Printable View
<center>http://ee.1asphost.com/nearby/imogen.jpg
You're heading for the crash
It'll be right here tomorrow
I'll even pay for gas
If you wreck us gracefully
The princess and the liar
Her dress is catchin' fire
Daddy's little lemon ain't
all she's meant to be
imogen rose barton - pomaville</center>
◊ a smile worth one thousand words ◊
"Let go."
Desperate blue eyes groped to catch one look, one tinge of regret in the careless chocolate orbs that glared down at her. She knew if she let go she'd never stand again that night. It was disorientation similar to being drunk, but closer to being punch drunk. It didn't matter how many times she handed him her heart, he crushed it every time with little regard.
She could see her Las Vegas dreams scattered at her feet. They were dreams she never realized weren't shared. Love. Marriage. Family. Funny how each could become a dagger to the heart with the right manipulation. California girls had no place in Vegas, he said. Needy girls had no place in Vegas despite their beauty and allure. They'd both been seduced by a facade, though only he saw through it.
A soft, mournful sound slipped past twisted, glossed lips as he wrenched her hands from his arm. He didn't look when her palms pressed to the passenger window of the taxi cab, or when she crumbled to her knees when he drove off to the end of that strip. No one said a word when seventeen year old Imogen arrived back to the hotel suite without the older boyfriend her father had politely toted along for their vacation.
No one said a word when he didn't show back up.
It was the first time in Immi's life she'd been close to being engaged, or so she thought. It was a devastation she'd never really recovered from. Her mother had been right. Men were pigs. That notion, however, was wiped from her mind when her eyes settled on Logan Pomaville. Her father's verbal appraisal to his baby girl had done the man little justice, and when she approached him she plastered the most beautiful smile on her face, and from between that smile escaped one thousand words on life, politics, and wine.
It was in that moment that Imogen realized the first rate life she craved was still at arms length.
◊ nemesis ◊
There weren't enough bangles in the world to hide the scars on Imogen's slender wrists from herself. The marks were lasting memoirs of days she was not able to drown away with the things she indulged in now and her champagne gaze always seemed to find them. She'd spend countless hours fingering the raised scar tissue, fluttering kisses across the flesh she'd marred so long ago and contemplating the pros and cons of doing it again.
Years had passed since she watched the startling red of her own blood splatter onto the immaculate porcelain of a bathtub. She still remembered the intensity of her mother's high pitched scream, the feel of her Father's fingers bruising her small shoulders as he attempted to shake sense into his starved teenage daughter's body, though out of everything her clearest memory was the sound of that razorblade connecting with the porcelain.
Memories tugged an easy smile to her lips. No amount of cream or treatment could make those scars disappear, though it didn't really matter. It was impolite to ask such things of a young lady, though she heard their whispers at parties and other social gatherings. Had she meant to end her life? Thin fingers extended and seized the stem of her glass, drawing it up for another drink. To this day, she still couldn't give a clear answer.
Thrill was her addiction and her bane in the same. The thrill of the game, the chase. The feeling that coursed through her skinny frame when her mother discovered her in the empty bathtub. The excitement of locking a hotel door and not knowing if she'd see the light of day again. Her games were a gamble, a Russian roulette and she simply kept spinning the barrel and pulling the trigger.
If the bullet lined up, would it finally be enough?
◊ imogen :: from the point of view of her husband ◊
When I first saw her, on a night of too much rum and too little coke, I swear she was floating. She had this dress on that was the exact color of her personality, this mysterious purple that changed depending on how the light was hitting it. I knew the moment I asked her to dance that she was the woman I had to have.
I will admit, I had my doubts. Dennis isn't exactly of the best breeding and his wife isn't much better. The pair of them come off as the cousins you make a point to forget to invite to Christmas but they never forget to show. My father insisted I meet his daughter, though, for sake of not coming off as an insult to his old High School buddy. How the pair of them created Imogen? The only truth is that God works in mysterious ways.
That night she had the most perfect curls spilling from her updo. They were loose, licking the line of her jaw with each step that she took, and when she unpinned her hair on our wedding night they fell carelessly around her shoulders as she kissed her way down my chest. She has the sort of curves that I've memorized from the slope of her breasts to the decline of her stomach and the gentle climb of her hips an hourglass. My wife was much more than I'd ever hoped for in the looks department. It was her mind that sealed the deal.
Imogen lights up a crowd. The way she breaks the ice with a crowd friendly subject is almost like a parlor trick, and her mind? Flawless. I haven't found one thing, yet, that she's failed to remember. That woman can recall the color of the tie that her cousin's ex boyfriend wore to our wedding without much thought. Conversation with Imogen flows, which makes my wife the perfect hostess.
She likes chiffon. She thinks silver looks best with her pigmentation. Though everyone thinks she has, she's never once colored her hair. When she sleeps, she curls up into this little ball, completely under the covers. When she's nervous, she wets her lips. When she kisses with nervous lips, she almost always takes my lower lip between her teeth. When I come home, she's always waiting in that purple dress no matter the hour.
Four years of marriage, and nothing has changed. You'd think, that after four years, I'd know something other than the skin deep facts that I've collected, but every time I see her is exactly like that first time all over again. She's still intoxicating, still this mystery I have yet to crack and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 09, 2006 07:45 PM: Message edited by: good morning, i'd die for you ]</font>
◊ the ace of spades ◊
Imogen shuffled a deck of playing cards. The feel of them in her hands was foreign compared to tarot cards. They were so small, so slippery from three years spent sealed by a stamp in the package. When it came to keeping her hands busy, though, they did the trick.
"What in God's holy name were you thinking?"
The voice was broken, masculine, filled with anger as she just shuffled those cards. She split the deck in half and bent the cards until they shuffled in a bridge. She needed a cigarette. She needed to tear her eyes away from the grandfather clock directly across from her. More than anything, she needed a drink.
She heard Logan's footsteps pacing back and forth across the tile in the kitchen. His steps matched the pendulum on the clock. Tick, tock, thud, thud. Shuffle. Shuffle. Bridge. The second-apart footfalls brought Logan closer, close enough to lay a hand first on Imogen's shoulder. The other seized her wrist and forced her hand open, angry gaze focused on where wedding rings should have been.
"What the fuck would your father think? Your mother? You goddamned whore. I'm over in a fucking sandbox beating off to thoughts of you and risking my fucking life so you can live this life while you're in a sleazy ass hotel fucking my high school buddies! Are you trying to make a fool out of me, Imogen?"
She wrenched her wrist away and resumed her shuffling.
"You're not going to succeed, Imogen. I'll drag your fucking name through the mud if you ever think of doing such a thing. Give me those fucking cards and your attention, you blonde harlot. My prostitute of a wife. Look at me, Imogen. At the very least I deserve your fucking attention."
"Fuck you."
His hand reeled back, the hand he'd taken her cards with, and with a strong downward swing knuckles cracked across her cheek and the cards went flying. The pain and surprise exploded across her skin, her eyes clenched, a sharp breath hissed between her teeth and was followed by the sound of a zipper as her husband's hand twisted through her hair.
She opened her eyes to the red blur of the room while the hand through her hair guided Imogen quite forcefully out of the chair and to her knees. There was a card by his foot, a card that came into focus while Logan fumbled with his button (he always fumbled with his button). The Ace of Spades. If only I could be so lucky.