Lila Darling

by Alun Williams

She wore a red dress, made from a material that I guessed was plutonium because it had explosive quality and literally blew the room away. It was softer than scarlet, clung on like a limpet, laid on her bare shoulders like a cascading transparent pinky red wrap, draped over her back like an Amazonian waterfall. Adding to this elegance was the fact she wore snow white elbow length gloves and a three tier string of opaque pearls around her slim neck, same as Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany's. She had red hair, flaming dark red that some lucky hairdresser had probably touched some hours earlier and who now I pictured crying because he’d touched heaven and now only faced hell. Every so often she would drop her head to the side and muse on some old guy’s poor taste joke and smile at him and make him happy. That was the first time I met Lila Darling.

6S

Alun Williams, ex-member of East of the Web and author of On the Road, lives in Wales. He now writes in Critters Bar and Zoetrope under "maxie slim" and "Maxwell Allen." Several shorts by Alun have been published in Write Side Up, Cambrensis and Secret Attic.