She wanted her beauty immortalized

Creative Forums Creative Writing
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There was a beautiful slender woman of red locks of hair known as the most fair maiden of the land. It was said her beauty was unmatched anywhere. Her skin was milky white as snow and her eyes red like embers of fire. Her breasts firm and tantalizing to the sight of most men of whom she had grown to resent.

The maiden kept disturbing problems of her own to herself as she was solitary by nature and very rarely interacted with her village who saw her with intrigue or suspicion. Her angst was that of growing old as she slowly saw her beauty fading away in old age.

When she would look in the mirror constantly to see her own reflection she would despair and self loathe herself often enough throwing things at mirrors with glass shattering everywhere.

She tried every dieting, beauty enhancers, and ointments that was supposed to repel old age, but for every solution she sought oncoming old age of her middle age was never peeled back away. Finally, in her angst or misery of the physical powers that be she decided that if she was to die she would still do so both young and beautiful.

It was a beautiful Sunday within the mountainous forested isle and she thought to herself that today was a good day to die. She got into her most favorite red silk dress and put her make up on. Next she ate the most luxurious food in her possession as a sort of last meal dedicated to fulfilling herself. She thought about writing a suicide note, but didn’t quite have the heart for it and didn’t much care of the family who she liked very little to begin with behind. No, instead she thought to herself that she wanted to display her corpse as a sort of art one of which would become of local legend. She decided that she would cut her wrists and exit from the world in her bathroom tub. In the bathroom she lighted a bunch of candles and burned some myrrh. She then delicately put rose pedals in the water where she drew a hot bath. Now, the hard part, she began to slit her wrists with a switch blade. She bellowed a horrifying scream after doing so. Bleeding profusely from her wrists everywhere she dowsed her own blood with her finger tips writing on the bath room mirror the words, “Immortalize my beauty” After writing this on the mirror she submerged herself in the bath and waited feeling death creep upon her as she slowly felt herself losing consciousness as she headed for oblivion of her soul.

As days went by some curious villagers rushed to her villa to see why they haven’t seen her in town for days and as they made their way around her spiraling staircase they opened her bathroom door where the candles were still lit horrified at the display. To this day they say that the lady’s spirit still echoes from the chambers of that old villa where sightings of a beautiful woman dressed in red still appears.

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That was good I enjoyed reading it but wouldn’t it have been better for her to simply pay someone to paint her portrait? She would then be forever immortalized, especially if she was so much the beauty.
“Bellowing a horrifying scream” may not have left her looking in death as beautiful as she had been in life. Pain and fear is not so beauty etched into the face at death.
You might have also had her swallowing a gentle poison and than laying down to die naked sprawled out within all of her glory (after all, she did a lot to maintain that glory) at the edge of the forest where she might have been found right away more or less.

Oh, one other thing, what kind of candles are left still burning after days?

The woman was a real fool you know. She decided to destroy her beauty rather than use it for the betterment of the world. :laughing:

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Your writing is getting better, Tyrannus. I notice that your sentences are shorter (you were, in my opinion, a bit prone to run-on sentences) and you didn’t use the word ‘where’ incorrectly, not once I don’t think. You used to do that at least once a paragraph.

Bravo! Srsly, not an ounce of sarcasm: if this is not just a fluke, and this is actually how you’re writing now, then you’ve improved big time.

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There is one literary precedent. Sorry to appear the spoiler, but this is another example where the ante of immortalization has been cleaved into the actual annals of hystery.

Besides ingesting gentle poison,in accordance to her famished self image, so forlorn now, she may have heard of the fountain of youth, supposedly located in the Florida bayous, incidentally a place reeking with witchraft, or taken the cure at the castle of Dracula, where the preceeding has striking similarity to.

This was also an outstanding beauty worth the admirable brushes of portraiture. She too, did not endulge as a model, but in stead, took repeated, much repeated baths into the blood of her slaughtered fair and virgin maidens-servants (mysteriously disappearing) , whom she personally delivered from their existential despair.

Needless to say, her salon methods did well to serve her, she became a publicly revered beauty of the utmost aesthetic purpose!

But alas, such beauty having gone so terribly mislplaced, she was fortuned to have suffered, an awfully ignoble fate, of which many a sonnets have been declared toward.

I must say, such are the vagrancies and frivoloties of earthly existence, as if morality could be of this instructed, so that beauties, consistent of fair skin deep, not the only of which the beholders so finely speak of, but that, the beast within, with other ideas, accorded to it.

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Arcturus, she didn’t want to live to see old age. That’s what the story was about. She was a classic hyper narcissist who in love with herself decided to end it all in suicide by putting herself on public display.

Also, there are some very large candles that can burn for days.

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Yes, I’ve been trying to improve.

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Obe, I believe you’re speaking about Elizabeth Bathory.

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 I used her yes, as if to contrast, not nihilize narcissism preoccupation in a way that is less an aphorism, then a fact.  The reasons I have for doing so are a conviction,that it is not a usual matter of course for  narcissists to end themselves..  Rather, they would most be  prone to sustain themselves at a level of assertion and re invention, usually at the cost of deception or aggression.

In folklore, a good example is portrayed in the fairy tale sleeping beauty. The beautiful but vain queen when told by her mirror that she is not the fairest in the land, goes on a mission to eliminate her competition.

 In contrasting the agressive-diabolical and sadistic narcissitic  to the forlorn masochistic one, you may have unknowingly played on the idea of inverting the inner beauty of the soul with the outer.  In dorian grey, a similar device was used, and this is what you may have had in mind, wittongly or not.  This is why your ambiguous writing worked, and mine, didn't.  Bathory was too real of an actual historical figure, to be original, whereas yours was partaking of a singular vision, more based on an un differentiated and unknown feeling, from an idea which probably came to you.

I meant to set a contrast, between pure fantasy, and reality, whereby giving it historical depth.

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Splendid Obe. I like and appreciate your comments here.

You’ve given me some ideas.

I don’t like giving away too much in my writings in terms of descriptions. This is intentional on my part as I like the reader to be forced to utilize their imagination more imagining the story as they’re reading it where upon imagining they’re utilizing their own mental interpretation.

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I don’t mean to sound condescending with any of this stuff, I’m really trying not to. It’s awesome that you’ve been trying, and you have improved.

I’m quite…moved - don’t mean to sound like a sappy faggot, but srsly - by the amount of improvement generated by your efforts. Someone trying, and succeeding - even if it’s only on a small scale that nobody will care about in the big picture - this is a really awesome thing. It’s very cool.

As far as your last post goes, in regards to intentionally leaving out detail, you should read a series of short stories called The Watch by Rick Bass. I think he’s an absolute genius in choosing what detail to leave out. You can find some used copies here, I think.