A little something to slit your wrists to

Following is a one page setting sketch that was assigned to me by my creative writing professor.  Just thought I would share my learnin' on here with y'all. Read it if you want to~Lola

                            She stands alone.  The salt heavy air blows her tangled, sea-sprayed hair across her face.  She doesn’t brush it away.  The pre-dawn light turns the dark heavy sky into a misty oyster shell of gray and purple swirling together.  The ocean’s colors mimicking the sky like an angry mina bird.  The ocean rises up as if to grab the sky and pull it down to keep it forever, yet the sky remains out of reach and unable to grasp the oceans waves reaching toward it.  At least that is what she imagines as she stands alone.  The empty beach stretches on either side of her as the waves pull at her toes, grasping hungrily for the tattered hem of her evening gown.

               Behind her, a trail of her bloody footprints leading from the cliffs she descended in the dark are filled with the discarded orchids and paste jewels that once adorned her hair and gown.  It is bitingly cold in the dawn and her skin has taken on a faint blue tinge from the hours she has spent standing on the desolate shore.  She can taste the salt in her throat and on her lips from the sea and the sky and her tears.  Her feet unconsciously dig deeper into the thick wet sand at the water’s edge.  The thick grey brown grains are flecked with black and gold.  Later in the day they will reflect the sun and make the entire beach glow, but now they stick heavily to her well shaped feet and ankles and weigh down the water and blood-stained pale peach silk gown.  The wind is tearing at her and the ocean pulls but she stands frozen.  The screaming inside her is only drowned out by the roaring of the tide crashing all around her.  She stands frozen on the edge of the world seeing nothing but the hours they were together, standing here in the place where they met.

It was hot then, mid-summer, only a few months earlier.  The itchy wool bathing costume was driving her out of her mind.   The heat of the sun beating directly down on her thick chestnut colored hair, causing little drips of sweat to snake down her neck and pool between her shoulder blades as she reclined lazily, eyes closed, in the canvas and teak beach chair.  Her friends were running down the glittering beach, their shouts of joy and laughter always at odds with the silence she preferred.  She dug her toes deeper into the hot sand searching for the coolness underneath.  Silently cursing her refusal to cut her hair into the current bob, she reached for her hat.  Her fingertips grazed the empty place next to her where she had place her hat hours before.  Startled she opened her eyes as the sun seemed to have vanished, as her eyes adjusted to the light she realized that the sun was still shining but had been eclipsed by a body.  As he handed her the errant hat, their fingers touched, and her quiet world expanded.  They swam together in the bracing sea that day, floating together, bodies buoyed by the salt yet drug down by those damn wool bathing costumes.

It is impossible for her to recall they had danced together only hours earlier, impossible to believe that he would never be there again.  Each freezing wave crashes over her bare bloody feet, numbing the breaks and bruises she couldn’t feel anyhow.  The screaming horses, cracking wood, and shouts of her world collapsing begin to roar in her head again.  There was nothing she could do as she held him in her lap, his body a mangled heap.  She just told him how much she loved him and stared into his dimming eyes, her tears washing rivulets of salt though the blood on his face.  There was nowhere for her now.  Nowhere but the edge of the empty world watching the sky and the ocean wage their endless battle to be together.