She lay on the floor; I couldn’t tell what force had laid her there. She lay still unmoving and I? Well, I could no longer care. This day had started like any other, hot, humid and no air to stir the dust from corners. The bottle had rolled away from her, empty as steel guitar notes in a June desert. The room sagged toward her body, enveloping tragic form in brown tones and torn sheets. Blood stained and winding round those once proud legs, if asked where the wound, she could not have replied, these things came to her only as reminders of nights spent with others whose names were now gone. Nights spent in escapades and dreamtime, mornings full of sorrow to follow, yet she would go again and again, searching the darkened light for something that bore her name.

I had travelled to be here, long years passing in the places where to be known by name was only to invite the company of other madmen, I had not overstayed but knew enough to recognise fear full flame when it appears to those who seek its transient glory. Those haunts would not miss my shoulders either in rain or sun. I knew others there were now no longer with us and appreciated this in the darkest nights. My journey had taught me nothing of love, only the glory of hot flesh and the paper that does not tear easily, that coins announce presence when most unwanted and that the second casually can buy the first.

But this, this was no purchase. I could not want for this gift.

She lay still, nothing moved in this darkened room of few pleasant smells, even the traffic seemed muted by what stretched across these age-darkened boards. Her clothes were faintly intact. With a creature as ethereal a grasp on life as this one had held, how to tell? What others recognised as silk gossamer this one felt as lead to hold her down and back. What colours these had been now bore only watercoloured reminders.

What to do? My travels had led me here, to this moment, do I run? Do I stay?

The faint buzzing of flies echoing my own thoughts, their drone replicating my own inner giddy whirl, how best to move on from this? How best?

I knew that soon others would be here, others who would be needing her, needing her perhaps more than I ever could or want to, others whose needs as hers also superseded their daily grind. Others who would need answers, needing facts as drowning puppies bite into their sack. What could I say? What could I tell?

To tell of days spent in torture earning for the night pleasures, of other men who had passed between her thighs in groans, slumbers and shuddering spendings, to tell of others who loved or promised love and then beat her, to tell of those who needed to mount her in darkened doorways for sordid splendour, the many them who would never again rut with her in the morning before they left their change on the side and rejoin those they had made promises and vows to.

They would need explanations, stories to neatly encapsulate all the facts, embellishments for the oddities that any sane life could throw up, this life had generated more than a hatful and those who hold a need to know, need to know. Indeed, would proclaim loudly that need to hold all loose threads in some generous hand that encompasses more than fateful meetings and chance, yet what else is life?

I could see destiny before me sinking lower into these once pinefresh boards and held will strongly enough to deny that the sun would turn again and I would not be affected. Sun to hold me again, naked as I was born in some tree shaded river as singers in white and other pastels eased the cold around me as I sank to blessings of sand. Sun to hold me as I turned mountain corners from snow, ice and winds that my rags could no longer repel, sun that as a child shone brightly, steadily through all of my memories. I cannot shrink from this, if my journey brought me here, her to this, then I must hold firm, else is treachery of these moments.

Now I am here again as seconds drift on and gone forever, here as fault and regret slip side by side into some other wanted dimension, faith cannot repair enough these deeds created by silence and inner violence. I would turn away now, turn up my collar to ignore these if I could. I would sink here too, deeper in this time gone comfortable chair, deeper into the same sleep that allows her to ignore the flies in her once proud hair, deeper into consciousness that nothing matters except history which is the passing of the sun.

The door rattles from the glance of knuckles in greeting. Reflection ends, now I must ask questions required of me, though I can know life in conspiracy had led her here, conspiracy also guides me to place a word, a name, a final cause, another held responsible for if this is not so, who can say that her choices were not meaningful?

Neil Benbow

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