The party wore on her like last year's wardrobe. Contemptuous, mockingly, she wryly swaggered about the lavish room in her own aura, glowing with all the illumination of a fluorescent bulb. Her stiletto heels sparked tightly, metronomically, against the Italian marble and her diamond teardrops reflecting the prismatic eccentrics of an overhead chandelier.
With her "don't know, don't care, kiss my ass," demeanor of opulence, ensuant of a Thorazine tom collins cocktail. She aimlessly passed about the contagiously boring James Deans and Marilyn Monroe's with chided impudence. Each reveler, playing out their rum -soaked roles before her. Thespians of the inebriated stage, dancing in the limelight of popular pretension while she remained just as content with her soap opera smile and disconcerting glances; all gathered, at the lavish expense of a very affluent, and esoteric benefactor.
The room was immense in design, cerulean circular waves on the ceiling, gave the impression of no beginning or end, broken only by long faced gothic windows draped in cotton sheers: revealing only the unearthly void of darkness. Large graphic murals of angry hounds, and dark-eyed riders astride mighty steeds hung evenly around the room. Storm enslaved colors of reds and blacks clashed with violent brushstrokes as Greek fountains bubbled forth below each.
Hideously graphic, and though she shied away, she found herself drawn into each savage scene. As she stared, she cringed as a chilling stare shivered down her spine and a waning shadow danced across the corner of her eye. A whisper, a blur, vacant of shape or continence, a fleeting specter along the upstairs balcony only to disappear into the shadows.
Unsure of what, or whom she saw, she quickly searched among her diluted audience for confirmation. She was alone. Anxiously, she glanced back up the stairs waiting, watching, though yet unsure if someone was there, until a sliver of shadow dared to reveal itself.
Testing the bounds of her tom collins bravery, she swallowed hard against her apprehension as she dared herself toward the stairway. Intrigued by the seductive intricacies of the shadow, and salivating of an envious hunger, she started up the stairs.
Blue-carpeted treads that wound up the stairway whispered softly beneath her stiletto heels as her tight fit Cavalli dress nervously crept up her thighs. Her dampened palm scrapping along the polished banister roughing the blanched oak with the band of a leftover relationship. Her eyes never wavered from the slim cast shadow until she paused with uncharacteristic reluctance. Stopping on the stairs to look back onto the party as though she were looking for exemption, to continue. Or, a reason not.
The top of the stairs welcomed her to an ominous row of elegantly crafted doors. Each identical to the others. White painted, brass ornate faces staring back at her. Each keeping their own secrets behind well fitted jambs while other long faced, arched gothic windows silently stood guard at each end of the hall. Suddenly, a shiver raced up the backs of her thighs and she turned to the window left open to the cool evening. Cotton cream sheers ebbed lazily with the haunting, incoming breeze in dreamlike pulsations of a hypnotic cadence that held her entranced, as a door at the alternate end of the hall, with a quiet click, whispered ajar,
Believing she had stumbled onto a secret tryst: a wicked smile warmed her. Whom would she capture with whom? The subjective thoughts aroused her, triggering tiny nervous rivulets at the back of her neck as she momentarily hugged herself against an anxious chill. Seductively licking the strawberry rose tease from her under her top lip, she brushed her dress smooth and slithered down the hall.
She stood outside the door for a moment before daring herself to enter. Her ears peaked, straining to hear the tell tale whispers of uninhibited lovers. Then lightly reaching for the knob, and with criminal stealth eased the door open and peered inside.
A tiny bedside lamp glowed quietly on a corner table, but otherwise, to her dismay, the room was empty. She reached around the corner and toggled the main switch filling the room with the revealing white light of intrusion and stood there . . . staring. No ruffled sheets, no empty glasses. No mixed aroma of cologne and sweet ripened sex, no cigarette butts, no sounds . . . empty.
Dejected, incensed, she toggled off the light switch with an angry huff and turned away from the open door, as a haunting voice beckoned from within.
"Angela"
"Who's there," spinning quickly on her heels expecting to catch the trickster?
"Angela," in a voice that slithered through the darkness.
Leaning against the jamb, impatiently staring into the blackness, she awaited for whomever, to show themselves.
"Come inside Angela, and all will be revealed." His voice distant, as though spoken on a phantom wind.
She stepped partway through the threshold, curious, spurned by the magnetic allure of his voice and reached for the light switch, only to this time, find darkness as she toggled the switch several times in nervous frustration. Angry at the lights, impatient with this game, not wishing to attract unwanted attention; "Who's there?"
