Short Story: Storyville

Storyville

     Lucy slunk in the door and hid in the shadow.  Maybe no one would notice her if she stood very still.  Impossible in a town this size. Everyone knew everyone and it was common knowledge what  was meant to happen that day. She alos knew it was impossible to conceal herself dressed in white as she was.  She stood stock still, deciding what to do when suddenly it occurred to her that she had spent all her life up to that point expecting to meet prince charming around the next corner.  When she came face to face with a frog again and again, she invested in the relationship certain and convinced that she would kiss the frog through a bizarre misunderstanding and in rapid succession she would find herself standing in front of a prince dressed in white, beaming a magical smile at her.  She waited for that moment to materialize in her hands every day that as she walked that endless walk to a job she detested and that was crushing her creative being and a dark cloud settled in her stomach, weighing her down with each step.  She slowed as she crossed the river.  Hazel River, the water had a green brown tinge, it was hazel like the color of her eyes.  She slowed and wondered what the water felt like when it covered your head and you breathed your last breath and water rushed into your lungs, the mud sucking you down to eternity. 

     Lucy came to from her daze.  She walked steadily to the bar stool.  Frank Jr. was there. He had always been so patient, even when they were children at school, he never had a cross word.  His face was serene and accepting.  That was the only way to live in a town where each person was held to a role, a role that could not  be shaken or modified.  She sat on the bar stool with mounds of white dress beneath her. It made it impossible to sit, to sit comfortably was out of the question.  She teetered on the sticky bar stool, the crinoline scratched her legs.  It was then that she wished, her focus was so intense that it was painful.   She could feel the enormous white dress slide off her body, her mother's pearls became heavy and draped ridiculously around her shrinking neck.  Her grandmother's handkerchief with blue and lavander embroidery that she clutched in her right hand dropped to the floor and she realized that she no longer recognized her own hands. No, she no longer had hands.  She watched as green webbing formed between her fingers. The white high heeled shoes that Marissa had given her for the day lay distant, under the bar stool. It all fell away, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. She suddenly felt like herself.  Green and shiny, small, she hopped down from the bar stool. Frank nodded the other direction and she had no explanations to give because no one even noticed her leave.  She hopped out the door in her new form, no her true form. She hopped tirelessly to the Hazel River and jumped to where she had always desired to go, to where she belonged.