The Crow Ate The Rose (Quiet Lies Book 1)

by H. M. Gonsman

  The couple resembled a swan and a duck. The difference between the two was significant, and they didn’t belong together. He should be with Adette, as she was the most graceful and elegant swan in the lake. How much more beautiful would she be if he were alongside her on the red carpet? This was the oddest pair she’s seen, and she couldn’t stop staring.

  Adette searched for a place to hide and watch in secret. She eyed the black, feathered dress she wore to the photoshoot mounted on display in a corner and slowly inched behind its full skirt, keeping a watchful eye on the family.

  Not once did they seem distracted by her exhibit. Why was he not in love with her like all the other men? It was disgusting how he gawked at his wife with longing eyes as if she was a classic piece of art like the Mona Lisa. The woman didn’t deserve someone like him, yet there she was, encircled by him like the earth around the sun.

  The blonde woman was plain—from her features to the simple silk dress hanging loose on her thin, straight figure. There wasn’t much to her appearance, but the longer Adette stared, the more she desired to possess the very thing the woman seemed to have that she didn’t, and whatever it was must be something stronger than the spell coursing in her blood. It had to be stronger than beauty.

  Love. True, authentic love. A new voice sounded in her head. Adette had never heard this one before. It was softer—kinder.

  She pondered the word love. Wasn’t it just a feeling? She evicted love from her body long ago when she learned no one could return the feeling because she was ugly.

  You didn’t give it a chance.The voice spoke again. You gave up love for lust before it could be awakened.

  The man stood up to his full height and extended an arm toward the woman, helping her up, and then swung an arm down and collected his small child, placing the boy against his chest. The family laughed at something and continued their journey through the exhibit onto the next one, never tossing a glance over their shoulders.

  Adette stood in shock. How could he just walk away like that?

  Because he’s in love with her and not in lust with you. Adette didn’t question or fight the voice.

  Lust? She looked around her and watched as people drooled over her images. They weren’t admiring them with the same gentleness the man offered his wife. They were sizing the photos up like deprived and malnourished snakes competing for the same rat. Was that lust? Was it lust all along?

  Yes.

  Adette suddenly found herself feeling ill and frightened. An unexpected tear bubbled in her eye and she sniffed as hard as she could in an attempt to stop herself from crying. All this time she thought people were in love with her, but it wasn't love at all.

  Love was staring into the eyes of a loved one, blinded by anyone else who threatened to take that away. Love wasn’t beauty.

  For years, the idea of love was the closest she could edge to harboring the emotion, but the idea of it had been all wrong. After witnessing such a love, she no longer wanted to understand just an idea of love, she wanted to experience love physically, mentally, spiritually.

  A whimper escaped her lips. She didn’t want this life anymore.

  Yes you do! The old and demanding voice returned and this time louder than before.

  No! Adette argued.

  Lust was like the night sky with billions of stars belonging to no one. Love was like the day with only one star to light up the world. No matter how unyielding the stars competed, none could ever touch and light the earth like the sun.

  Everything she told herself had been a lie—beauty, acceptance, love. For the first time since subsiding into her twisted fairytale derived from the depths of evil, she no longer desired perfection or a platform. Instead, she yearned to share an earth and sun romance with one not many.

  She wanted to go home.

  She wanted to drink pumpkin spice lattes.

  She wanted to fall in love. Even if no one could love her in return.

  With hands tightened on the fabric of the dress she still hidden behind, she yanked the garment off the display and fled to the bathroom.

  She was determined to find one flaw. To find something that made her Edith Crow again.

  Chapter Seven

  The decaying bathroom, forsaken in the basement of the most expensive building in the world, was peeled of its interior flesh and shorn down to its brittle skeleton. There was no other word to describe the room other than dead.

  Everything from the stalls, to the sink, to the floor was cast under a green and gray hue, as if the bathroom was pale and sickly. Two out of the three light bulbs fixed above the mirror were stripped of its electric blue flames while the last light flickered with an uncontrollable twitch. The cold settled behind the walls, frosting the grout’s veins and icing over the off-white tile. Mold crept from the dusty air vents and dripped down the walls while uncirculated air was tainted with the stench of rotting wood, mildew, and death.

