When she was six years old, Lucinda's mother told her she would be the ruin of all men. Don't let them in, she would say, wipe away those tears, baby girl. You can't let them see. Ten years later, her mother died in the callous hands of her father, beating her to death after his shift ended at work. Before his daughter could come home from school, he quickly shot himself, Lucinda having to find both bodies on the living room floor.
Lucinda is now 24 years old, living the life she built for herself, a life she knew would make her mother proud. Her mother knew Lucinda's beauty would be both a curse and a blessing to the men who wander the streets of New York. She's the most beautiful woman a man can ask for--pure, smooth flesh, rich hazel eyes, full succulent lips, curved defined legs, luscious dark locks, all of which are captured by her warm, stark complexion. She's a woman whose voice makes men listen, whose touches make men weak upon the knees, whose scent makes men drool at the thought of claiming her as theirs. The women in the city are more jealous about her looks rather than the amount of men groveling at her feet. It's as if they can all hear the very clicks of her heels against the pavement, or spot the boldness of her dark, red lips. They say such beauty shouldn't even exist within this world, sometimes whisper and gossip about Lucinda, even begin to have certain beliefs that she's a rare gift from God. It's funny how people can have these perceptions about a woman, and suddenly forget that looks can be deceiving.
She comes home one day and finds herself in the bathroom of her home, looking at the woman staring back at her in the mirror. She has taken off her heels and threw her designer bag on the couch, hoping to rest up after a long day at work. She's gone to the bathroom to take off her earrings when she stops to stare at her reflection. She finds it all strange, to see herself stare right back at her without a single scar or scratch.
"'There is no beauty without some strangeness,'" she quotes out loud, taken from Mr. Poe himself. Pick yourself up, Mother would say, don't let them see.
But then blood forms at the base of the sink. It's as if it's been filling the pipes, aching to be released, sprouting within the core of the drain. She looks down to see the blood beginning to flood the sink without hesitation. She begins to panic, shocked at the scene before her, turning on the faucet to try to wash away the contents. But the faucet begins to leak the same substance, dripping every few seconds as it splashes and ripples in the puddle of blood.
Her eyes widen and her body trembles to the traumatic scene before her. What the fuck is going on? She needs to do something, do something before it's too late. Yet, she feels something wet on her forehead, streaming down her face to the midst of her neck. She touches the wetness only to reveal a trickle of thick blood as she rubs it between her fingers. She suddenly looks at herself in the mirror, and finds a woman's face and hands drenched with it, coating every dip and fiber of her skin, staining her flesh in someone else's DNA. She knows this isn't her blood. She feels no pain or remorse, and finds the smell to be quite peculiar when it journeys into the deepness of her nostrils. This has to be someone else's, has to be someone whose...heart deserved to be ripped from its corpse. Horrified, Lucinda screams and backs away from the sink, ready to run from the sight.
But when she opens and closes her eyes, the blood is gone. The sink is clear, the faucet drips fresh water, and the only woman staring back at her in the mirror is her; fresh and completely clean with insane, terrified eyes. There is absolutely no blood in sight. She calms herself down, sighing in disbelief, shaking her head at her own mind that betrays her. She then takes off her jewelry, and makes her way to the bedroom.
It's been almost a month since the strange phenomena occurred. She couldn't stop thinking about the incident that night, wondering if what she'd seen must have been a dream of some sort. It wasn't possible anyway to see that much blood flood the pipes of the sink. Since then, she chose to forget it ever happened and focused on her work instead. She's been working day and night, shift after shift, trying to keep the company together as each deadline comes to a close. It's her job to make sure everything and everyone is in check. All the employees answer to her. Without Lucinda's tidiness and professional skills, the company would ultimately fall apart, according to her boss, of course.
While looking over documents and organizing a couple of files, one of the employees, Mark, knocks on her office door. Lucinda looks up and gestures Mark to come in. He says he has a file to turn in and she accepts it without question. Mark, with his navy blue tie and white button up shirt, is an attractive man with dick qualities. He looks at Lucinda with lust, lingering at the door as he undresses her with his arrogant eyes.
"You know you work too hard for this job. This company should appreciate you more," he says, scanning her body when she gets up to put the file in a pile. She rolls her eyes, ignoring his comment as she sits down and gets back to work. "If I took you out to dinner, I could show you how appreciative I can be. I'm very skilled at what I do."
