I would have made it a submission, but I think putting it in my journal is a better way to ease into putting my writing on DA. This is just a super short little thingy on a character that just popped into my head one day. Tell me what you think. If you want to. Oh, and be nice, por favor. I've never put my writing in a public place before.

"Fiona" by Me

Fiona let her slender arm hang over the edge of the gutter, watching the cigarette waste itself, slowly burning closer to her pink-tipped fingers. Usually Fiona had very warm hands, but it was the middle of Autumn, and it was windy. So her bejeweled, freckled hand was pink and raw, setting an example the rest of her bare arms would soon follow. She never wore long sleeves. She wanted the world to see as many scars, as many freckles, as many blemishes as she could manage. It wasn’t about show, it was about truth, and proof that she was real. No one could prove her false or non-existent while brandishing the marks of the world before their eyes. She was there, and everyone would know it.

Bringing a slightly pinker arm up to her face, she studied the tiny cancer stick for just a moment before greedily sucking in the toxins, inviting them into her lungs. Fiona liked the idea of sabotaging oneself. In the building below the very roof where she was lying, she could hear a baby crying , and Jerry Springer in the living room. Where her mother was she could only, though she wished not to, guess. This was her absolute favorite time of the day to adorn her perch. Just before the sunset, as the twilight was setting in, turning the red of her one-story ranch’s sides into a burgundy purple. The days of Fiona’s life were so draining and long that when her hemisphere decided to shut down it was such a relief.

The wind took this particular moment to hurry somewhere, its path taking it right past Fiona, sweeping ratty frizz into tired hazel eyes. She was so tired. Chipped black nails reached over, itching as if they had not been used for years, to brush the fugitive curls back to their rightful place with the rest.

She rolled her eyes to the left to look out over the lawn. The tiny pond was disturbed as the toads made their way back to settle in for the night. The willow that tentatively sat, as if it would offend, by the edge of the pond swayed with the hurrying wind, always a follower and never a leader. Fiona liked their yard, and felt sorry for it having to endure her family as its inhabitants. Humans really did destroy everything.

Fiona hated the word beautiful. It was used to often, too easily. She thought that many things and people were pretty, and pleasing to the eye. But in a world like the one Fiona lived in, few things were actually truly beautiful. She hated that word. Fiona saw the world without color, and that made her bitter. But she didn’t really care. After all, she wasn’t going to change now. And it wasn’t as if everything in her life was colorless. Some things were saturated. Like Autumn. And cigarettes. And the weeping willow tree in her yard that could not think for itself. Those were the things that gave Fiona’s tired body the boosts of energy it needed to get through the colorless days. They were beautiful things.

Fiona really did hate the word beautiful.