Vocabularily Adventurous
from the mixed-up files of E. G. Morgan
A Chip of Glass | Prose
Early July, 2007--inspired by some book, I guess
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She had the nose of a Roman god and the chin of a Jewish fishwife. At
one time she must have been handsome, if not pretty, but now her cheeks
were scarred with pockmarks and her eyes were drooping with brown,
wrinkled skin. ?Hair? could not describe the dense mass of copper yarn
that emerged from her scalp, but it was tied nearly on the top of her
head into what seemed to be a messy bun, though it could have just as
easily been a rotting turnip. My eyes were instantly drawn to a tiny
locket, shimmering blindingly against the yellow spotted skin of the
woman?s chest, and her faded blue eyes narrowed to snake-like slits
when she saw me appraising it. Her thin, wrinkled lips parted, framing
mossy yellow teeth, and she was beginning to form a word when a crimson
spot appeared on the front of her tattered chemise, just under the
locket. The eyes widened, the mouth formed a soft ?O?, and the woman
swayed forward. There was nothing I could do but catch her, and when I
looked down my eyes were met with the sight of a crossbow arrow wedged
between her thin shoulder blades, piercing her straight through. I
dropped her like a sack of moldy vegetables, forgetting in my horror
that she had been a living being. Raising my eyes from crumpled heap of
clothing and flesh at my feet, I stared ahead of me, seeing nothing but
the point of an arrow, then the wings of a crossbow, then the narrowed
eyes of one of the king?s soldiers. The memory of the woman with the
locket was swept from my mind as I faced something even more
inconvenient?my own death.
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