Cursed Ground

If he could pull himself close enough he might be able to reach for it and slide the keys off the table. He had a free good leg.

It was raining and about an hour later when he stepped outside and confronted her again. She was lying on the ground, staring ahead: eyes blinking but unmoving. Wherever she was she wasn’t there.

He’d had plenty of time to look at her yesterday when she lay asleep in bed. His eyes had roamed over every feature of her face countless times and after each time he was convinced he had to look just once more. Like a besotted schoolboy, he could barely turn away as he could barely do so now. Her soft pink bottom lip, her curly black hair, her coffee colored skin… all quite alluring, but ultimately, it was the lovely brown tone of her flesh that captured him the most. It blended so well with her attire that by the end of the day he was convinced that the cream colored gown he’d put her in complimented her warm skin tone quite nicely.

It was such a simple observation to come to terms with, given the fact that he’d spent so many hours staring at her. He had been entranced, so to speak, so much so that he’d forgotten his manners—to clean up after himself as she so astutely put it. And by the time he’d realized it, it was too late to undo the damage. He’d run out of time.

At the time, he wasn’t quite sure who had died. He’d noticed blood, but he’d never paid attention to much else. Truly, he never had a chance to take a close look or maybe he just didn’t want to. Either way, most, if not all of it was truth. Once he’d come to, he had to tend to her and that was all the distraction he needed to avoid the reality that threatened him from the day he’d arrived in this God-awful place.

He picked her up. She was drenched through. He would have to get her warm soon before the chill set in and she came down with something neither of them could cure. He would do it quickly, because the thought of losing her so soon was close to unbearable.

Before, he was capable of enduring the long days of loneliness with skillful thinking, but now that he had company he couldn’t imagine going back to that insane place in which he had to keep himself occupied with his own thoughts hour after hour, day after day.