broken pieces
Characters: Kasper Setting: Her Room, Afternoon
There were pieces of broken glass everywhere upon the sink and floor of her bathroom. Kasper’s blank expression held up like a expendable soldier ready to take the bullets that come. She tilted her head to the right as she looked down upon the floor, her eyes catching her reflection in a shard. Her eyes blinked hard once as she reached nonchalantly into the left pocket of her shorts. The roll of surgical tape fit perfectly in the palm of her hand as she pulled it out, bending down in unison with the movement of her arm and then reaching for the same shard that caught her eye. Her approach to the ground sprawled fractured images of her face throughout the pieces of mirror.
The dull expression never changed its tune as she stood back up, turning her head to face the remaining half of the mirror above her sink. She looked down briefly at the shard and then up again at the empty,wooden spot between glass and frame. Kasper decided where to put the piece and then pressed it upon the empty space and bright the tape with her free hand. She clutched the end and pulled a long strip off the roll, leaning forward to bite it apart. Like a bandaid, she stuck the tape across the shard and withdrew her arms, neither satisfied nor displeased with her work.
Not wasting another moment, she bent down and repeated the process over and over until she was working with the pieces upon the sink itself. There was barely any comprehensible pattern to the patch work and most of the mirror had become a web of reflective surface and tape. One last piece of glass to go and the rest was simply dust to be swept away. The very last one, and a place for it to fit to boot. It was only a shame that her tape ran out.
Her gaze cast downwards at the plastic middle bit of the tape in her palm, then returned her sight to the patched up mirror. An apathetic expression left her rather unsatisfied with the work she had done. She turned, tossing the plastic bit over her shoulder, hearing it collide somewhere with the wall in her shower, and moved out of the bathroom. Kasper’s eyes searched the bedroom thoroughly, coming to a stop at her desk where she spotted the pack of cigarettes and then she moved over to the desk, sitting down at the chair.
She lit herself up a cigarette and sank down into the chair, her feet lifting and settling on the desk itself, boots and all. Her thoughts fluttered as she tossed the pack back and stared up to the ceiling. There were parts of her that wanted to break everything around her, and parts that had enough. One satisfying inhale and she leaned her elbows on the armrests of her chair, the back of her head barely peeking over it. She shifted the cigarette to her wrapped up hand, clutching it at the ends of her first two fingertips and used her better hand to dig in to the left pocket of her jean shorts.
The tattered up picture was her most precious possession. A thankful grace given to her upon entering jail. She could have had it sent to her, but parting with it even for a moment sent boiling blood through her veins. Her lips pressed together before releasing the smoke in her lungs. He had darker skin than she did, and small curls of hair that began to grow longer with each day. She remembered fondly the day of the picture; October fifteenth, ninth grade. He was barely thirteen by then, smiling vaguely in front of the blue backdrop. Her stomach twisted up somewhere between hunger and anxiety.
Clearing her lumping throat, Kasper sat up straight and removing her feet from the desk. She leaned her elbows, still looking at the picture of her only son. He would be thirteen forever. She sighed, placing the picture down face up in front of her and moved the mouse of her computer to turn the screen on, shifting the cigarette back to her better hand. There was something daunting about the vibrancy of the monitor that made her look back down at the picture again. He would not have been proud of her and because of that, she was proud of him even now.
The ash from her cigarette fell onto the desk, catching her attention as she simply stared at it then back to the monitor. The first thing she honed in upon it was the name she wanted to avoid most of all. Brady Somers. Fuck that- she interrupted her own thought and chewed on her cheek briefly, catching a glimpse of her son’s picture before using her bandaged hand on the mouse to navigate to Brady’s journal.