Crow: Femme Fatalé

“Hell hath no fury like a young womans' scorn...”

CHAPTER 1 - Innocence

The heat was unbearable inside the sweltering coffee shop
despite it being a Friday night as the winter months
deliberately bite into soft, yielding faces. The wind
lashed at the windows and sent trash and destitute bits of
paper dancing in the place of leaves. The city always found
substitutes for what it had devoured. The little place was
buzzing with business as it usually was near the weekend.
Two types of people ever came at this hour, young couples
who stared dreamily into each others eyes, as if soldered
together. Hands were joined across the table, growing
clammy with bodily heat. Those sitting at single tables
fixed their eyes forlornly on the dramatizing duos, who in
return ignorantly believed their happiness was apparent
only to themselves. There emerged from the recesses of the
dinghy shop a fat, red faced woman namely DeeDee. She was
barking out commands to her staff left and right, trying to
rectify an inkling of order within the chaos, futile as it
seemed.
“Hey Morannon! You OK sweetheart? Come on, give the poor
girl a break we’re workin’ her to the bone. Sylvia, help
her out with that order, eh?”
“Easy for you ta say! I’ve got four people waitin’ here.
Don’t worry sweetie, this mess ‘ll die down in a couple ‘a
hours”, Sylvia flashed a consoling grin towards the girl.
Morannon stood behind the counter looking cool and
professional despite the frenetic frenzy surrounding her.
She had mastered the task of balancing a tray containing
four hot coffees in her left palm while working the
stubborn, cash registrar with her right.
“I swear this thing is possessed”, she kicks the side of
the counter sending a tremor up her arm, where the drinks
slosh about spilling into each other.

Five hours later and the place looks as if it’s been
evacuated. Seats once occupied by sultry couples and
heart-broken singletons were left deserted. Waitresses were
milling about the place starting the more gruelling task of
cleaning up. It didn’t take the exhausted women too long to
start up a good conversation. As they spoke, their
exhaustion left their aching limbs, proceeded through their
larynx and out their mouths as the day’s stress was
systematically expelled from the anatomy.

“Hey, it’s been a pretty good day for business” Sylvia
pointed out cheerfully.
“Frankly, I thought they’d never leave!” came the utterance
from below the counter.
“Jesus! My feet are killin’. Sylvia, you going early?” said
Morannon as she looked over her shoulder.
“Yeah Sweetie. Why?”
“I was thinking of staying behind and locking up shop
that’s all.”
DeeDee heard this as she heaved herself through a narrow
door “What? You lock up for me? Nah, you’ve done too much
already honey. I feel so guilty as it is anyway. You ain’t
got a social life ‘cause ‘a me. You go home an’ get a good
nights rest. I’ll lock up.”

She smiled faintly at the girl that reminded her so much of
her own daughter, wherever she was now. DeeDee handed a
small brown envelope to Morannon.
“Here ya go, and before you say anything, the extra money
is a token of my gratitude. You’ve proved yourself to be
too reliable! Oh, and I’ve given you the next week off. NO
BUTS! Now get outta here before I change my mind!”.
Morannon couldn’t help laughing, she embraced the chubby
figure and gave her a peck on the cheek as she winked at
Sylvia.
“If I were you Huns, I’d get my cute little derriere over
that threshold and outta her sight ASAP!!” came the warning
from Sylvia.
“Consider it done girlfriend!”, she was out the door in a
flash.

CHAPTER 2 - Paradise Lost

Walking down the street with groceries bearing her arms
down, she neared the humble abode called ‘home’. The lights
were off and no sign of anyone in the house. ‘Strange’, she
thought, ‘has Jane gone to bed early. No, she’s a rebel
teen Goth, probably with her pals out on the town, gone to
a gig or something?’ Yet she couldn’t ignore that tingling
sense tugging her neck that told her something was
desperately wrong, she reached to put the key in the door
but to her alarm it yielded to the touch. The door creaked
opened on its arthritic hinges and tentatively she immersed
herself in shadows. There came from within the bruised
hollow of the house a plaintive sniffling. She could barely
hear her footsteps as the blood pumped violently from her
heart up to her head sending it spinning. Her ear-drums
felt as if they were about to rupture and a vitriolic
liquid dissolved in the back of her throat and stomach.
Face hot and forehead clammy she slowly proceeded dreading
the scene to be encountered. Upon entering the kitchen she
was struck with a sense of panic, as she saw three drops of
blood lying on the table. The shiny carmine substance now a
dark burgundy, tainted by the greyness of the room glowed
like hot ashes in front of her. The night’s shabby efforts
to disguise the struggle was ironically indiscreet. As her
eyes grew accustomed to the guilty blackness, shards of
broken glass laced with blood, streaked over the floor by
desperate fingers, knives edged with it, work-tops pooled
by it was unveiled to her fervent eyes. Her hands shook
violently, unable to grasp the paper bags any longer. She
extended her hands out frantically to stop herself from
falling as her legs gave way.

