She’s still sitting there, her head yanked back at an odd angle, her eyes dull and mouth foamy. I don’t know what to do. I’m fairly certain she’s dead.
I’m sorry if I’m coming off as cold right now, but I just feel so numb. I think I will collapse when the ambulance gets here. For now though, I feel nothing. I’m just eyes on a body, observing. So little, and yet so much more than… Her.
I want to believe this numbness will last forever, that I will simply float over this chasm I know has opened beneath me until the day my eyes are like hers. But I cannot bring myself to say her name, so I know this isn’t true.
It was a good day. We had not seen each other in a couple of years. Me at my job, her with her job and family. I can’t think of her family right now. Not while she’s still sitting there, sitting stiff with dead eyes on the ceiling, gurgling a slow and awful post mortem breath through foam and gaping teeth.
We went to the mall, she bought me a T-shirt. I’m wearing it now. I bought her sandals, she never got to try them on. We went to Chilli’s, her leftovers are still in my fridge. I remember when we sat at the booth to eat she flipped the long braid of her dark black hair that dangles just past her knees to the side before she sat. Just as she always did. Until a few minutes ago.
On the ride home, I drove. She flicked her hair out of the way when she sat in the passenger seat. Such a mindless gesture, neither of us ever thought of it. Until now. We spoke of childhood memories. Of our parents, and forgotten friends. Of embarrassing memories, and strange broken games that our tech illiterate parents bought for us on some game console that sits collecting dust in some storage closet somewhere.
We came to my home where I live alone, where I am alone again. She wanted to try on the sandals. We went to my living room. She was saying something about the color of the sandals, I can’t remember what. She sat, but she didn’t flick her hair away. She sat with all her weight on the braid. Her head whipped back. All she managed was an abortive yelp before a crack like a gunshot brought terrible silence to the room.
I wish she had died instantly. Her body went limp yet stayed sitting, the braid pinned beneath her and attached to her head held her suspended in her sitting position. I saw her eyes on me, and I saw in them the confusion and pain. They stared around the room looking for something, I don’t know what. It only took a few seconds for her eyes to go dull and for the foam to begin leaking from her spasming lungs. Her death was quick, but those few moments in the interim between life and death where suffering was everything will haunt me forever.
I see the lights of the ambulance coming down the street. I’m going to my room now. I think I will collapse.