Broken

Ange's heart was broken on the day that the world collapsed. While the survivors around her struggled to find food, clothing, and shelter, she lay oblivious to it all in bed and cried; for the man she loved, for the agony of rejection, and for the cruelty of fate.

Leonard had been so handsome, with delicate lines that creased at the edges of his eyes when a thought amused him. His touch had been so tender, as though any more force might tear through the world which, it turns out, had been made of the thinnest of parchment. Ange believed that he had loved her, for the words often drifted from his lips in the midst of their lovemaking. No man had ever enveloped her, wrapped her body in the luxury of his loins until she had lost herself in his woodsy musk.

Someone pounded on the door. "Angela! Are you in there?"

"Go away, Mother."

"Thank God. Oh sweetie I've been so worried. Let me in."

"Let yourself in."

"I don't have your key."

Ange sat up, curious how her mother could possibly be without a key. After all, the woman kept it next to her own car key on the ring, Ange had seen it a hundred times.

More banging. "Angela?"

"Damn." She threw the covers off and her body tensed from the cold of the room. The heat must have failed for she could see her breath in the air. She wrapped her arms tightly against her chest trying to stop the shivers and opened the door.

What stood in the hallway could not possibly have been her mother. The woman never wore anything but a power suit, complete with high heels and matching jewellery. And yet there she stood, in worn jeans and heavy winter boots, a flannel plaid collar poking above the Gortex jacket. And her hair, for the first time in her life the strands hung limp and lifeless, oily even, as though she'd lost her mind overnight and the hair drying along with it.