A Story Began...
The sun was filtered through a green see-through curtain giving the massive room a dimly lit, lonely ambiance.
A ticking clock. A humming refrigerator. A metal chandelier. The usual modern amenities denoted a human presence, but aside from the crimson paint on the walls, there was nothing warm or inviting about the house.
The bridal bouquet that Anne caught by happenstance aka accidentally, sadly drooped in its vase of five-day old water. The stems were browned and puffy, the petals shriveled and falling. Where natural flowers would pollenate in the wild, the cut stems dropped bits along the table that looked like white dust. Ants had become curious at the spoiling flora and Anne sat in dread as she waited for her life to begin.
That week had been long, and she had been pressured to help out "the wedding party" as Maid of Honor. "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride", her pregnant sister joked.
Anne was glad Cheniya was out of the house and finally wed to Jamie, a financial advisor at a top hedge fund who, despite being kind of an ass had the means and wherewithal to provide for her baby sister whom he'd knocked up after a one night stand at a local dive. However, their home which had once sung with laughter and arguments, the joy and tears of their sisterhood, now felt barren, empty, and out of place.
Their mother had passed four years prior. Her ashes were kept in a small metal urn above the brick fireplace.
Anne sat at her marbled living room table contemplating her existence - had she lived solely for her sister all that time? Wasting away her youth as the caretaker for a 20-year old who never quite appreciated how much she'd sacrificed? And now...would she be able to finally live for herself? She felt the depression seep in as she closed her heavy eyelids.
"What was my purpose again? For whom do I live?"
She did not have the answers. Anne had just spent a week of joy, of helping out in her sisterly duties, and of expressing how happy she was for her last remaining blood relative to celebrate this next big marker of life. Yet all Anne felt now, was forgotten.
She was dying inside, like the wilting roses, reminiscent of her poor mother's own decline into the complete and dark abyss of Alzheimer's.
"Mother"
Anne opened her eyes and squished an ant between her fingers.
It was an odd sensation, killing the pest - exoskeleton crushed in real time. How simple life was for these tiny creatures. Ants...all they were interested in were the spoiling remains of a rose...something decayed, that fouled and dried up...to an ant, that was a full day's meal.
Ugh. Anne looked at the black guts stuck on her index finger and thumb. She hated the way she felt embittered and cruel and hated the ease at which she'd squashed an insect with little to no remorse.
Slowly, Anne touched the bug to her tongue and swallowed.
"I won't be an ant, that's for sure"
She lifted the dying bouquet out of the vase and dripped it over to the metal urn which she took hold of in her other hand. Anne walked over to the trashcan, opened it up with her foot, and tossed both the dead flowers and her mother's remains in.