Liquid Brain
"But this...that...it...no...I'm not saying the thing you're thinking, I'm not. Let's dance the rest of the evening then go home and have a slender glass of rosy wine and watch the fire crackle the logs to death and pretend the house burns down around us but we're saved from destruction because we're special, special, and ouch my shoes are hurting my tender feet just like your tenderloins."
The woman spoke this matter-of-factly, her prim mouth wrinkled with oncoming age. Her age was like a freight train plowing through time, nothing could stop it, nothing, and yes, she was right, they were special, the woman and the other person she was talking to, evidently someone close and eligible for intimate encounters, but she refused to acknowledge everything about herself, like the times when she would wield kitchen knives while standing in front of bathroom mirrors, secretly admiring her finesse, the shiny blades flashing in the light, just missing slicing her neck to pieces.
Or the days in the garden when she would lie on the ground and flail her arms and legs, wailing like a banshee. The neighbors sometimes watched her antics, shaking their heads and softly grinning, knowing that nothing should be spoken, that they only should stand and watch without admiration, for she wasn't to be admired, no, there was no magnificent quality that exuded from her flesh, it was just that she was an anomaly in the universe and the neighbors were safe on the other sides of their respective opposing fences to simply term themselves as onlookers to a supposed human being who had tripped on the wires of sanity and had fallen into a huge chasm of wretchedness and inner tribulation.
She came to no good end. In fact, she came to no end at all. Not even a beginning. She remained imprisoned in her own middle, surrounded by endings and beginnings innumerable. Her whole life was one gigantic mid-chapter, on page 178 in an average-size novel, unable to move on and get on with the storyline. Her essence was the lack of essence itself. She later died a death, but the death she died died with her.