She raises her eyebrows, "Mr. Houston, you do know that you're hitting on me in a professional workplace? I could report and fire you in an instant. I'm also very aware of your skills and terrible performance, according to the many women in this building."
His eyes widen, defending his own words by telling her she doesn't know what she's talking about. This isn't the first time she had to deal with men like him.
"I wonder what your wife would say if you came home without a job or heard about the many women you hit on at work. Surely, you wouldn't want to lose her again, would you?"
Anger emerges within his eyes as he briefly touches the band on his finger. She's heard of his constant whereabouts and his past relationships. There are times when Lucinda quietly prays for his wife to open her eyes and see the man for who he truly is. Mark looks as if he's going to call her a bitch, which wouldn't be the first time. Yet, before he could open his mouth to make another remark, the phone rings, interrupting the creative thought process he doesn't have.
"Now If you'll excuse me, I have to take a business call. Do you need anything else?" she asks.
He eyes her, wondering how she even had the nerve to say such a thing to him. However, he shakes his head instead, fully surrendering without forgetting this altercation. He then notices something on her upper neck. Following his gaze, Lucinda quickly moves a piece of hair to cover it before he could perceive the scar more. When he notices her gesture, he smiles to himself.
"You missed a spot," he proudly says and shuts the door on his way out.
Never let them win, her mother would say, don't be a fool to these men who have nothing on your beautiful soul.
The funny thing about beauty is that it can be a misconception. You can be beautiful and still have a damaged soul. You can be beautiful and still feel insecure about certain features of your body. You can be beautiful and still feel death linger inside your bones.
Lucinda failed to fully cover her insecurities. When she gets home and takes a hot shower, she washes it all off; the makeup, the foundation, the lipstick...the fabricated walls of her beauty. When she steps out of the shower and looks at herself in the mirror, she sees the real her, the true Lucinda who has fought and won. For the people of New York, they see the woman whose face is clear of blemishes and small hairs. Yet, for her, she sees the woman whose face has dark scars and scratches, whose eyes have now healing bruises, whose neck has long faded cuts, whose stomach has restored wounds. The bottom of her lips are dented in the middle while a small, deep stitched up gash displays across her upper thigh. They are visible to the naked eye and will never truly disappear. They are there to stay forever, to stare right back at her, every single morning and night. She looks away from the mirror in disgust, in guilt, and even in shame. Sadly, these are the scars left from someone who resembled her father.
Suddenly, the image of her reflection changes and she shockingly sees the scars and wounds begin to open before her eyes, emerging thick, warm blood from underneath the skin, leaving streams down her cheeks to the curve of her neck. They are all becoming apparent, every single one of them, bursting out in blood, seeping into the cracks of her skin. Lucinda begins to panic, looking at the mirror to see this woman covered in her own blood. Her body is trembling, her muscles are still, and her eyes are widening at the sight before her. This can't be happening again. This has to be a dream. This must be.
She begins to wipe it all away, wanting this illusion to disappear and realize she must be sleep deprived from working late. However, this isn't the case at all. She's only smearing the blood in her hands, which are now suddenly covered in dark, smudged blood with a different texture, a very different texture from hers. She looks down at her shaking hands and notices the gash on her thigh begin to ooze and trickle down her leg. Yet, she feels nothing. There is no pain in this dream and she's not dying from the horrific blood that flows out of her veins. To her surprise, she's quite relieved. If this is one of the side effects from sleep deprivation and she could feel no pain, she honestly wouldn't mind having this issue.
But then she sees someone in the mirror, someone standing right behind her when she begins to look up. To her horror, she finds him staring back at her in the mirror; alive, breathing, awake from a distressful slumber she hoped he didn't wake from. She finds her ex-husband with devil eyes smile in ghostly form, wearing his dark leather jacket with jeans ripped and ruined with bleach. His eyes look just like her father's, wondering why she even fell in love with this man in the first place. She wants to scream, but she can't even make a single sound. She wants to run, but she can't even get her feet to move. She's trembling viciously, unable to control her heart rate as she feels every beat pound against her chest and echo in her ears. Before he can move a muscle or speak a word, the memory rushes towards her and she quickly whips around to see if he is actually real. Yet, she sees nothing when she does. Instead, she hears a loud, deafening thud in the basement below her; a sound that shouldn't even exist in the first place. No.
Make them think they can control you, Mother would say, make them think they have the power, but let them know they don't. Let them know you have it all.
