Every sip tastes of desire…and loss.

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Wine bottle labels. Pieces of white paper, gracing hour-glass-shaped green glass. Marcy’s life.

The avid collector of rare wines was a recluse who was more than slightly off-the-wall–the smell of her eccentric apartment was cloying, filled with the scent of grapes. Shelves were lined with prides of her collections, caked with layers of dust. Marcy wore her refined palate like a proud peacock. She could name the wines she sipped blindfolded–and that was a waste. She memorised the scent of every grape she’d kissed.

Life became less of a rut when a mysterious, unmarked bottle arrived on her doorstep with a simple note–handwritten in looping cursive, curling like chimney smoke. The red liquid within the bottle gleamed like red rubies, as if it knew the secrets within her heart. She took the first sip–alone, yet not quite. It slid over her tongue, sweet, persistent, like a memory tugging at her soul.

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The wine had a familiar flavour—but she couldn’t quite place it.

Then, a faint, airy breath—her own voice.

Chanting a long-forgotten mantra.

“Crave the taste, lose in haste.”

Marcy set her glass on the table, almost spilling the wine over in her start. Was it the flavour of cured grapes? Or grapes and alcohol–

In her mind?

“Crave the taste, lose in haste…”

A photo above the fireplace. Of herself, as a little girl, pig tails uncut. 

Firm. Without the feel of a hairbrush.

With a naive, untainted smile.

Crave the taste.

Lose in haste.

The little girl swirled in a whirlpool of mental smog–and vanished.

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Marcy raised a trembling hand, reaching once again for the fated glass. The bottle of wine made suggestions. Beckoned. 

Its surface shimmered–a secret untold. 

She lifted it to her lips and took in its smoky aroma. 

Along with something too familiar. A little grating. 

She swooned a little as a picture of herself, a child, surfaced at its brim. 

The warmth of happiness, naivete and sunlight, streaming through her window. 

Casting a glow on her soft skin, yet unblemished.

The wine swirled beneath her tongue. a drink soothing in its forbidden form.

And then…Marcy, the child. 

Crave the taste….lose the haste.

Her innocent form hazy, against the taste of succulence. 

Marcy gazed at her childhood self fading–gradually, in each glass section of the window.

She reached.

No more. 

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Marcy’s fingers slipped, but her reflexes weren’t slow–yet. She held on to the wine glass.

Tighter. 

A lingering, cloying scent filled the room. 

The wine bottle stood, watchful.

Mocking. 

Daring her to take another sip. 

Marcy fingered the glass, her desire for another taste almost insatiable–but paused.

Fear began its grip. 

She caught sight of her reflection in the glass window. 

Too stretched.

The lights on the ceiling sparked on and off. 

Her shadow, once still on the floor, grew longer. 

The sweetness of the wine cloyed, thicker, on her tongue. 

Her reflection in the window started to haze over. 

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Marcy raised her glass to her lips, ready for a final sip. 

The bottle seemed to breathe; the wine swirled with a life of its own. 

She paused, the longing for the taste of the old wine almost drowning. 

She caught sight of her image in the glass window–only its legs. 

The lights above her clicked on and off, the rate increasing. 

The reflection in the glass window had shrunk–to its feet. 

She was being consumed.

She stared at the wine bottle. 

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Then, at the image in the mirror.

The feet had vanished. 

The label on the wine bottle read: “Red Nook.”

With the letters O more rounded than she had first seen them. 

On it, a picture of a charming chateau, its branches curved.

Almost smiling. 

The wine glass fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. 

Marcy?

Marcy no longer. 

Vanished. 

She had sipped, sinned–and succumbed. 

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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.