Something warm and sticky made contact with her hand, the
sick-sweet smell of fresh, warm blood flooded through her
nostrils. The morse code of a passing car’s headlamps
temporarily travelled across the ceiling and onto the
offending hand. She hastily snatched her hand away as to
her horror found an unidentifiable lump of flesh
dismembered from a human body. Next thing she knew, she was
approaching the staircase. Her memory was eradicated, no
record was available as to the meaning of her actions,
there was no rationality. In obsessive retrospect she would
marvel that in times of extreme shock, innate acumen would
rule in the customary habitation of reason. She was to
further adopt this method of life in the bleak future that
lay ahead, only seconds away, hidden only by the barrier
called Time. Instinct led her legs to the bedroom, and
there she found her sister lying cut and bruised,
whimpering. The girls' eyes were glazed over, snapping
constantly from one world to the next, her eyes
intermittently cast itself upon realms beyond and back to
the carpet on the floor. Gathering the broken body into her
arms, she rocked her back and forth, breathing in the
sickly smell of impending death slowly, letting it poison
her soul, inviting it into her heart. She lifted the now
vacant face and stared into unoccupied eyes, she could see
dancing within them her fifth, eleventh, and fourteenth
year’s. Sudden annoyance and hatred gripped her as she
asked ‘Why am I not crying?’. Passively her arm took over
and lifted the receiver, dialled the number, and her mouth
said the relevant information necessary. It was as if she
was staring at herself from a great height, no longer at
one with her body, detached, divorced, expelled from her
own being.

Minutes later the rooms were flooded with people. Colours
of black, orange, yellow disturbed the natural pink and
peach of the house. Gold badges flashed rudely into her
eyes as she sat abjectedly staring. Eyes looking but mind
not acknowledging, ears hearing but body not reacting,
hands touching but heart not feeling. She sat like a
vegetable, her whole future snatched within a breath of her
life, what is there left to live for now? The point of
living is having a reason to live for, that reason is now
gone. God how cruel that is!! It’s a fuckin’ lie!! Shes
still here, look at her, her body is there, it’s there,
she’s still there. GET UP!!! GET UP JANE, come on, don’t be
like that, let’s make some coffee and sit and watch a
movie. Please. I know you're punishing me. GOD ISN”T THIS
PUNISHMENT ENOUGH!! What did I do wrong? Why, Why, Why me?
Why Jane? My baby sister Jane...

A young woman focussed into view, her lips were moving but
no sound came out. “Hi, I’m Officer Shanks, look it’s not
your fault, don’t blame yourself. You could have done
nothing to save her. Please get up and stop torturing
yourself, we’ll take it from here. There is nothing left
for you to do.” Her life snapped back inside of her at the
sound of those words. Her pupils narrowed onto the pinched
face of the woman, concentrating on her eyes; lips curled
to such a gruelling grimace that the woman took a step
back. The anger and hatred burned deep within her, her
guts roared like a furnace as she glared at, not the person
in front of her, but at a far deeper, more darker being.
“Nothing left? Oh but there is....”, she said mincingly,
grinding the words into the officers ears. Upon looking
down she realised they had wrapped her in a blanket,
disgusted by the warmth of her body she threw it off. “You
cannot leave, not until we have maintained all the
necessary evidence, there are forms you must fill out
stating....... Where do you think your going? You can’t
leave!!” screamed the woman. Two words materialized in her
head ‘Watch me...’. To Morannon, her words receeded into
the void unto which she had built a new world. A voice
beckoned her to escape the suffocating hotness of the
interior. Silently, obediently she glided from one end of
the room to the other and out the door, her body leading
the way, her mind a heartbeat behind.