I Met Death on a Bed in December

If someone would have came up to me and said, “I can take away your sight, but you would be blind forever.” I would have taken him up on his offer without a moment’s hesitation. However then I would still be able to hear her and I would then have to hunt down that man again and demand he take my hearing away also. For you see she was a plague that would never lift. It wasn’t just a hit and run, like other plagues, her plague lingered and coated everything in the vicinity. I was disgusted by her and strangely intrigued and then brought to despair, for nothing was lifting her from her current state to what it use to be, or rather close enough to it. Time, the great healer of healers, did nothing but remind us all how long it had been since we last saw her smile, heard her laugh, listened to her jokes and her stories, and I, the one person who had cared least about her; started to worry. But you don’t know her, yet. I will tell you of how I met her, and the events that followed, but my opinions and thoughts and even narrative abilities will be tainted by a strong bias, and for that I hope you will be able to look past and find the truth yourself in my words, for I have all but lost them myself.

Her name was Evalena Dodger. We were introduced through a mutual friend during our last year of high school. We had never known each other existed until one fateful day this mutual friend decided to ‘introduce’ us. She had gone on about Evalena up to the week of our introduction. She described her as a ‘natural beauty’, average height, a curvy girl but not fat, and the prettiest eyes I would ever see. She told me how guys developed a crush on her only after they new her and how she was someone to rely on. Now this is all nice, but honestly I wouldn’t care if she was a selfish little brat, so long as she was tall, slim, and beautiful. Pretty is nice, but does pretty look good in a two piece bikini?

I listened with patience about Evalena, found out she was good at Volleyball, a talented essay writer, a studious student, loved novels on historical eras, hated fashion runways and beauty campaigns and loved to travel. Well would you believe it we had something’s in common, but I still had a distasteful opinion of her and I hadn’t even met her yet. Your probably curious as to what we had in common, well I liked Volleyball very much, played it too, of course only on the beaches; I’ve travelled in my eighteen years existence to Cuba, Mexico, France, England, Spain and Sweden. I planned to continue the rest of my adventuring days during my third or fourth year of university, hopefully getting a placement at one of the universities, and well that’s about it. I loved fashion, some of the most beautiful women were in fashion, and I was quite handsome also, and dressed much the same a male model would, so in short, this girl seemed like a conceited, pompous, brat, who was likely no prettier than Miley Cyrus.

In the weeks leading up to our ‘introduction’ I was looking for an escape route, finding a way around an unpleasant hour with Evalena and our mutual friend. I found nothing; the best I could come up with was an excuse I could use if our mutual friend decided to extend our meeting.

I sound like an ass, and at the time I was. I was full of myself, a single bachelor with a few skeletons in my closet, and a womanizer. I saw girls as objects rather than people; I got what I wanted from them and then tossed them aside. They flocked to me and tried to charm me, woo me, and well, they got what I wanted from them and were left with nothing but a broken spirit. The way I saw it, they deserved it, they came with ideas in their heads, girls can have their own minds but when they try to involve another person and think they can succeed, they have another thing coming.

The day finally arrived and I dressed to impress. Secretly in the back of my mind I planned to show Evalena what she would never get. We were gathering with a group of friends, I later found out they were already acquainted with Evalena and could have warned me ahead of time what I wasn’t expecting. She arrived late, it was snowing out and she was flushed with red cheeks, nose, and pale lips. Our mutual friend, as soon as she spotted her crossing the parking lot from the café window, dashed to the door and grabbed Evalena’s wrist and dragged her straight to our table to shove her in front of me. She didn’t even give her a chance to kick off the snow that was caked over her boots, almost immediately a pool of water formed around her and started slithering under our table.

The girls I’ve always dated and actually liked all had similarities I only later realized. They all had strong ethnic backgrounds which always showed in they’re features, of course each one was beautiful, but if she was Greek, she had the olive skin and dark curly hair. If she were Swish, she had fair skin, blonde hair, and angled features. Italians were always curvy, but sexy, not pretty, and Asians were cute, but they had their kinky sides. Now from hearing about Evalena, and understanding she had an ethnic background from Central Europe, believe how surprised I was to see this child standing before my eyes. She had no angles to her face; it was completely round, with freckles and thick brows. She stood a whole head and a half shorter than me, and her eyes, well I will agree they were probably the most prettiest eyes I’ll ever see, the purest, freshest colour possible, but she had thick lashes around them, and on her babyish face, she looked weird.

