thought that in vain she did not drink and did not smoke.
Now she terribly wanted to sleep, but the prospect of seeing a new nightmare prevented her to close her eyes. The eyelids were poured, the head was split, but Claire decided to distract herself with something. She took an album and a pencil. It was better to make an outline of coal, but the pencil was the first thing that was near of her hand.
Claire wanted to draw something beautiful, but the pencil began to slide it himself. Fuzzy lines merged into one ugly tangle. Maybe it came out due to the fact that the fingers swept or from the fact that the eyelids were sticking out of the desire to sleep. It was preparing that the pencil moves by itself. It was not her painted an disfigured face on a sheet of paper, it felt like itself. The same face that she dreamed. Which she saw in the crowd before any accidents happened to people.
Claire dropped a pencil. The drawing lay on her knees, ugly and shocking. The side effect of her creativity! She looked at it discouraged and almost horrified. Probably, Viktor Frankenstein looked so at his hands when he created a monster. Everything came out so unexpectedly. If it were another dream. A drawing for some reason frightened her very much.
A minute Claire was sitting motionless, feeling his knees, like a disgusting insect, and then crumpled it quickly and threw under the bed. Sometimes it is better not to remember something. So now she rushed to forget the drawn face, but it did not come out of memory.
Demon in the mirror
Early in the morning Claire fell asleep. She dreamed wonderful dream. After waking up, she still could not believe that all this did not happen in reality. The feeling was as if she had just steam in the clouds. That’s what it means to fly!
Probably dreams this is the flight of consciousness somewhere in the uncharted worlds. The feeling of the miracle remains. But Clair was still sure that she would see something more terrible if she would fall asleep. It comes out, she was mistaken.
In a dream, there was someone who was inexpressible to her. Beautiful, sophisticated, blond and blue-eyed. She wanted to remember his face to draw, but the features escaped from memory, as if them were not at all. Does all perfectly be illusing?
Only the case was not at all perfection of who she dreamed. Just next to him, she felt some striking spiritual warmth. In a dream it was so nice and joyfully, as if the friend whom she knew and loved once a long time ago.
They danced. Rather, walled. Or did they still make love? Claire frowned. She could not remember exactly. But the impression remains divine. It is like to visit the angel or the Olympic Deity at night.
In the beginning, in a dream, she danced with him exactly, looked in his face. He tried to cover his eyes a little bit, because they shone like a flame candle. And Claire looked at his eyelashes, his cheekbones, neck, a lace around the throat, the golden sewing of coat… how beautiful he dressed. She wonder if there is a cuff with his sleeves. As soon as she wanted to see how he asked:
«Do not look down!»
And yet she looked to see his burned hands. Digid and poorly existing, because the fingers seemed to be trying to snatch with hot tongs.
Crumpled hands under exquisite sleeves. An unpleasant and even shocking combination. Claire thoughtfully tapping her fingers on the wrist watch bracelet. The time as if returned to reversal somewhere. Claire noted that the tiny hands on the dial froze. Probably the battery ran out. Claire removed a bracelet from the hand. She did not want to wear a stopped clock on his wrist, as if it was bad sign.
She has little time. It’s time to work. It’s time to draw. And there are no absurd sketches or face from sleep, but those illustrations that she ordered.
But instead of focusing, she still remembered the sleep. Dance. Embrace. What sweetness was a feeling of intimacy. But burned hands…
Claire got up and looked out of the window to the street. Along the highway, cars were used at the bottom. Already evening. Bright headlights resembled asterisks. With the memories of those accidents that occurred at her eyes recently, Claire was unwittingly wondered how the highway could be empty. Cars swept past and have not shot down anyone. No corpses with cut-out turtles are not lying on the asphalt. Perhaps everything ended. And she will never again see confused victims, random incidents and a disfigured person who flashed in the crowd to them. If only she did not invent it.
Today she just got up too late. Although, maybe her beautiful sleep and cost the good half of the day to fall into bed. Pleasant thoughts stirred with terrible, as if pink and black paints merged in her mind. Beauty and something ugly in bizarre mesaliance. Clare grinned, presenting how her work could go if she uses in it to fully all the novelty of her fantasies.
The mirror in the bathroom was inexpensive: without frame and jewelry. But Claire loved to look into it. Even with a scarce lighting of one light bulb without lampshar under the ceiling, it was surprisingly clearly reflected. Great glass, though not Venetian.
In the abstract furnishings of the bathroom, the beauty of Claire was especially brightly distinguished. The accurate cheekbones, ash eyebrows, delightful emerald eyes – it was difficult to imagine something more divine. But the Claire got used to her appearance and did not find anything unique in it. Up to that moment. Now she began to watch it, as if the eyes of someone else and the fact that she saw, she had a reverent delight. Hypnotizing beauty The face of an angel with gold curls looked at her from the mirror. It was not impossible to comprehend such beauty nor to see it. And at the same time it was scary to watch. And suddenly all this will disappear. Suddenly beauty is just an illusion?
«You can’t even imagine what treasure you have,» someone’s hoarse whisper from silence suddenly whispered. It burned her. Burned and ears, and consciousness. Although Claire already knew that it did not make sense to turn around the shoulder. There is just no one. But in front of her, the mirror reflected the darkness as if someone was attached in it. Someone mutilated and dangerous. The creature from dreams. It scared her very much and at the same time something strangely excited. Claire imagined how it is to have a beauty, and then lose it.
Together with the question came a desire to find out about it. However, Claire did not even look at the razors folded in a bucket along with toothbrushes. Of course, the blades of the razors were sharp, but they did not excite her. It is completely different that the knife always lying in her pocket. Claire got it and pressed the button, releasing the blade. Almost the same knife like his. She did not know the name of that creature, so only one name whispered out loud:
«Mutilated!»
What to be so? She raised the blade to face. What if she brings with it on the cheek? What then will remain from her beauty? Will she be then like him?
The darkness in the mirror as if she was in a certain bizarre labyrinth. Probably, it was a game of a darkness mixed with poor lighting in the bathroom, but Claire seemed that the images in the mirror were moving along the same luxurious gallery in which she was in the dream. Only its reflection remained in place, golden on the background of the darkness. It attracted demons like light. Such a bright light that it exuded, walked the inhabitants of the kingdom of darkness to life, made them excited and aggressive. And someone waited for her there at the end of the tunnel. Someone who she wanted to see and was afraid of.
The blade in her hand shook. She could not put herself a wound. Could not mutilate herselff. It was attractively and scary. But she lacked courage. But in some one mad moment it seemed to her that she would not only be able to do it. But a strange hoarse voice interrupted her thoughts.
«Cordelia!»
Again the name from the sleep. Claire carefully looked into the depths of the mirror, and the knife fell from her hands. For a moment it seemed to her that she sees a terrible wound face next to her own reflection. How strongly the cuts on it emphasized the contrast with her own skin.
«It is necessary to value what you have,» as if it reported without words. «And then look at me! I didn’t