C2 The Weight of the Gaze

POV: Elowen Hart

The back door of the hall did not close all the way.

I stood in the wet dark car park area, my bare feet on the cold ground, and I could still hear them inside. The music was still playing. People were still talking and merrying. It was supposed to be my party... the one that was supposed to be about my love and my forever, was still going on without me.

The worst of it? ... no one came out to look for me.

I pressed my hand harder against the torn part of my dress. The cold air kept touching my skin. I could feel the wetness of the rain on my arms, my shoulders, the parts of me that the dress could not cover anymore.

Through the small opening in the door, I could see them.

Livia was dancing with Julian in the middle of the room. Her thin arms were around his neck. Her head rested on his shoulder like it was made to fit there. The song playing was our song. The one Julian and I picked together two months ago when we were still pretending that this wedding would happen.

He held her waist and smiled down at her. He looked happy... really happy. The way he never looked at me before not even at the beginning of our relationship when I thought he loved me.

My chest felt so heavy like someone was sitting on it.

Then I heard my mother's sharp and clear voice through the door.

"I told her," my mother was saying. "How many times did I tell that girl to lose weight? How many times did I caution her to stop eating like a pig and maybe fast or do something that works. Did I not send her to that doctor to help? Did I not pay for those weightloss meal plans?"

My aunt said something I could not catch. Then my mother again...

"No, no. It is her own fault. Men do not stay with women who look like that, i dont know if she doesnt see herself in the mirror... she disgusts me. Look at Livia, she is the kind of woman every man fights for. Elowen was just a disgrace in human form, i dont even know why i gave birth to a deity like her.. anyway, she was the bast placeholder until the real owner that is way better came around."

I heard my mother say all this... my very own mother.

I wanted to walk back inside and scream at her. I wanted to ask her what kind of mother says this about her own daughter while her daughter is dying inside, while her daughter is outside with no shoes and a torn dress but I did not move. My legs would not carry me.

My uncle's voice came through next. Loud and rough from too much drink.

"Well, that was something," he said. "The boy has sense, I tell you. Who would marry that one when Livia Monroe is standing there? They cannot be compared, even a blind man can see the huge difference." He Laughed loudly.

I pushed myself away from the door, I could not listen to them talk about me like that anymore...it was too painful and unbearable to her.

I started walking, not like a had a particular direction or something but I was walking.

The ground was rough under my bare feet. Small stones bit into my soles, the road was wet and cold from the rain. I did not know where I was going. I just knew I could not stay there anymore, it's better to be anywhere than there.

The street was dark and most of the houses had their lights off. A dog barked somewhere. I pulled the torn dress around my body as best as I could, but it was no use. The cold was inside me now, it was not just the rain.

My feet carried me down one street to another. I passed a closed shop with metal shutters, a church with a dark sign outside and a bus stop with a broken light. The world felt empty... really empty, like I was the only person left in it.

I reached the bus shelter and stopped there.

It had a very small space, three walls of dirty glass, a bench that had seen better days. I sat down and pulled my knees up to my chest. The dress fell open around my legs, but I did not care at this point. Who was there to even see me? Who was left to look and judge me? What else is there to say or names to call me that I have not heard?

I sat there for a very long time. The rain had stopped, but the cold stayed. My feet were bleeding a little where the stones had cut me earlier. My toes were numb, I looked down at my body, at the way my stomach folded when I sat, at the thick thighs that had always made my mother frown and look away with disgust.

This is what they see, I thought. This is all they see.

My phone buzzed in my hand, I had forgotten I was still holding it.

A message from my mother came through.

You have embarrassed this family enough tonight, do not come home, I cannot look at you right now, stay wherever it is you are.

I stared at the words until my vision blurred. Do not come home, my own mother was telling me not to come home. On the night my life fell apart, she was worried about the family name and reputation not even about my feeling but the family name is more important than her own child... which i am starting to doubt if I am really is.

I waited for a message from my father but i got none from him instead I got something else... a notification from a video he had posted, a video of my humiliation.

The thumbnail was my face, my mouth open, my eyes wide and my dress tearing at the side. The words under it said: When your daughter thinks she can keep a man above her level. Watch till the end!

I did not open the video nor did i read the comments, I quietly deleted every social media app from my phone, one by one. From facebook to instagram straight to twitter. I deleted all of them.

Then I sat in the dark with my bare feet and my torn dress and my mother's words still burning on the screen.

I had no one to call, no best friend, no person who would leave their bed and come to get me. I had spent so many years making myself small for Julian that I had made myself disappear completely. Now I was a ghost, and ghosts have no one.

I pressed my face into my knees and stayed like that.

Then the lights came again, it was bright and white, cutting through the dark like knives. I lifted my head and saw the car, it was the same black car from before. The same long, dark shape. It was pulling up to the bus stop, slowly and quietly, like it had all the time in the world. The engine made a low soft and expensive sound. The kind of sound that tells you money is inside.

The windows were dark. I could not see through them but I knew who was inside. I knew those silver eyes were behind that glass, looking at me again.

I should have been afraid. A strange man in a black car, following me in the night, any woman with sense would run but I did not have the strength to run, I could barely stand on my own right now talk more of running.

And there was something else... a small sick part of me that did not want him to leave because when he looked at me, I felt like someone was looking at me atleast and I was not invisible.

The car stopped at the edge of the bus shelter but the engine kept running though. The window did not come down this time. He was just there watching me through the dark glass.

I stood up with my shaking legs, my torn dress fell open, and the cold air hit my bare skin. I did not try to cover myself. What was the point? He had already seen the worst of me. He had seen me crying beside a bin with my dress falling apart. There was nothing left to hide.

I stared at the dark window, I could not see his face, but I could feel him. The weight of his eyes on my body. The same slow, cold look he gave me in the car park.

"Who are you?" I inquired. My voice came out rough, low and broken. "And what do you want from me?"

I received no answer, the car just sat there... the engine humming. The rain starting again, light and cold on my skin.

"Why are you following me?" I said, louder this time. The anger was coming back, pushing through the pain. "You saw me crying from the party, you saw me running with no shoes and now you follow me here? What kind of person does that?"

I got nothing, just the dark glass and the quiet engine.

I walked toward the car, my feet hurt with every step, but I did not stop. I walked until I was close enough to touch the door. The paint was so black it seemed to drink the light.

"Say something," I said. My voice cracked. "If you are going to look at me like I am nothing, at least say it to my face, at least be man enough to tell me what you want."

For a long moment, nothing happened. The rain fell, the engine ran and the glass stayed dark.

Then the car began to move slowly, it pulled away from the bus stop and rolled down the empty street. The back lights glowed red in the dark.

I stood in the rain and watched it go.

"Coward," I whispered.

I did not know if I meant the man in the car, or Julian, or my father, or myself. Maybe I meant all of us.

The car disappeared around a corner and the street was empty again, the bus shelter light flickered and died.

I was back to being all alone again.

But I knew, deep in my bones, that it was not over. The man with the silver eyes had seen me twice now, i dont know if it was planned or not, he had stopped his car to look at me, he had waited while I shouted at his dark window.

That was not the behaviour of a man who did not care, it was more of a man that did not know what to do with what he was feeling and thinking whether to help or not.

I did not know his name neither did I know why he was there but something told me that he would come again... we will eventually cross part again and next time, I would be so ready for him.