The Songbird In The Mirror

Short twist story

She was beautiful. That’s how most stories begin, and it is indeed how this one will begin. In the low yellow lights of the dressing room and the soft blur of the mirrors, her face gazed back at her in a gaussian shutter of ivory, chalk, shell, and ice. The whiteness clouded into a bloom of carmine lips, full as a July rose, the black heady depth of her wide round eyes crowded with thick strums of lashes. The symmetry and romance of that face struck her into silence. Somewhere, the clowns roared over a bottle of absinthe in the darkness. But here, in the lush ochre gloom, there was nothing but her and that face, that precious, perfect face.

She raised a hand and traced that perfect, sharp jaw, admiring the firmness of that throat, the proud rise of her chin, and the flush of colour that lit her cheeks. Unpinning the wrap, her hair fell thick and fast around her shoulders, glowing umber and gold in the gaslight…