  “Get off of me,” Adette grunted between clenched teeth as she tore off the gold dress. She kicked off her heels, flinging them into the cracked walls, and clawed at her expensive necklace until it finally ripped off. Ding ding ding. The crystals hit the ground like raindrops.

  Shivers multiplied up her spine and down her arms and legs as she stood naked and exposed in the drafty bathroom. How could such a beautiful building have such an ugly secret?

  Adette quickly slipped into the feathered dress and admired its simplicity. She twirled around before facing her hazy reflection.

  “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Adette pressed her plump, gold colored lips against the grimy glass, her warm breath fogging the faded glass for only a moment. Her sapphire eyes glowered into her own reflection, searching every angle and degree of her perfect appearance.

  She pulled the pins in her hair and shook out loose curls until they cascaded passed her bare shoulders. Opaque brows and lashes framed large, luminous eyes. A promiscuous mole was pinned on the right side of her upper lip, resembling the classic appearance of Marilyn Monroe. Everyone knew beauty marks made a woman more striking, but for the first time in years, Adette wanted to carve it out of her porcelain skin.

  Isn’t being beautiful a beautiful thing? The question echoed in her head day in and day out, but this time she mocked it. She was sick of the question chanting inside her head over and over.

  She analyzed her reflection, desperately searching for just one imperfection, but there was not one to be found. Not even the slight turn of a tooth or the hint of a blemish. She truly was the fairest of them all.

  Adette placed her sweaty palms against the glass. Tears of agony and frustration boiled from her eyes, dragging mascara down her cheeks like spilled ink. “I just need one flaw,” she screamed at her reflection. “Just one! I want to be Edith again”

  She sealed her eyes shut—the image in front of her dissolving away—and wailed. It wasn’t a wail of sadness. It was a wail birthed from melancholy, festering from the gut and consuming the entire body of hopelessness because there was nothing that she could do to help herself anymore.

  In her mind she could still envision the girl with freckles splattered against uneven complexion and teeth, too large for her mouth, sticking out ever so slightly. There were kinks in her dark hair, her features were rounder, and had eyes not nearly as blue as they were now. But most particularly, there wasn’t a mole above her lip. She was unsightly—ugly. And she would do anything to be that person again.

  Anything.

  A loveless life was not a disadvantage at the time when she dipped into the witch’s bathtub because her ambition then was to inflict ignominy as she licked the lips of revenge, but now she was hunched over in a dim lit bathroom dissatisfied because chasing beauty and revenge was like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. She was the one humiliated for what she had done to herself and those around her.

  Isn’t this what you want? The harrowing voice slithered a forked tongue in the air. Isn’t being beau
tiful a beautiful thing?

  “No!” Adette flew her hands over her ears as if she could drown out the voices in her head. “I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

  Yes, you do. It pressed.

  “I want to feel love.” She rocked back and forth. “I have to feel it.”

  Love will only bring you pain.

  “Then I want the pain,” she raised her voice.

  You are nothing without your beauty. You’ll never be loved.

  “Liar,” Adette choked on sobs. “I saw a man ignore my beauty for love.” It took her years of worshiping herself to finally realize outward beauty and inward beauty were not the same.

  I wouldn’t lie to you, Adette.

  “My name is Edith Crow.”

  Edith Crow is dead.

  “No!” she pounded her fists into the mirror over and over, her hands starting to blotch purple and blue. “Break this curse!”

  Stop it. The voice screeched.

  “I’ll stop when you’re out of my head and I’m back to Edith again,” she continued slamming her fists into the mirror.

  This isn’t what you want.

  “Yes, it is!”

  You can never go back to who you were!

  Pieces of loose glass sliced through her hands and she bit back shrills of pain as blood dripped down her arms. A large sliver fell from the mirror and landed in the sink. Pausing to catch her breath, Adette picked up the splinter of glass and studied its sharp edges.

  Adette slowly leveled her gaze with her reflection. “If you won’t fix this, then I will.”

  Stop! the voice commanded. Do it and everything you are will vanish.

