American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 44
The Dead See
Patti Santucci
The bullet hits with such force, I take two steps back.
Josh stares at me, all the anger drains from his face and
is replaced with horror as his eyes find mine and then
drop to my chest. My gaze shifts to the unnatural shreds
of bloody tissue visible through the tear in my blouse.
Shouldn’t I feel pain? My fingers find the hole and it is
then that my knees begin to turn to water. I try to yell for
help, but the volume of metallic sludge pools in the back
of my throat and spills off my bottom lip. Each breath
reminds me I am drowning. My knees hit the asphalt first.
Josh brushes his hair back, that brown hair I once thought
was so beautiful, and whispers, “Oh my God.”
The burning begins first, like a white-hot knife
thrusting and twisting inside my left breast. A sucking
sound involuntarily escapes my mouth as if my lungs are
trying to grip handfuls of oxygen. I think I am crying.
Josh bends down telling me how sorry he is, my eyes
pleading with his to save me.
The air becomes still as the rest of my body folds onto
the pavement. I watch an ant saunter along the white
line that defines the parking space, watch it methodically
negotiate the boulder-like gravel. Step by tiny step. The
fire inside my chest, now extinguished. The sun bathes
me. I see Josh’s lips moving, watch him pace. I find the
ant again and walk with it. No more pain. No more sound.
Death is very still.
I feel no part of the panic as I watch Josh scream,
no sadness as I stare at my body awkwardly bent and
bleeding. There is no wondering where I will go next,
no fear that I don’t belong where I am. Only a detached
stillness. Comforting. Peaceful really.
Perhaps five minutes pass as I watch Josh go from
sorrow to sociopath. He tucks the gun into the back of his
Levis, the ones with the fraying inseam and the oil stain
on the left back pocket that I never could get out. His
wheels are turning now.
I should have run sooner. He had been capable of
this all along and from the outside looking in, we had
always been a statistic. One of those couples destined to
make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Seems like a
completely different man who once scoured the stores
to find Necco wafers just because I once mentioned that
some of my best childhood memories were of me and my
sister sharing that candy on our front stoop. A different
man who laid four straight nights on the floor, next to my
boxer, Cassius, because no one should ever die alone. A
different man who showed up at my work, after our first
break-up, dinner and candles in hand, singing along with
a recorded version of Al Green’s, Let’s Stay Together.
The rage, a quiet beast inside him, grew slowly at first,
nibbling at his soft edges. I kept making excuse after
excuse until one day I realized the monster in him had
ripped all his kindnesses away, leaving only large chunks
of inflamed gristle exposed. By then, his boot had been
wedged at my throat for so long that I didn’t even know
how I’d cope if he ever let up. Friends, family, they had
all fallen away. Or did I push them? I had become too
lost, too fragile, too alone to risk moving.
He pops the trunk of his blue Nissan, the sound echoing
through the empty lot, and pulls out a tarp, seven bungee
cords, a roll of duct tape and several black garbage bags.
He reaches underneath my shoulders and drags me onto
the canvas. I watch as he sweeps the hair from my face
and places a bag over my head, handling me much more
carefully in death than he ever did when I was alive. He
duct-tapes my wrists and ankles and wraps several bags
around my body, securing them with the bungee cords we
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American River Review