Lucinda fell in love with a man who appreciated all of who she was and what she stood for, including her beauty both inside and out. He supported her ambitions, understood her dreams, and made her feel as if she was on top of the world, that he was the only one who could make her happy. But then she said "I do," and the woman that her mother didn't want her to be became the only woman that she was. His hands suddenly became the only marks on her skin. The grip he would have on her wrists, the slaps he would give on her cheeks, the words he would shout in her ears. He gave her these scars and bruises, engraved these wounds into her skin, instilled his touches on her bones. Night after night he became erratic, screaming about things she did wrong and things she should of done better, not only as a wife, but also as a woman and a lover. If only she could have children, if only she could give him a family he desired, if only the doctor didn't speak of such words, he wouldn't have done what he'd done.
So night after night, Lucinda became terrified, afraid, diffident, desiring to escape from her husband whose fists became much too rough and whose hands became much too strong. She knew he became her father and she…she unfortunately became her mother. She didn't have a choice. She did what she had to do.
Lucinda now opens up the door of the basement, hearing the aged wood squeak against the floorboards of the house. She slowly walks down the stairs after turning on the light switch, trembling in every muscle of her body as tears stream down her cheeks. She's shaking her head when she gets to the last step, looking in the direction of her sins while anxiously stepping towards the back of the room.
You see, it was only a matter of time before he would kill Lucinda. He came too close once, and she couldn't possibly die in the hands of a man that resembled her father's. She couldn't possibly go against her mother's wishes and surrender to the power of a man. With his devilish eyes and murderous grin, she wasn't going to let it happen again...couldn't.
She approaches the white closed storage bin in front of her, where the sound must be coming from. As she touches the Styrofoam material, spilling from the seams of the lid is thick inundations of blood, creating puddles and puddles of wounded flesh on the basement floor. She screams in horror, gagging to the metal odor, stepping away from the bin and having every desire to run and yet, doesn't.
The action was quiet and quite simple: he came home one night after a long work day, reeking of booze and cigarettes, wanting to see if Lucinda cooked dinner for him like a good wife should. She dressed up extra nice that day for her beauty was such a distraction to men; a silky red dress with a slit to tease the eye, gold diamond earrings, and expensive high heels to match the design. It was easy to seduce her husband, to kiss him on the cheek, massage his callous shoulders, drag him under her spell, make him beg for her attention.
It was only a matter of time before she slowly took the knife from the kitchen table and sliced his hideous throat from behind, tearing out every piece that made him the man that he was, a man that was her father. After several minutes or possibly hours, she suddenly found herself holding the knife on the kitchen floor, kneeling next to his corpse and gasping for air. To her surprise, she felt nothing but relief and satisfaction. To her surprise, she felt her lips expand into a grin once she realized her husband was dead. Yet, shouldn't there be blood? Shouldn't she see his flesh splash against the walls and flood the cracks of the kitchen floor? She looked at her hands and saw no stain or lifeless guts. It was only her husband's body she could see, and only her father's face.
So when Lucinda opens the bin, she feels the air grow still around her. Shockingly, the blood disappears, but the body of her husband, who she refers to her ex-husband in the time of his death, remains inside. His flesh has disintegrated, his blood has blackened, and insects have plucked and harvested his organs for meat, maggots devouring his bones and scarfing down the ruins. Lucinda screams as the memory of sin flashes within her skull. All the blood in her hands from viciously stabbing his chest, all the guts in his body spewing into her eyes, all the thickness of his flesh gushing onto her dress, all the fluid of his veins drenching the crevices of the kitchen floor...the relief, the smile, the joy.
"NO!" Lucinda screams, backing away from the scene, breathing for air, aching to be saved. What has she done?! What did she do?! This couldn't be happening! Her hands grip the strands of her hair, shaking her head in disbelief, wondering that this must be a mistake.
Yet, the light of the basement abruptly blows out and darkness engulfs her body. The walls are now silent, wind howling from the crack of the wooden door as if aching to escape. She now feels strange as she slides down against a pedestal behind her, rocking back and forth, circling her arms around her knees in dismay.
She suddenly hears movement in the darkness, a screeching from the bin. Lucinda then feels the air constrict around her, feeling a strong presence in the distance, opening her eyes, struggling to breathe.
Her ex-husband stands in front of her, disheveled but alive, giving her a cunning smile, "Miss me?"