Windless

The heat from the plains seemed to crouch over the city, the sun beat like a drum on every possible surface; the whole city was paralyzed under the brightness that was not so much light as presence - close and tight, slow and terrible, a sadistic kind of heat.
She worked in a cafe. And the place behind the counter was hottest. How warm it was, the machines working and whistling behind her. The door propped open was nothing but a gesture toward the idea of coolness. Her cotton dress was stuck upon her like a strange children's project with papier mache. She had long ago stopped trying to straighten it. The large collar fell to the side, limp, and she let it stay. Her hair hung about her face in strands of determined perversity against her will to keep it properly set up. No one expected a cafe girl to be coiffed, but in her mind she was not a cafe girl. She was something more. She didn't know what. She didn't know where. There was nowhere, actually. But she refused to listen to reason and pushed her hair up every day in front of her cracked mirror, dreaming of the freedom of Natalie Wood and the wildness of Gatsby's parties, humming a tune that sounded like 'Moon River.' The milkman who heard her could never quite be sure, and usually ignored it even as it issued upon the still, quiet street through the shamelessly open windows of summer.
She took a hot breath and kicked off her shoes. The wood of the floors seemed strange against the skin of her feet, white and damp as they were. She ran a pointed toe around in a circle, letting it touch the wood on all sides of her, making a witches' circle around herself. How she wished for wind.
The wind had come when she was young. The great wind of storms, and they had swept away her calm, her father had said. She had been a very young girl, really, curls still golden, eyes innocent, and she had watched as the clouds gathered, the winds began. Ever since it had been a sort of sense memory that burned insider her - wishing again and again for that sweep and carry of the black-cloud, dark-rain, dust-cloud day. What others feared she signed for. And so she swept the toe of her foot around her again, enclosing herself entirely in a circle of protection, a circle that would keep her safe from this eroding stillness.
But it did not. And her heart burned with a kind of restless anger she couldn't name. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, prickling even in the heat. Oh god.
She had wondered if it had been a dream, but it was happening again. Her mind was twisting against its own confines, it was in darkness, and darkness had come. She gripped the counter for support, even as the room stayed still, it was as if her mind was seeing something her eyes could not. The emotions swept through her uncontrollably. She felt the past and the future of her own life surrounding her, pressing on her, misunderstanding her. A cacophony of experiences she couldn't understand. Of a life half-lived, of a life of middleness. A life that was still.
A fly buzzed above her, breaking her out of her fantastic consumption. For a moment she was as grateful to the fly as any sinner is to reach to the unknown god for salvation.
Against this great wave of life, against the past, and the future, she was small. But, and her fists clenched, but, against this moment, she was king. She unbuttoned her dress. She let it fall from her. In her few underthings, she made that strange circle around her again, this time in reverse, and as she did so, she felt the stirring of a breeze. The dress lay in a crumpled heap upon the floor, a small pile for so much clothing. Insignificant. She kicked it away. The breeze blew on her again. And as it did so, she began to hum, matching the breeze for strength. Her hair fell from its moorings, it stretched to touch the air about it.
The winds came that night. And the storms.

Alone

It was a dark night, it was a green night. The trees were verdant and full, lushly whispering words of their own coming death, of the falling to come. The stars were bright; too bright. The sky the deepest blue of the velvet cushions in the bordello across the way. And soft, so soft. Soft enough to absorb even the longest sort of pain. It was a night when she walked alone. It was a night when alone was the only way for her. And as she paced through the thick, thick night, the darkness thick like rope is thick, her spine was straight, her brow cool. Her neat, light, cotton dress moved about her, wafting waves of lavender into the evening scented of lilies and cinnamon.
She looked straight ahead, but now and then her chin tilted, she saw the stillness around her. She saw the movement within the bellies of the houses. She walked quiet, silent by, her feet making no noise. She felt the breeze shift to notice her, and then move away, uncaring. She watched the silhouettes in the burning windows with luminous, unjudging eyes. Only the night watched her.
She saw the white smoke from a cigarette float into the slightly rotting orange light of a streetlamp. Her gate smooth, she continued on, looking forward steadfastly. Her eyes did not waver. Her hands were relaxed beside her. A cigarette butt lit like the flash of a neon sign for a moment and then faded. She saw the fade drop to the ground, she saw the ground devour it in darkness.
A hand shot around her neck, another around her waist, and she was pulled into the shadows, the deep, eating shadows.
But her white, careful dress still gleamed out like a pearl. It seemed to light around her. It was the luminosity of a fish in deep, deep water. Suddenly, the white of it, like the waving of seaweed, straightened. The dark lines that had bound her faded, a sigh of death escaped the shadows for one moment, but was quickly absorbed by the pillowy night. She moved back into the light, and kneeling suddenly, gracefully, she picked up the cigarette butt and it turned to ash in her white hands. She let the ashes fall without expression; the breeze sniffed them, carried them away. She was alone again.