the task. The first strike's the hardest, keeping the nail still without index and middle finger, or use a hammer without these - Either alternative screwed her over. Her eyes peered one last time to the manual sitting right beside her within these four white walls, now confident enough to press onwards.
Clank, clank, clank. The hammer dropped.
"You are supposed to go straight with the rest of your sisters, you gremlin." A half-hearted smile had her stop dead on her tracks to pull it out entirely and start over. Screws would have been better. Easier to remove and play around with. Nails are problematic in that sense, even if both have their uses. Yet the comparison just made her all the more sour for a moment.
A trying tug across the table leg made her bask on the fruits of her labour, as now food had a place to be at and Elise could call this a living room, if only the barebones of one, missing all the important details save for the essentials: Kitchen, T.V, couch. Nothing else, nigh even worth to describe the boring cotton or the patternless ceramics and blackened stove, and neither her visitors needed to ask for more than that as the lights were better kept off to mask the ugly of her home.
Pulling out her phone, Elise glimpsed at her email, then back to the app tracking down her delivery. There's been a delay on the package's arrival, but she had nothing to do, not after the incident with her co-workers that would amount to a pain in the ass for the higher-ups. A headache to deal with later, as the ringtone started to play and upon it's touch pad screen flashed 'Private Number', unsurprising given the pletora of subscriptions plus how easily any company can obtain your phone to spam you with their most elaborate yet monotone of AI.
"Hello?" Devoid of emotion, as if already expecting the aforementioned ordeal. Cue her eye-widening surprise when the voice behind her phone proved to be a familiar one. "How did you get this number..?"
'...'
Screws and nails, how accurate.
She forgot the rotten smell of philadelphia by now, memories just kept piling up as she went down the cracked sidewalk, perception warped by experience. One to the right, two to the left, and about fourty steps east lead her to a plot of land still well within civilization, yet the sound of cars were at bare minimum all across. Like a park where herbs don't grow but slabs do, and structures four times her height stand made out of granite or marble, but these remain a luxury. There are pathways to follow, but no people to tread them. Most stand on their own little assigned corner, people in the hundreds. The flowers that rest atop mounds of dirt or emerald green grew her disdain. Envy directed to those surrounding her ate away at her heart. Lucky the lot of them.
Can almost see the judgement in their eyes.
She stopped at her destination, turning on her heel to the right to stare down at her progenitor with stillness unlike their last time, having dressed for the ocassion with as much glamour as her pocket allowed, sticking out like a sore thumb around this side of the city.
Elise's the first to break the silence, since her mother didn't had it in her to talk back.
"Feeling tough now..? Really, you had to go ahead and make them waste this muchmoney for you, and for what," The pansies made her almost throw up, to squint and bare her teeth like a wolf flashing it's fangs, pure contempt reserved to them. "These don't fit you, you know it right? You are twisting their meaning, it's for people you want to keep in your mind, forever. You ain't that." She swallowed these words, knowing the hypocrisy behind them.
'...'
"You turned out to be worse than him." Her frown grew once feelings begun to spill away, and for once she didn't know what to do or say, not to her mother, who plays listener for once in her life, a natural aspect of a role as a parent, bastardized by inaction and lack of commitment. "Meryl called. Told me about it, but I wanted to see to this matter personally. Of course," Her eyes turned away for once, staring off to the distance. "She did it because we are related since she never really cared about me, and I got tired of caring for her." A bridge that turned to ash long ago, severed ties with every single one of her siblings, only for the small crime of running away to find a better life, without a single one of them to follow her lead.
'...'
"Well, it turns out you were wrong. I'm doing great. I hope you can see that now," She stopped, taking one step closer, despite the clear distance between the both of them not shortening at all, a hand tightly grasped against her own bossom "Now I'm better, and you can't take that away from me like everything else you STOLE-" Edging the line between yelling and talking real quick once her heart gave in and tears rolled from her eyes, dripping her makeup in the process. Elise took a deep breath, hoping to feel any better by now, yet that sentiment never happened. She dreamt of this meeting, and yet her stoic mother had gone and become even more beautiful than she should be in the first place. Only out of respect did she not rip out the pansies from her, to her and her peers. Both of them got what they wanted, and the flowers served their purpose, the realization baffled the bluenette enough to turn eyes into daggers.
Elise turned to the side, ready to leave the same way she arrived, turned her face towards her mother, to the flowers she adorned herself with, and spat over the woman's grave.