Title: Smoke and Mirrors
Rating: Teen

The sounds of a new widow’s screams echoed through the walls, making the women hug their husbands, the husbands hug their wives, and lovers cling to each other in the shadow of night. The great and terrible sounds filled each soul with dread, and the slow sounds of attempts to calm her made the cries quiet into sobs.

Natalie looked down at her hands, away from the sounds, though she could hear them echoing through the walls. Another man gone and the wife left to mourn him. Her pale hands lifted the pen and wrote in ink so final, “Haley, Patrick 30 June 2056 age: 52.” An old guy, a good guy, someone she’d known all of her life. Dead, now. She didn’t have any sobs to stifle, just the simple, easy ability to hold only apathy in her mind and soul.

Always apathetic, as more names filled her little book, a little black book bound in leather. The pen rested against her thigh, held loosely between her fingers. A deep, shuddering breath taken. Apathy fading. Now, unable to keep the pain from striking a hard blow into her body, she shuddered.

“Wife, Kathryn Haley, age: 51. No children.”

Another wave of screams came from upstairs. “Loved by many.” Not the widow, she realized. Kathryn had too much dignity to get caught screaming. Likely, she stared blankly at a wall, or folding the blankets she’d left out to dry on her patio.

Natalie wished she could have that strength of heart to be as dignified as Kathryn. It would drop this urge into burning acid, make it go away. With every death, every disappearance, her shell of ice disappeared. The cold dignity died slowly, painfully, leaving her ready to crawl into her bed and face her death, like the coward

Thank God for Mother-Dearest, Esther. If Esther hadn’t done everything she had to Natalie, she’d have likely found the top of the apartment building a temptation. High temptation.

With Mother-Dearest, she’d learned strength. She’d learned the power a cold heart could have on people. Somehow, Esther preferred the ice to the passion her daughter had caught like a disease, the heat that burned everybody else out of her life. Almost as bad as the ice surrounding Esther.

Pictures decorated the wall with the past. Pictures told the passionate story of Natalie, the beautiful Natalie. Always the beautiful one. Her thick blonde hair always tumbling down her back, her head tilted just right to give her beautifully arrogant face a dash of attractive humility.

That back never held subservience. That back never held anything less than everything in that heart. Never, she’d once sworn, would she bow down to someone else.

Esther had taught her that.

A pack of cigarettes peeked out from the corner of the blankets. Aah, temptation. Temptation itself hid in the unassuming little box.

She reached out for it. How could she resist? An addict to the bone since her father had given her the first addictive pack on her thirteenth birthday. An addict couldn’t fight, couldn’t resist. Esther had taught her that, too. It made her weak. But was the weakness really so bad right now? It made the pain in her heart fade into simple relief.

The cigarette lifted to her lips, almost of its own accord. How had that happened? She jumped then let it in. Unlit so far, but that would change quickly.

Maybe inside wasn’t such a great place to smoke…she rose and sighed. Going out of her little sanctuary meant she’d have to hear the horror stricken screams of whoever screamed.

Maybe, she thought with horror. They hadn’t just lost Patrick. Maybe there someone else had gone. It stopped her steady, calm motions in their tracks. She had to take a deep breath as the world swirled around her in confusing flashes of color and light.

Lord, she thought, I’m losing my mind.

Away from the wall she walked, and into the hall. The screams were louder here, and every shrill sound became a knife in her chest, slowly twisting and turning around her heart, but never striking, always dancing around the heart.

She made her way outside. After curfew, but who cared? She was just a burned out model, with gray in her blonde hair, and wrinkles around her blue eyes. Things had certainly changed. Once, she’d even been a brunette.

Outside, she lit her cigarette and leaned against the cold brick walls, barely in the light of the street lamp made its effect on her, highlighting her features and making them more dramatic. A match slid from the side, definitely not hers, but lighting the cigarette that hung from between her lips.

“Old fashioned fuck,” she hissed but let him light the cigarette for her.

“How lady-like,” the voice beside her murmured.

“Lady like? Me? You are a better woman than me,” she took her first nicotine flavored puff and felt her back relax as the drug hit her system.

“Of course I am,” he adjusted himself, “Just not today.”

It always felt wrong, somehow, to be attracted to the slim figure. It wasn’t some misplaced sense of perversion, but something was just wrong with him, and with being attracted to him. Male and female at the same time, like something in a book. Something wasn’t quite right about him; she reminded herself and rolled onto a shoulder to peer at him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m watching you,” he grinned at her and leaned against his shoulder.

“Ah, that makes sense. Stalk the ex-model and see what’s going on?”

“No, watch the strongest person en le resistance,” he laughed, “You’ve got the strongest mind I’ve ever seen.”

“Great,” she grimaced and rolled back against her back. The smoke came from her lips flew against the sky, painting it gray for a moment before the cool breeze disintegrated it.

“Great that you’ve got a strong mind, or do you not believe me?” his lips quirked and he took her cigarette from between her lips, taking a smoke and letting it caress his throat.

She shrugged; her shoulders graceful in their motions. Graceful as a model.

“You don’t believe me, ever, do you?” he asked softly and leaned forward, stroking his hands over her shoulders.

“Of course not.” Her voice was calm and something different, a low burr he could become more than familiar with, the perfect bedroom voice.

He reached out and pulled her into the building, smiling faintly. How could he not adore her? Her strength of mind and soul would make myths. His smile was faint and fond as he tugged her towards her apartment, silencing the screams and sobs that had broken the peace of the apartments, fogging the sound from her ears.

His hands slid soothingly across her shoulders and he brought her up to her room. She walked as though she'd been drugged...He'd only done a little bit of it, and that was just to make her sleep.

Her emotions were tormenting, and would give him a headache before the night was done. He slid her into the bed, making her take off her shoes, extinguish her cigarette, and loosening her blouse (subtly, of course, so she wouldn't wake up wondering what he'd done to her). She slid into the warm embrace of her bed, and wiped her eyes as she crawled across the bed and resting her head onto the pillow.

Morning, he'd tell her why he'd come. But then, he just grabbed a blanket from the closet and crawled onto the couch, setting up camp and waiting in the cool room.