Found a prompt on a site a while ago and wrote this out quickly. I like where I went with it. If you'd like a (very) brief explanation of my though process whilst writing this, ask. Read it first, though. (Any thoughts on the paragraphing by the way? It was originally one block of text but that seemed inaccessible).
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there are two chairs in the room. one is a faded red; the material so worn it’s almost pink, but still retains a deep blush at the edges. shiny hand-prints are grooved into the arm of the chair, and it still holds the vestige of mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks in the form of the occasional crumb lurking in the seams. the back of the chair sags: shapeless from the body that has moulded into it. the other chair is beige, the colour that comes when all other colours are mixed together and combined with a dulling white. though seemingly soft, it is covered with plastic masquerading as leather and stocky, rigid wood rises up to form a backrest ready to claw at tired shoulders.
they sit together, these chairs, and the woman stands next to them. a hand on each, she looks down at the floor. strands of white hair brush over a creased face; grooves that tell of countless sunday afternoons in the garden, of watching a child grow older until they become a distorted mirror, of watching the world until it ceases to be reality. slowly, her head tilts away from the floor. a straggled curtain of hair still veils her features, but a bony hand follows the woman’s gaze, skittering over the faded material of the reddish-pink chair. it traces the outline of the handprints and the woman and the chair sigh simultaneously – it is the sigh of a husband or father setting down his briefcase on a friday afternoon, of a student setting down their pen at 3am monday morning. they sigh and the woman snatches her hand away, burnt by a dying flame.
head still tilted towards the red chair, she turns her body and sinks slowly into the chair that is coloured dull-white-beige. when her body touches the chair it is as rigid as the wood that her shoulders barely touch. hair falls away from her face as it turns away from the other chair; brittle icicles falling from the mouth of an icy cave. her hand stills at her side – the fingers twitch, reaching out for something that is no longer there. beside her, beside the dull-white-beige chair, the formerly red chair begins to fade. the blush at the edges creeps backwards until the now-only-pink chair becomes insubstantial, a dream-that-was-once-a-memory. as the chair fades, the woman’s features are obscured once more as she looks down at the floor.
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