Ball

Ghazal Bigdeloo, the woman

(Second in a series of ghost stories)

Her half-child back and half-full sack turns, (the sagging sun too tired of the day) and sees a gloaming shade at the field’s far edge.  Trudges over to lay down under winded branches, a sleeping bed of white frogfruit. To forget she’s alone. To forget her fingers purple cracked.

An owl hoots at the secret mouse and she wakes in a pool of moon. Shivers. The field spreads a dark stain. A truck forgot, she and the half picked bag. Forgotten. Someone should come for her, of course they should. Of course they would.

Panic chews at her mouth. Closed night all around. Darkness in her eyes and shivers heat to scream.

Only blind woods hears. Hearing

a melodic strain, low and thin. Silver keys thread the dark. Is it a waltz? She turns shadow eyes to a glow. Follows the music through undergrowth. Scrape and claw. She stumbles and pitched to ground, looks up in the foil moon.

  A coach.

Filigree door swinging open and seated on the velvet – a crystal slipper. Diamond bright. Leather tuft interior glows pearl. Melody grows with her breath

so close in.

Steps into the coach, how lovely the shoe.

Beauty. Ahhh.

Wedges foot in. Wrought toes pained. But, her hands soft, now French manicured. Her lips pout, red and full. Money rustle of silk and wrapped fur. The smell of rich and clapping for the belle of the ball.

Click door shut.

Glass shoe cold. And colder. Colding and happy and pain. Coursing up and down and into her blood, turns her breath hard. Crystal prisms. Symphonic volt and tympani drums.

Two mornings from now they find her body – chill. Toes broken back. Officer suspects foul play. An old glass slipper inside an overlarge pumpkin rolls away. A belly full of blood.