This feels like such long time ago. There's the ambiance of the turn of the 20th century, high top stiff collars, the clopping sound of horses on cobbled streets, the smells of primitive plumbing and horse drawn carriages, the staid colors of cheap dyes for men's coats and ladies' skirts. There is the feeling of a much different pace of life on a daily basis than what we experience now. Everything moves more slowly -- us, and our efforts to travel from one spot to another, mail and communication in general, goods and services. It's so much slower, I feel that I can take a deep breath, that the "rush" of movement in the 21st century has ceased.
It's timeless, this scenario, the set of circumstances playing out before me in a different era and to a different tune, but it's also the same. There is a surreal feeling of deja vu. There is a tryst, of course.
There's quite a bit of virulent and violent interaction between two females, cloaked in the conventionality of their era, but so raw when seen through the mists of time... raw and shocking. Between the two women, there is an aggressor, and there is a victim. The minute details of this interaction may be steeped in mystery, unknown to the people surrounding them at the time the drama and confrontation played out.
After the confrontation and it's ultimate conclusion:
Someone ran away, disillusioned by the outcome, horrified by the results, morbidly disgusted mostly with themselves, but also afraid of discovery. This deed, these feelings, this is something that the perpetrator doesn't even want to face with themselves, much less to have the populace know such things, speak of such things. "Let's run away", she thinks to herself, "where no one will know. Where the secret will be safe."
And what of the object of all this venomous desire and lust and conflagration? What happened to him? Where did he go, how did he move on, what course did his life take?... Within his reality, it would seem that his true love fled, the one he felt so connected with, the truth of her absence shrouded in mystery, unrevealed. It would seem that life became what was expected and natural at this time and place, for this man and his newly proposed partner, though the passion may have been missing from this coupling, and the legitimate relationship wooden and predictable, the life constrained and often dull. But it fit smoothly in the puzzle pieces of the day, of the time, of his life, and of the lives of all those he touched.
What became of the victim of these feminine hostilities? Where did her physical remains come to rest? It would seem that her final resting place would never be discovered, though her spirit moved through the motions of the transition, and her soul ascended.
Questions were left, the mystery remains.
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