Bare Witness
Flash fiction about that ever-loyal presence that sees us even when we can’t see ourselves.
Most people are disappointed when they look at me. She’s no exception. Whatever she sees now, she despises.
In the beginning, she was keen to share every inch, her silk robe slipping as she pulled the pins out of her hair. Today, when she passes, I get no more than a sigh.
The problem is that I don’t lie, and she’s changed. Her face has thinned, and her waist has grown thick. She’s still beautiful, and I show her that, but she won’t see it.
These days, she prefers to spend time with people who reflect what she wants to see—younger women whose names all end in a flourish—Charlize, Chantelle, Charmaine. In her living room, they screech like gulls, picking on pieces of pink salmon and all the people they know.
Her new friends like me, and they have no reason not to. I’m kind to them, but when they get close, I catch her, eyes like little green pinballs darting up and down their length.
Some evenings, she leaves without even a departing glance. If she brings a man back, they have sex on the floor right in front of me. Gripping her waist, he’ll look right at me, face full of pride, as he diggers and knocks her back and forth until he’s spent. In the morning, however, it’s me alone she’s left with. The house was empty, and the wine was worn off.
She had planned to do so many things, and for a while, she did. Every month, she’d stand in front of me, in the skin of someone new, and practice her lines. But one day, that stopped. Today, she throws on a navy suit and sighs before leaving the house.
One night, swearing abuse, she throws a glass at me, and I crack.
Refusing eye contact, she takes me down from the wall and hauls me up her stairs, her hot breath all over me. We’ve never been so close.
Shattered and broken, I live in her attic now, my heavy frame collecting dust.
She blames her life on bad luck, but her next seven years are on me…
