The empty black pain of the dry wind put a smile on Crispin’s lips that he couldn’t shake. The agony creeping across his head only made the smile more fancy free: her dark hair, her hazel eyes, the deep red of her lips….her beauty would be burned into his mind forever.
He sat on the warm pavement, wet and sticky, slowly taking his shoes off with a single hand: black socks with holes in the toes and hearts around the ankles rested, restless.
Crispin raised his face toward the skies, making out nothing but the smallest of stinging glitterings. He couldn’t tell if they were celestial bursts from one god or another or the acidic glow of surrounding urban streetlamps.
It was warm, a balmy breeze burning the holes that were once his eyes.
His caustic smile never seized.
And then he heard her footsteps.
He felt Prudie’s body fall against his, her left arm blanketed around his waist.
They sat facing the nearly black water, sitting on the graffiti and gum stained sidewalk away from the sand, both grinning at the roaring sound of the ocean waves lapping against the rocks of the breakers.
“My love must be a kind of blind love
I can't see anyone but you.”
She didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at her. But their lips were collective curls of a secret truth.
Prudie’s hand found his, not his vacant hand but the coddled hand with moist fingers closed oh so delicately around the wet stickiness.
With Crispin, it was always wet and sticky.
“For you, Mrs. Glover.” His lips touched her ear with a haunted murmur.
Prudie’s bottom lip trembled as she gingerly took the treasure.
Carefully.
Oh so carefully, she opened the warm, wet sticky fabric.
She stared at the bloody mess, two orbs that she would never see again.
Her own eyes glanced sideways at Hellion in the warm moonlight.
One by one, she placed each offering of love eternal into her mouth.
And swallowed.
When they were gone,
Crispin never saw her again.
But they were together.
She was forever behind his blood-matted lashes.
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