The odor of rotting flesh rattled around in Anne's brain like an obsession. It would someday drive her mad. Drive her to pull up the floor boards in search of corpses. And he would come in to find her with bloodied fingernails, hunched over the earth, weeping.
Hunched over damp Southern earth, surrounded by decay. Rancid sun and mosquitoes and heavy air that catches her lungs and makes it hard to walk. To walk, to stand, to unfold from a bed and face the dripping branches and the swamp.
Weeping over her steering wheel, weeping over corpses, weeping over the Southern earth.
She drives away from the past.
And his future: she had one of those faces, one of those mouths where when she smiled, she looked like a toothless old lady, Anne thought. Or like a pointy little bird.
And there she is coming up the overgrown walk. And speaking to him in confidential tones with her little pecking beak. Peck peck pecking away what has happened before until it is insignificant nostalgia.
So Anne drives away and is enveloped in limbs and morbid night sky and the carrion scent.
Back home, she spread her arms wide across the bed so that the vines could wrap around her wrists and the smell could knock against her skull. And the flies, they tried to escape from her mouth so she swallowed them one by one.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Carrion
A small animal curled up and died below Anne's bedroom window.
The smell of his rot permeated the stolid apartment air and wrapped fingers around Anne's neck until she could not breathe.
Doubled over on bathroom tile. What had she done?
(She smiled at the familiar shirts on the rack. At the closeness of his shoulder to her waist. Sitting next to him. Wanting to touch. Loving, always loving him.)
And then she shrouded his sunshine face.
When she was young, Gina had had a lover who fell apart. She told Anne.
He was put together all wrong and fell apart. Organs tucked in willy-nilly and knocking on his ribcage. A weak heart. Beautiful skin like milk and bad blood rushing beneath, rushing to the surface. Poisoning him.
It seemed that all the care of crafting had been left to his mind and his black eyes that looked out so angrily at the world. And then softly, soft. Like the trailing off and cracking of his voice. Or his lips on her shoulder.
(His face in the morning light. His lovely sunshine face. Beaming and searching for her answer.)
And Anne, oh Anne, she prattles and evades and curls up next to the rotting carcass and fills her mouth with flies.
The smell of his rot permeated the stolid apartment air and wrapped fingers around Anne's neck until she could not breathe.
Doubled over on bathroom tile. What had she done?
(She smiled at the familiar shirts on the rack. At the closeness of his shoulder to her waist. Sitting next to him. Wanting to touch. Loving, always loving him.)
And then she shrouded his sunshine face.
* * *
When she was young, Gina had had a lover who fell apart. She told Anne.
He was put together all wrong and fell apart. Organs tucked in willy-nilly and knocking on his ribcage. A weak heart. Beautiful skin like milk and bad blood rushing beneath, rushing to the surface. Poisoning him.
It seemed that all the care of crafting had been left to his mind and his black eyes that looked out so angrily at the world. And then softly, soft. Like the trailing off and cracking of his voice. Or his lips on her shoulder.
* * *
(His face in the morning light. His lovely sunshine face. Beaming and searching for her answer.)
And Anne, oh Anne, she prattles and evades and curls up next to the rotting carcass and fills her mouth with flies.
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