In her place – copyright 2004 – First published in “Thirteen Magazine” U.K.
They considered her insignificant, if they considered her at all.
Why she chose to walk that way, along the dark side of the buildings no longer matters to anyone else.
She checked over her shoulder often. She felt as though she was being followed. She was you know. A rush of thin stale air climbing her back scraping her nerves, sending wisps of hair into spiked jolts of dread.
It may have only been a feeling after-all. The only time she would have known for certain was when it was too late.
It was raining. The street noise was muffled, distant. Her gait would have sounded uneven as she sidestepped the puddles. She was a fast walker at the best of times. Your leg muscles twitch involuntarily imagining her pace, imagining you in her motion.
Her thoughts may have slipped back and forth between practical realities and intangible wanderings. She had been carrying dry cleaning, office attire; two merino sweaters and cream gabardine slacks. The wine stain never did come out — a Hungarian red, Szekszárd 2003 — your birthday or hers?
You suspend your breathing to consider her desolate moment. Obsessing over images, rhythms, creating textures, you can’t stop building the incident with incomplete fragments. Your life stops locked in her whorl.
Her thoughts and ideas, plans and emotions lost. You agonize. Your mind tortures senses. What became her reality, you force down into your own essence. Her tangible terror is swallowed in supplant shards, skimming over your vital organs, screeching across your thoughts.
You beg to be consumed, removed: to be in her place.
Replaying how it must have been, locking one mangled night in an endless eight-minute loop. You are desperate for one last element something to finally connect you.
You want to believe there must be a reason for it – for everything – a comfort to be found. There isn’t, not for any of it. Nothing will ever fit quite right; you’ll just have to find the reason that fools you into calm. Find the reason to make you let go.
Frenzied; the dissembled projection takes your mind again.
You watch her leave.
She steps out into the downpour wincing at the first touch of slivered rain.
You sit numb: watching her tug at the collar of her navy coat then drape her cold right hand with the fringe of the pink scarf, the one you bought her for Christmas the year before last. She shivers, visibly agitated. She speeds up veering down the alley; her short cut to meet you.
You slip out of your body; floating over the horrid scene allowing the details to sting your mind, burn your eyes.
You float just high enough for her to reach, close enough for her perfume and the night to be real.
Clearly now, this time you can see, always unable to prevent it.
This time you are there at the moment of her death.
End.
