The door gave way on the third kick. I wished that it hadn’t as soon as the smell hit me. The notion of what a smell is will never fully explain what entered my nostrils that day. She had been there for three days, windows shut, in the dry Sri Lankan heat.
Her position was familiar, sitting in her favourite chair, facing the television. Her shorts and T-shirt seemed almost inappropriate for the situation. She was there, but gone.
The arc of blood up the wall behind her was brown now. A death rainbow, and at the end of it there was no pot of gold. The air was me, and I was the air. I breathed her decomposition.
I spent years thinking that she had been murdered. The Colombo murder squad hinted at the boys from the beach. They insinuated that she was a prostitute, that one thing had led to another. She was just another victim of just another brutal robbery in a poor country. Now I’m not so sure. Something happens to you when you discover a dead body. There is an interaction, even though one of you is no longer there. She told me something that day. It has taken me a long time to hear it but I hear it now.
I hear her pain, her disappointment, her release of expectation. I hear her dreams slowly disappearing as her heart hardened.
I hear her locking the door from the inside.
No Tall Stories 
January 26th, 2014 at 1:37 am
omg. ♥ + 😦
January 29th, 2014 at 2:02 pm
Whoa, I have a case of the ickies now, like I breathed it in, your writing was so graphic. Holy mackerel.
February 1st, 2014 at 3:58 pm
and I hear her too , now,. x
February 3rd, 2014 at 10:19 pm
Wow… What a piece of writing!
February 21st, 2014 at 8:50 pm
I took from this and ran with it! Amazing imagery! That is why I love reading, it reads pictures into the mind.
Thank you!
February 21st, 2014 at 9:49 pm
Damn! (oh sorry out the swear word) But this is GREAT! Great write, keep writing!
February 23rd, 2014 at 5:32 pm
Lord have mercy; one heck of a good if not brilliant piece of writing. You hit everything needed short and sweet and to the point, holding your reader without a let up. Once you start reading this short bit, you can’t stop. It is enough but as anyone who loves a good story, you want it to continue.
March 5th, 2014 at 2:55 pm
This has to be one of the best shorts I’ve read!
March 7th, 2014 at 8:27 am
Reblogged this on shane bolitho.