All My Sins Remembered
I could not see her
body, just a head in a hatch.
It hung there,
in the gloom, like some desiccated trophy, exquisitely positioned by a capricious
witch, to serve as a warning to others.
What had she
been before her terrible fate had overtaken her?
I made a surreptitious
study of the evidence whilst pretending to browse.
Where were the traces
of her innocent girlhood that many women show in their aging faces? Nothing but
faint salty stains, memories of long dried tear tracks, betrayed her past.
Had thankless children
etched those lines around her rheumy eyes?
Had the absent
husband been ushered into an early grave by the stodgy food that dulled her own
pasty complexion? Or had he left her, run away to sea or driven into the arms
of a voluptuous vixen by her relentless, disapproving frown?
She regarded me,
unblinking in the eye straining half light of the kiosk.
I would not buy
anything I knew, even as I continued my listless survey of her yellowed stock.
What sin she had
committed to have been consigned to this half life existence?
The atmosphere smothered
me like a musty pillow and I fled for the door. Even the bright ding of the
bell at the door was diminished, swallowed by the hungry shadows.
I gasped like a
drowning man as I burst into the daylight, leaving the woman wallowing in her monochrome
misery.
240 words
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