Ok, so this was an assignment we had to do in which we had twenty minutes to write about absolutely anything...My friend had been talking about a dress....I got this idea.

Prom Dress

The dress didn’t fit anymore. It hadn’t fit for six years. It would probably never fit again. She just didn’t have the figure anymore. Instead, she had the extra pounds and wrinkles.

She was only 24, yet the bitterness she felt toward life was greater than many people who had seen more of it.

The young woman, who felt so old, sat on a throw rug in her tiny apartment, staring at the red prom dress in her hands. How she wished she could just put on that prom dress and go back to high school!

She had never wanted to leave high school in the first place. She had known she’d never make it on her own.

And she had been right. Yet she had still gone to college, still tried to get a job, but that didn’t work out either.

There was a time that she had been popular, pretty, happy. There was a time that people had liked her, that she had liked herself. There was a time when her skin didn’t hang from her bones like hanging leaves on a willow tree.

Those times were long ago, though.

Her life had since burnt out like the match in her hand. There was nothing more to burn, her match would never light again.

She had lost everything, everything, when she’d found out she was pregnant. Her mother, the only family member left, had died of shock and disappointment when the news was heard. Her “friends” all seemed to have better places to be once they learned what happened. But none of that mattered, she knew she would have a child soon that she would love and adore.

And then he happened. No one knew who he was then and still no one knew who he was. She didn’t even know what his face looked like. All she could remember was walking, walking home from buying a crib, carrying it herself with no help from anyone, when a man came over and hit her. She fell onto the pavement, the crib flying out to her side. Fists rained down upon her over and over again. She was luckily that she fell unconscious so soon, the pain would have been unbearable.

The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital. They said they hadn’t been able to uncurl her hand from the crib box’s handle. In fact, she was still holding it when she woke up. The man had stolen her purse. Unluckily for him, there was nothing in it.

“So I’ll be ok,” she said to herself, breathing out in relief.

“Yes. You’ll be ok,” the doctor said.”

She looked at him. “What do you mean? Did the man get hit by a car or something?”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry miss, but you’ve lost your daughter.”

Tears pricked her eyes at the memory. That man had cost her the last important thing in her life. Her flame would never flare up again.

But something else could.

She stood up, leaving the dress on the floor. She struck the burnt out match against the sand paper once again, watching it flare up.

Her life would never flame again, but something else could.

As she walked out of the room, she dropped the match.

This might possibly be the most depressing story I've ever written. I so do not write depressing stories. Well, I hope you enjoyed. Please review!