Ella Reynolds
Yesterday she had un-done herself. The unwinding had met its end and begun to escape the reasons to return. So she closed the storage cupboard, gear in hand, not dwelling on the happenings of mere days before.
She makes her way down the passage, to the room with no soul. The foul smell of a rotten corpse begins to fill her lungs, so she breathes it in ever so slightly deeper. She doesn’t hesitate nor fret to open the unhinged door and peers at the gallivanting maggots with their fly foes who gather at the site of decomposition. Instead, she pulls her limbs close as she bends to the floor to reach over and close the pointless eyes. Now that there is no one watching, she fiddles with the trash bag to find the opening and sets it aside. First she gloves her hands and sets her laptop away from the site and presses play on the tutorial for a Constrictor knot. She replays and readjusts until she’s sure it will work. The restrictions lessen and she begins her descent into madness. The limbs are bound, hence the ripping of tape that bounces off the walls. The body is now a garbage bag that she can throw over her shoulder and into the forgotten land fills.
She rounds the corner, lit by a lonely lamppost, and opens the bin. She heaves the body over her shoulder and stares holes through the times that are only memories now. She swiftly closes it with a lack of remorse just as she’d plunged into the chest of the oppressor. A joyful whistle fills the air as she makes her way to the house she had never called a home. A marionette pulls her into the act of tidying up and the unwinding reverses. The splatters of blood that litter her hallway are uninvited with the bleach she’d bought on the way back. The screws of the door are forced back into place as though nothing had happened. And with that, the doubt lying in the mirror, the food on the dinner table and the clothes she wore that day all lie at the bottom of a landfill site next week Tuesday.