  Ignoring the warning, Adette dug the glass into her skin and gashed out the pestering mole. “I’m done with beauty!” she fought back. When she was finished, she used the back of her hand to wipe away the blood.

  And then she heard the strangest thing.

  Nothing.

  There were no more voices. No other noises except the sounds of the buzzing light bulb and her own heavy breaths.

  And then she spotted the strangest thing.

  At first, when she lifted her eyes back to her distorted reflection, there was nothing to be seen except a damaged mirror. There was dust, smeared lipstick, runny mascara, greasy fingerprints, deep cracks, and wet blood. When she ran her hand down the length of the mirror, wiping away the filth, she caught someone else staring back at her.

  It was Edith Crow.

  And then she felt the strangest thing.

  Love.

  “You’re not as ugly as I thought you were,” Edith whispered to her reflection.

  What she now looked like at twenty-four was nothing compared to her adolescent self at sixteen years old. Everything about her was transformed and new.

  Her once coiled hair was now similar in appearance to Amber’s, and she preferred the untamed and natural movement. Her face was more structured with sharper cheekbones that she didn’t realize she would have at an older age. Even her teeth weren’t as bad as she remembered. Running her hands down her torso, she was surprised to find her curves weren’t too different from Adette’s figure. She welcomed the minor blemishes on her face and her freckles seemed at home sprinkled over her cheeks and nose. Unfortunately, the only thing she wasn’t thrilled about was her vision. Everything was a tad blurrier, but at least her perspective on beauty was clear.

  How foolish Edith was to think that she was ever ugly. She was beautiful. It was there all along hidden under the lies.

  The trembling light bulb, humming above her, suddenly died and so did Adette Rose.

  Chapter Eight

  Edith Crow staggered into the exhibit as if she was wearing heels for the first time, except she was barefoot, feeling the earth for the first time in years. She limped her way to the hanging canvas of Adette Rose, where she stood behind the crowd of people lusting over the artwork and squinted at the image, her sight back to a blurry mess. Adette truly was the fairest of them all, but she had the ugliest interior by far. Everything about the false idol was slathered with deception and too many were fooled by the appetizing poison.

  It’s time to go home. Edith thought to herself.

  When she finally departed her attention from the image of her past, she was surprised to find the absence of eyes on her. Everyone in the room was too transfixed on Adette Rose to notice the blood running on her face or the dress she was wearing. She lowered her head and moved passed the crowd.

  But then she stopped.

  Casting a chin over her shoulder, she gave the exhibit and everyone in the room one more probe, and then made contact with the red fire alarm on the back wall. Edith needed to put to death Adette Rose once and for all.

  No one noticed her shuffle to the back of the room and pull the alarm. Immediately, an ear piercing alarm disrupted the event and water gushed from the ceiling, soaking everything on the walls and floor. The photo’s ink melted down the canvas of Adette’s giant face like tears.

  Edith finally washed away the lies, the deception, the wrong voices. It pooled on the floor and rivered under bare feet.

  It was time to go home.

  Epilogue

  Emma Grimm swung an arm across the bathroom shelf, knocking jars and bottles to the ground. “No!”

  The damage Edith Crow has caused was beyond repair.

  She moved to the rusty sink, ripped open the top drawer, and dumped its contents onto the tiled floor. Shuffling through the pile of loose oddities, she found what she was searching for. She snatched up a crinkled photo and held it up to the candle’s glow.

  It was a snapshot of her and Derek Reeves sitting on the rooftop watching fireworks on Fourth of July during their senior year of high school . . . back when they were in love. There were faded lipstick marks smeared the image and a note on the back that read:

  Love you long time.

  “Ha,” she scoffed at the caption. He didn’t love her.

  Emma’s purpose in this life was to distort love and prevent others from undergoing the same tragedy she had to endure. It was better to harbor a numb heart than to fall in love with the wrong person.

  She was doing Edith a favor by erasing love from her heart in exchange for beauty. The plan was working flawlessly, and Edith could have been satisfied with her life, but then Derek’s kind voice had to pipe in Edith’s head and ruin everything.

  Emma dug black nails into the photo. She wasn’t going to let Derek give others hope after he stole it from her.