She stood there, flushed, cold and in complete disrepair, while our mutual friend introduced us. The pool of water was getting bigger and I could hear the squishing of her boots as she shifted her position, obviously impatient. Finally it came to my introduction and I noticed her nose was running; I was disgusted but interested to see how she would respond to me. When she looked at me, I swear I felt a draft breeze right by. She gave me a cold glance, not even noticing I was really there. She turned to our friend and said in a voice restraining annoyance, “I need to use the bathroom; you’ll still be here when I get out right? Great then I’ll take my time.” And with that she turned and left.

Our friend explained how she usually isn’t like this and that she was sorry on Evalena’s half. I stared for a while at where she disappeared and then asked if she really was suppose to be pretty and all she had said Evalena was. I received a harsh whiplash of insults, outrage, so on and so forth. Let’s just say I wasn’t in good company afterwards. Now I told you to pick the truth out of my bias thoughts and opinions so by now you should have realized Evalena was pretty. Who could not look at her and think the same? Even now, as I look at pictures of her I find it hard to believe these are her, because they don’t capture what I see or hear. She was far from photogenic, pictures were her least favorite thing to take, but when you sat with her and said something to peaked her interest, you could see her face run through so many different expressions; from delight to utter shock, from sadness to conceptual happiness, and so on; all in the smoothest of ways. Her expressions never looked awkward or fake, and were always authentic. When she was sad, even if she smiled and tried to hide it, her eyes, those eyes that were so hypnotic, gave her away like a man facing life imprisonment. Now I didn’t feel this way until many months after I had made my acquaintance with Evalena, I never thought of these things when I first met her, it was quite the opposite.

When she appeared back at our table, refreshed, and somewhat decent, she properly introduced herself and gave us a sweet smile then took her seat. I didn’t notice till the third or fourth meeting that two of my friends were smitten with her. Actually smitten isn’t quite the word, they were in awe, intoxicated by her sweetness and innocent nature; personally I found it boring and annoying. I had my way with sweet girls and it was always an act. Throughout the two and some hours we all talked and I made a personal effort to ignore the chunky little thing. I was hoping to set her off, hoping she would try to get my attention, make an effort to know me, but was disappointed. She paid more attention to my two friends who were infatuated with her; than she did to notice I was sitting right across from her. I gave up and enjoyed my time talking and checking out the waitresses and customers in the café.

When the day finally came to an end I said my share of goodbyes and went to the other side of the parking lot (farthest from the café) where my car was parked. When I got in the car and started heating it up I saw Evalena walking past the back through the rearview mirror. I assumed she drove, everyone else did, but she continued to walk out of the lot and onto the street. It was well past 9, and it was one of the coldest nights to date. I tried calling her back, but either she was deaf, or my voice wasn’t as loud as I thought it was. None-the-less I didn’t know many people who walked home from anywhere, and I had no idea where her home was, so I got into my car and went after her. I tried driving up beside her, but she ignored me, and went to the trouble to cross the street where the on coming traffic would prevent me driving beside her again. I felt like driving off and forgetting she ever existed, but then my mother’s face came to mind and her tears as she read the death of her friend in the newspaper. It said if she hadn’t walked home, or if she had walked with another person, or so many other scenarios, she might’ve arrived at home at the time she was expected, however that not being the case she was found three weeks later in a creek, placed neatly in three different bags.

I drove to the end of the block, parked my car in an empty spot and stood outside waiting for her to walk by. Shortly, a few minutes later, her figure appeared under one of the street lights, and I will admit this only once, and if brought to question, I would deny it instantly; but the snow had started to fall again, and what I saw was not an angel, but something soft, almost a delicate beauty. If you’ve ever read Cosmo or flipped through some magazine offering advice on beauty or sex, you would’ve seen those pictures that usually accompany an article; a girl waking up in the morning, with the light on her face and body, the sheets ruffled and her hair just right, that delicate softness that is rare for a lot of guys to see when they wake up in the morning. This is what I saw and I was quite taken aback, because in most aspects, she was rough, I thought.