ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 66
She left her body and the familiar sensation of vertigo was thrilling
instead of nauseating. She could no longer see. She embraced the
short-circuit of her psyche and went on spinning and levitating.
The roaring in her ears finally subsided, fading into a high, pure
tone, under which she could make out a low gurgling from the
object at her feet, now coming into focus. His middle had been
impaled by a large branch. Bark and debris floated, moving ever
so slightly in the dark puddle beneath him. Shards of glass had
torn his face and eyes, and finer glass dusted his glistening ear. He
wheezed, but all the real suffering had been completed so much
earlier. He had made a promise and could appreciate a magnificent
storm. Glass clinked to the ground as his brow relaxed in the relief
of martyrdom.
Sleep found her this time, and she conceded, cocooned beneath a
quilt. The dreams kept on, unrelenting, but they escorted the darkness away and symbolic figures discussed her new destiny.
When she woke, it was light. Through the open window, she
watched a tree lean in her direction slightly, allowing her to anticipate the breeze that came in, fluttering the sheer white curtain,
ragged and dark at the bottom where it dragged against the floorboards. She felt around the other side of the bed with her hand.
There’d be no making sense of what she’d destroyed. Taking a deep
breath, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, over
the congealing mess beneath her.
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Before she left, she took the black drawstring bag from her duffel.
Crouching over it, she untied the black ribbon, her bruised knuckles
meeting as she pulled open the mouth of the bag. She laughed cynically at the wooden sculpture of a pelican with its neck like a loop
and its beak piercing its own breast; there was nothing in the bag
for her, as she had suspected. She let the memories of the two of
them fall like heavy drops of blood from a wound beginning to close,
