Short short story II/4

Tear Open The Velvet Curtain (by Paul Saxton)

She had just returned home from the summer ball. Her father, eyeing out from behind his newspaper, noticed, but didn't mention, her skirt crazily tucked into her knickers, her blouse held tight in her hands, her lipstick all over her face and her shoes somewhere, God knows where, maybe on the steps of the Old Ballhouse or wherever it was that the summer ball had been held.

The summer ball was, if you were that way inclined, the absolute event of the year. There was no way you could miss it. You'd have to be a bedwetter to miss it. A jabbernow. A mooncalf.

She lay in dreams and wet her bed slightly as she drifted back to the night's proceedings. Martha said she had never seen her looking so, oh I don't know, so daringly dramatic, so starkly beautiful, like a vampiress forced down the stairs by the unseen touch of her master.

But it's a mid-August night and the window, open, breathes in the closeness, the summer night's joy. She's on the bed, mere wisps, thinking she's asleep. The music of the night plays deep within her, her slow movements carrying her into dreams. And he's there. Of course he's there.

Downstairs, her father shuffles towards the kitchen. A standard lamp throws its empty light somewhere into the room which also, somehow, shuffles. He stops in the middle of the room, at the edge of the light, and aches, a little, for what is left of the summer.

[The second short short story series is announced and explained here.]