“Can’t wait another hour, huh?” She was flirting, but quickly picked up on his concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Who’s that woman?” He pointed to the figure at the other end of the bar.
“That’s Iris. Poor thing, she’s a mess. She comes in here sometimes and I give her some soup or whatever we have in the break room out back. She is such a sad woman with some real bad stuff in her life.” Tasha paused, shaking her head. “She lost everything. Her boyfriend Marcus was shot and killed right in front of her, died in her arms. He was the only person she had left after her mother passed away—no family—just totally alone.”
“What happened to her mother?”
“Iris spent the better part of a year watching her succumb to dementia. It tore her apart. She told me about it one night. Iris was taking a bunch of anti-depressants to just cope with her own depression. But it all changed when she met Marcus.” Tasha looked up at Iris and sighed.
“There’s something wrong. I don’t know what. I can’t get into her head.”
“Honey, there’s nothing there. She’s a lost soul. Hit rock bottom. She lives wherever she can around here but won’t beg or take help. Too proud or something. I give her food and stuff, but she refused the money I tried to give her. She said she’d work for it and cleans up some nights when it’s late or the midnight cleaning kid calls in sick.”
Iris looked up from her soup and stared at him. Her eyes were empty, but he could hear the whimper of her soul as it cried out to someone who was no longer on this plane of existence.
He sat, locked in a trance and he started to shudder. This wasn’t the kind of connection he usually had with women. His blood froze and a tear stung his eye. This feeling hadn’t hit him since that day. The day he lost Kelly.
“Hey.” Tasha shook his arm.
Tearing his gaze away, he looked back at Tasha. “I have to go.”
As Tasha reached for his shoulder, he vanished before her eyes.
“Holy shit. What happened?” She turned around and Iris was gone too.
*~~*~~*
Iris sat motionless. The dim light from the end table shone onto her as she rested alone on the tattered couch beneath a well-worn blanke
t, a cracked glass of water next to her with a lipstick stain on the rim.
Finally, she stood and walked slowly to the bathroom. The water had been running and steam filled the cold space. She had used the last of her money to pay for a week in this shit-hole room. The week was up tomorrow.
But tomorrow wouldn’t matter.
By then everything would be over. The painful memories, the constant inner struggles, the incessant sobbing in her head. The rippling sound of the water filled the little room as she turned the faucets off. Iris slowly tugged her robe open and let it fall to the floor. She unfastened her bra and tossed it to the side of the small clothes hamper. Her panties fell to her ankles and she kicked them away.
When she turned from the small sink, she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Her eyes filled with tears because the once young woman filled with hope, dreams and a bright future wasn’t what she saw anymore.
Her life had become meaningless. Filled with drugs to help keep her sane in a world that had become a nightmare. She’d had to watch as her vibrant mother lost herself in dementia, the whiplash changes from woman to little girl, from caring mother to vicious harridan. Iris had done the best she could, keeping her mother home instead of a facility. In the end it was all for nothing. Her funeral costs had been the least of the accumulated expenses. Watching as her family home was auctioned off had just about killed her. Iris kept taking the anti-depressants but could still feel herself turning inward, away from everything and everyone around her. She would use a razor to cut herself to try to force herself to feel something, anything.
Marcus had changed all that. He gave her a reason to believe again, a reason to step from the cell within her mind she had created for herself. He helped her through the depression, the drugs and the self-abuse. He was her white knight. But even that shred of happiness was ripped from her heart as she had to watch in agony as he died in her arms. Nobody should have to go through that helpless torment alone. It broke her fragile spirit and left only the tattered remnants.
She picked up the straight-edged razor, her old friend, on the sink and walked, still crying, and listened to the water as it dripped like a heartbeat into the tub. Stepping over the rim, she sat, letting the heat engulf her body. The bath felt cleansing. She submerged herself up to her neck. The silence surrounded her. In a way she thought this was what God would feel like if he held her. She would be wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. If only He could forgive her for what she was about to do. A cardinal sin, but she thought it was her only answer to be back with Marcus again.
Iris let her head fall back, her hair hanging loose and dripping from the edge of the tub.
She sobbed and couldn’t bear the weight and constant abuse of her frayed soul. She didn’t want to go on, falling farther and farther into the bottomless pit, or longing so badly for the person who had made her feel whole again. Her heart was hollow and empty. Nothing eased the grief she felt. It was weighing on her, crushing her.
With a quick shot of pain she slit up her forearm. Her eyes squinted from the initial shock then she switched hands and cut the other side, blood streaming down her pale forearm. She threw the razor from the tub and lay back in the water. To Iris, this was the only way to get her love back and be with him again.
*~~*~~*
The Dark Lord materialized in the dingy hotel. Somehow he knew it was here that he needed to be. He looked around, seeing the light from the bathroom under the half-closed door.
There was an eerie silence. He became hesitant as he approached the room. Pushing gently on the door, he sensed a darkened aura. The cloud of steam dissipated slightly with the door now wide open.
He scanned the room, seeing a figure in the bathtub. It was her—Iris. A red cloud filled the water surrounding her and her skin was frighteningly pale. The black smears of makeup under her eyes showed she had been crying. The open wounds above her wrists pulsed slowly as the life-blood drained from her body.