Creative Writing "Moths" (Alternate)

Lord, she could hear the voices again.

They were these little things that silently deafened her from the inside out. These voices that buzzed and fluttered inside her head like blind, stupid moths. They tapped against her skull relentlessly and noisily and she just needed to make them stop!

"Oh! Stop!" she shouted, and Henry instinctively slammed on the brake. He looked over at Lane, who was already unbuckling her seatbelt. He saw no signs of fear or anxiety on her face, and he followed her line of vision to a field of flowers along the dusty road they'd been traveling.

"Lane." Henry groaned, but she was already getting out of the car, laughing gleefully. Henry couldn't help but break into a grin of his own.

"Are you twelve?" he asked, his good humor muffling the intended sarcasm. He got out of the truck and followed his friend to the patch of multicolored wildflowers.

"I hope not. Since you want to get into my pants and everything."

Henry blushed visibly, and Lane smirked. She stuck her tongue out at him and performed a clumsy cartwheel before bending down to pluck a handful of the flowers. Henry sighed, his gaze drifting over the field. He looked down at his foot, where a solitary red flower grew in a sea of white ones.

Henry held the flower up to Lane with a smile, and it was her turn to blush as she took it from his hand.

There was a single fake flower in a vase on the table by the hotel room's window. It might have been red at one point in time, but constant sunlight and very little cleaning had caused it to go a sickly yellow-grey. The room itself was numbingly cold due to the air conditioner being stuck in the "on" position and the contrast of the cold room and the humid, heated summer night outside fogged the windows. Lane watched beads of condensation drip through the bleary, jaundiced yellow light of the outside streetlamps and numbly willed her moths to go toward those lights and leave her be. They did not comply, however, and the voices continued their mumbling nonsense inside her head.

"Don't worry your silly little head about it," Lane giggled. She opened the door to the restaurant for Henry, who was still staring at his mismatched shoes.

"This is unbelievable," he said.

"Oh, I believe it," she said.

"Our first date was supposed to be perfect."

Lane smiled, held up two fingers for the hostess before turning back to Henry. The smile was edged with good-natured mockery as she said, "I'm having a perfect time."He rolled his eyes, following her to their table.

"Besides," she whispered, "It's pretty dark in here. I don't think anyone will see."

The hotel room was dim but she could still see form of Henry on the bed, peaceful, wonderful. He was too good for her – he kept by her through everything, he loved her more than life itself and it was tearing her apart because she knew every fit, every one of her episodes broke his heart just a little more. He was a kind man – an honest man, a wonderful man, and she loved him in return with every fiber of her being. She hated to see him hurting, just as he hated to see her hurting, but while there was nothing he could do to stop her pain, there was something she could do to stop his. It was all she could give him.

"I want to give you something," Henry blurted, stopping suddenly. The look on his face after she'd turned to face him told her that he'd probably meant that to be smoother than it turned out to be.

Lane held back a smirk, twirling her cone of cotton candy in her hand as she looked up at her boyfriend. She had to stand on her tiptoes to be eye to eye with him, but she felt what she lacked in height she made up for in spirit.

"We've been together for a while, right?" Henry was being awkward again, and Lane couldn't help needling him. She rolled her eyes.

"Feels like years."

He grinned. Her mockery had backfired.

"I'd like to make it a few more," said Henry. He held up his hand, and in the palm of it was a diamond ring.

"Will you marry me?"

Lane, stunned, held up her hand. He placed the ring on her finger, kissed her, and they continued on their date.

She glanced down at her hand every moment she could. Every time her eye caught the sparkle of that tiny diamond in the carnival lights, her heart felt lighter.

The only real light in the room was that of a red LED clock. It told Lane that it was just past midnight. The Witching Hour, it was called. She didn't know where she'd heard that – just acquired it through life. Or maybe the voices had told her, her little moths. They told her all kinds of things – some good, some bad, some ridiculous and some ingenious. Her moths had even helped her out with what to do about saving Henry. To stop the constant emotional pain they caused in one another, she had decided that she and Henry could never see one another again.

He was a good man, a noble man, a perfect man, and she had to let him go.

"Just go!" Lane screamed. A vase of flowers flew against the wall, followed by plates and whatever else Lane could get her hands on.

Henry just ducked the debris, trying his hardest to get to his fiancée without getting hit.

"Lane! Lane, just calm-"

"Don't tell me to calm down, Henry – Don't! Just don't! Just go away, please, go away. I don't want to hurt you, but I will. Please, please, please…"

Henry grabbed her by her shoulders, Lane suddenly finding herself without ammunition. He held her still as she sobbed, each sob punctuated by another half-hearted scream.

"I don't know what's happening to me," she whimpered, her voice quiet and broken.

Life was cruel to good men. It gave them broken, hopeless women to love, and it gave them millions of ways to shatter, until there was nothing left of them but a shell of what used to be.

He found her sitting in the living room as the kitchen burned. It was the third time this week, and the fourth time this month. As he put out the fire with the fire extinguisher they'd kept on hand since the second time Lane had listened to the voices, Henry knew that things were getting worse.

"Why, Lane?" he asked, though he knew the question was practically rhetorical. It used to just be little, quirky lapses in judgment. Henry had found it endearing – just the spirited Lane he'd loved and married, but now it was…

"The moths like light," she replied, dark eyes blank, yet still sparkling... like a looming storm on the horizon, rumbling with thunder and flashes of lightning.

Henry took her hand, kissing her fingertips as she tilted her head to listen to things he could never hear.

Lane moved to Henry's bedside and looked down at the man she loved, brushing her fingers across his tranquil face.

"We're leaving," Henry told her. He grabbed their coats and his keys, and guided Lane to the door.

Lane drifted in and out of reality. Henry could see the moments where she realized what had happened, what she'd done.

"I burned our house down?" she whispered.

Henry nodded, motioning her into the car. He buckled her into the seat and draped the jackets across her lap. She shook her head, like trying to remove water from her ears.

"I was only doing as I was told," she sighed and pouted, like a petulant child. She shrugged nonchalantly and lolled her head to the side to look at Henry as he climbed into driver's seat. She pushed his bangs off his forehead and smiled.

"You're a good husband, you know?"

Henry smiled at her, brushing tears from his face with the back of his hand. He started the car. He didn't have any idea where they were going.

Lane lifted the hotel phone from its crook, her mind as clear as she'd ever felt it and her goals obvious. The moths were oddly silent as she dialed, each melodic beep in her ear like an echoing step toward salvation, toward peace.

"I love you Henry," Lane said from the hotel window as Henry climbed into bed.

"I love you, too."

A voice answered on the other line, calm and succinct, "Nine-One-One, what's your emergency?"

"Hello," Lane said. "I'm reporting a murder."

She looked at the still and silent form of Henry, lovingly smoothing the pillow his head rested upon. The fingers of her other hand idly played with the empty pill bottle in her jacket pocket, and she hoped above all else that death would grant that loving, thoughtful, amazing man all the prizes he deserved, all the prizes that life refused to bestow upon him.

In the back of her mind, a buzzing moth that refused to die told her that it would.