Skin and Bones

*apostrophes have been omitted because deviantart does not seem to want to recoginze them


The last time he saw her she had a bruise on her knee. It was purple and red and dimpled to match the hockey ball that had created it. She wore long socks that lay just below the mark, but which she tugged upwards from time to time to cover it. Shed warn similar socks all those months ago, too, when it had ended. But she hadnt had to worry about them slipping down then - they sat snug where the curve of her calf met her thigh.

Since then, she had refused his calls, ignored his texts and deleted him as a friend on facebook. It had been such a long time since theyd had any contact at all, and if it had been up to her, he was sure it would have been longer. She was clearly surprised to see him at the party.

She did not approach him, but kept a careful watch out of the corner of her eye as she talked to her friends. He was less subtle, glancing at her every few minutes and clutching the neck of a bottle of what had been her favourite cider. He could not help but notice how different she looked - how could anyone? - and with each sip he stared with more interest at the length of her legs and the slope of her collar bones.

Her friends finally left her alone and he slid over to where she stood. They begun with awkward pleasantries and he offered her a sip of his drink. She blanched at the proffered beverage and refused, indicating the Diet Coke in her hand.

The day after he could not say how they got from there to the next room, lips locked and hands grasping at each others clothing. What he could remember was how she left. He could recall the rasp of her fly as he undid it, and the warmth between her small breasts as he placed his face there, pausing and speaking those three pined-after words plus two: "I still dont love you". She was gone in a beat, his slurred yell of ignorant, sexual frustration following her out the door.

Not two weeks later did he overhear the news that she was in hospital. She would not have wanted to see him, he decided, so he would not go to visit. And thus, his last chance was squandered.

At her funeral he approached her coffin with sinking trepidation. When he peered over the edge he expected skin marred with fresh scars and puncture wounds. What he found was nothing of the sort.

She wore the kind of tasteful, plain clothes shed never have worn in life, and they pooled around her like run-off from the gutters on a drizzling day. The gauntness of her cheeks, which had been disguised by the dim lighting of the party, now cast shadows over the rest of her face - but it was not this that gave him the most pause. Instead, his eyes traveled with horror over the translucent skin of her slightly exposed forearms. He balked at the tininess of her wrists and the still lie of her clearly visible veins. How could he not have noticed, on the night of the party, the way that her bones had jutted?

It was with bile rising in his throat that he turned away.

Those few months that they were apart had taken much from her. She had withered, she had stagnated, and she had festered away with the pieces of her broken heart. Her physical strength had left her, dragging the mental in its wake. In the end she had no will to continue - no will to fight. In the end even the savage sting and the drama of a slit wrist could not move her. There were no more tears to be shed and no more screams to be heard, so she stopped, and she faded, and the quiet swallowed her up.

In the end she was just skin and bones.