When Love Dies, part 1

I sat down to write a ghost story set in a theatre, but when I started writing, this came out. With a title and everything. I'm not sure how long it will be or if I will finish it, but I will post the segments here as they seem fit. All of the segments (chapters?) are rather short, but if this does become a novel, I would prefer the chapters to be short. But we'll see how it turns out.

Effie glared at her own reflection, tugging at the blouson dress that was somehow simultaneously too big and too small. Tearing off the dress, she looks around the dressing room, completely littered with all the dresses she died on of varying sizes and styles––none of them worked.

As she looks at the disarray, looking for when last glimmer of hope, she sees herself in the mirror, unclothed. She always felt too short, but her legs are rather nice and are pretty long, except they're always scattered with mysterious bruises. She turns her focus to her stomach, stretch marks entwine together from her hips to her naval, like ivy rebelliously growing up the side of a building, from all the weight she gained in college; her belly hangs down to her pelvis, no matter how many crunches or planks she gets up in the morning to do. Her boobs are ok, a bit too big, but at least, thanks to her mother's insistence to always wear a bra, they are rather perky for their size. But, she has no butt.

Thanks to these dimensions, Effie can never find clothes that don't make her look either frumpy or slutty. She can never go shopping without crying in the dressing room.

And here she cries again.

Before the tears start to roll, leaving all the garments she tried on in the dressing room, she runs out of the department store.

Not a lot can make Effie cry––crying never turned out well for her as a kid, so, after years of getting her hair pulled and arms covered in bruises, she learned to release that negative energy in ways other than tears. However, even fear of body injury could never cure her anxiety and when that got out of control, the tears would flow. Still, she could never let anyone see her cry.

She managed to run home before it poured.